EVE General Discussion

Excuse me for playing Devils Advocate here but this sounds like it could be abused way too easy.

Is there any accountability? You say you collect donations throughout the year and IF a disaster happens you donate the isk to
the character that CCP created. What happens to the isk if there was no disaster that made the news?

How much do you keep to yourself? This is EVE after all... Scams are part of the game... is this a scam?

With no accountability You will get no iskies from me and about accountability... is Somer Blink going to be the "Trusted party"?

After all they are doing a service to the community.

You are welcome, this is EvE after all. I am not going to bring in details about my years records, current facts matter.

- First of all, VAERT already have got the ISK to donate. Actually, VAERT is asking to give them away.
Therefore a big scam motivator does not exist to begin with.

- There are special clauses (linked earlier in this very thread) written by CCP. Basically scamming on these things is worse than scamming on characters sales.

- When disasters don't happen, the fund actually begins to work. Donations trickle in over the years, the fund exists exactly to orderly hold and accrue residual ISK people feel free to place somewhere for a possible future charity drive.

- When the disaster happens, then the accrued ISK are converted into PLEX and forwarded to a special CCP character that takes them and turns them into real money to send to RL charities.

- The trusted party is myself. Feel free to browse my records on Market Discussions to see why and how.

A couple of points to make on this.

a) VV ran this programme for a while between the first and second PLEX for Good drives and delivered about 100bil of PLEX to the second one. He then closed the programme down honourably having distributed all the cash he gathered. The programme was restarted not because VV went cap in hand to people asking for donations but because I kind of pressured him into starting it up again, despite all the work it takes to administer, by dumping a significant donation on him.

b) VV and affiliated donors and supporters (including myself, Grendell, Chribba and others) have discussed in recent months the question of whether there will ever be another PLEX for Good drive. My assumption when pushing VV to get this going again after the Japan drive was that another one would happen fairly soon. However, it has now been more than two years since the last one so VV recently petitioned CCP to find out if they intended to do another. His position is that if CCP state they will not do any more of these then donors will have their funds returned. If they leave the possibility open (and CCP Eterne's reply in VV's thread a few weeks ago did just that) then the funds will remain in place awaiting their day. As you can see, VV is rather keen to get rid of the 70-80bil of PLEX he has already collected in the last two years! That is why he is here pushing for CCP to activate the programme again now.

c) VV keeps nothing for himself.

d) Accountability - VV has managed hundreds of billions of public funds in the last four years, including managing the donation of 100bil to the last PLEX drive, and has been the trusted third party auditor for a significant number of businesses. He maintains open books on this project so everyone can see what's going on. This, combined with CCP's assurance that no one is allowed to scam around this programme (CCP do not allow scamming in relation to PLEX for Good; they have publicly stated that anyone using this scheme to scam will receive an immediate and permanent ban) provides a great deal of security, since anyone can always petition CCP to check that VV's claims are true. In addition, VV has recognised throughout that individuals might not trust him with their isk and so has put in place 'sister funds' run by some of the most trusted figures in the game that can be donated to instead. There is a sister fund run by Chribba, for example, and Grendell also manages a portion of the isk. In short, if you don't trust VV that is not an obstacle to donating. Read the linked thread and send your donation to Chribba instead if you prefer.

Philippines*

Being Filipino myself +1 I'd give all the isk I have to the fund.

It seems petitions about skill point loss get answered within a few days whereas petitions regarding, for example, a 16B scam in a CCP-endorsed event get stuck in queue for 35+ days. It's all about priorities.

Lending my voice to the endorsement of Vaerah and her scheme. I am away from the game at present due to work, but will endeavour to donate a few PLEX to the cause if I get back online in time. Failing that, I have already donated to a relief fund, but as Rhivre and many others have pointed out, when IRL cash is limited for philanthropy, the ability to monetise virtual assets to potentially save lives is a powerful thing.

Make this happen CCP - VV has done all the hard work for you, get on the phone to the relief organisations and let him give you his, and our, money!

That is a great gesture, and gives me the idea for auctioning off a T2 BPO that I have. A significant proportion of the sale price will go to charity. The higher the sale price, the more goes to charity. Will work on a formula where 100% goes to charity if the bids reach a certain value. This is, of course, if CCP decide to open the PLEX for Good drive.

Hopefully we hear back from CCP soon (tm).

CCP only helps rich countries like Japan.