I'd like a little more information on the SOMER lottery issue specifically as that was the really immense giveaway here and it's not really well addressed. Specifically, why an in-game business was given such immense prizes as "a fansite" that wound up making them almost certainly literally trillions of isk. It's not really addressed at all in your post: no indication of why SOMER, no indication of what process went on here and why the CSM was never consulted, no indication of what other "fansites" have gotten these sort of things.

It's not just that SOMER got the lottery gifts. It's that they were absolutely stupendously massive. There's also the seperate problem of Navigator officially declaring them Not A Scam.

The IWS issue would not have been nearly as big an issue without that: it's that both happened, and that the lottery gift to SOMER was already absurdly out of line. The IWS issue exacerbated the lottery issue, it wasn't the main problem.

Should we stick to out-of-game things only? Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards? Give no personal rewards and only prizes? Only items below a certain expected ISK value? Always give out tons of stuff at once so early recipients canGÇÖt cash out? List all rewards publicly?

ThatGÇÖs it for now, let us know your thoughts.

When you reward somebody by giving them PLEX nobody else suffers any serious devaluation. When you give somebody an IWS all other IWS owners and collectors get completely screwed over because the price collapses.

Just give people PLEX in future, as much as you like, but no rare items ever.

ThatGÇÖs it for now, let us know your thoughts.

Should we stick to out-of-game things only?

Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards?

Give no personal rewards and only prizes?

Only items below a certain expected ISK value?

Jealous people killing a reward that CCP gives out to people who support the community. As far as the first somer lottery was concerned this was a mistake and CCP actually fixed it.

Also thanks Guard!

Out of game rewards only please.

I can probably shed a bit of light on that although Navigator touched on that in his announcement following what was going to be the Gold Magnate event.

Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do.

In the statement we go into who else have gotten the ISWs and also what sort of giveways we usually extend to fansites.

As we said, we agree with you that we went too fast and that's why we need to re-think this whole thing. We need to keep the CSM more involved, their input is invaluable.

Ideally sponsorship will come in the form of items that are not insanely valuable (magnates etc) and do not impact the sandbox in any meaningful way. ISK is highly meaningful.

Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do.

There was over 100 ISW "spawned" before this whole fiasco started. Why wasn't this an issue then and why now? Not only that, but plans to release more?

As a fan site owner I got goodies worth of about ~1B and felt honored.
I sold the items and gave my corp mates some free ships, which leads to more PvP ingame.

It does not matter if it's a Video, a blogpost or a whole Tournament. Some people put so many hours into fan projects and they deserved at least something. It does not matter if it's ISK or just a thank you.

Bloggers already get their media account, how about something for those awesome video makers from /my eve/?

As the players of this universe, we set the prices of everything contained within. Its annoying watching some peoples reactions on this matter.... "T20 2.0" or "CCP gave Trillions to SOMER."

As a fan site owner I got goodies worth of about ~1B and felt honored.
I sold the items and gave my corp mates some free ships, which leads to more PvP ingame.

It does not matter if it's a Video, a blogpost or a whole Tournament. Some people put so many hours into fan projects and they deserved at least something. It does not matter if it's ISK or just a thank you.

Bloggers already get their media account, how about something for those awesome video makers from /my eve/?

because the ISW was the prize for the poker tournament, hence it was announced.

and the poker tournament was open to any one (i assume) and as such it was available to "everyone" and not just some one that CCP decided deserved it based on an unknown set of criteria.
also, generally, the people in the poker tournament put some extra effort in (you know, turning up to the poker tournament, and winning it) vs somer doing nothing that isn't day-to-day business for them.

The first one went to the winner of the 2012 Fanfest Poker Tournament. Subsequent ones have been given to participants of various PVP tournaments, the 2013 Poker Tournament, the winner of the BIG Lottery 10th anniversary event, Alliance Tournament player commentators, Alliance Tournament volunteers, the staff of the Syndicate Competitive League (SCL) and most recently the staff of SOMER blink.

also, generally, the people in the poker tournament put some extra effort in (you know, turning up to the poker tournament, and winning it) vs somer doing nothing that isn't day-to-day business for them.

In the future I would suggest sticking to gifting plexes and the like. No one (or at least not many) would have batted an eye if you gave SOMER 30 plexes.

You make it sound like as if creating and maintaining a well know eve online fansite + infrastructure and handling with employees is effortless.

Should we stick to out-of-game things only?

Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards?

Give no personal rewards and only prizes?

Only items below a certain expected ISK value? Always give out tons of stuff at once so early recipients canGÇÖt cash out?

List all rewards publicly?

and even less if CCP would have just credited each blink employee with a month or two of game time and cut out the middle man.

This does not address at all the criteria CCP uses to determine "services rendered" and why Somer Blink got so much in the way of rewards while there are far more deserving entities for any particular criteria it would be reasonable for CCP to have used.

In the future I would suggest sticking to gifting plexes and the like. No one (or at least not many) would have batted an eye if you gave Somer 30 plexes. Nex clothes would also work.

Giving out unique ships in a spaceship sandbox....eh......not the best idea.

The precise criteria isn't that scientific at the moment which is why we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

We selected to reward SOMER and his staff because the time was right to do stuff with them, Vegas sponsorship being an example. Same story with the SCL which was having an active period and doing really exciting things.

What is the difference between NEX clothes and IWS?

When we gave out thousands of pirate-skinned rookie frigates to players at PAX East and Gamescom, they initially sold for 1 billion ISK in-game without causing stir. Obviously those were less rare from the get-go and were handed out fairly randomly in the familiar environment of GÇ£go to game show GÇô get swagGÇ¥.

The precise criteria isn't that scientific at the moment which is why we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

We selected to reward SOMER and his staff because the time was right to do stuff with them, Vegas sponsorship being an example. Same story with the SCL which was having an active period and doing really exciting things.

Here's the million dollar question

what else has CCP secretly given out to pilots, communities, player run organizations?

I haven't heard of SOMER helping anyone in game. I don't gamble with them so maybe I'm in the dark here but the only service I see that they provide is taking peoples ISK through gambling and the only reason they got a reward from CCP is that they help sell plexes.

In the statement we go into who else have gotten the ISWs and also what sort of giveways we usually extend to fansites.

The problem is this reeks of 'Greed is Good' at the moment and the secret nature in which SOMER wanted it handled only makes it seem that much worse.

I haven't heard of SOMER helping anyone in game. I don't gamble with them so maybe I'm in the dark here but the only service I see that they provide is taking peoples ISK through gambling and the only reason they got a reward from CCP is that they help sell plexes.

You failed to read this part...

If fan-sites etc are rewarded with isk, be it in the form of rare ships or whatever, could it not lead to a situation whereby some folk will learn how to milk-abuse the rewards system?

we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

A SOMER Director is a regular at a Monthly EVE meet I help with. He donated tens of billions in prizes in August. And gave 250 Mil to everyone in attendance last Christmas...

Now you have heard of SOMER helping people when they didn't really need to, but wanted to!

Hard to abuse a system which isn't automatic.

You make it sound like as if creating and maintaining a well know eve online fansite + infrastructure and handling with employees is effortless.

Out of game only or vanity trash like:

- A piece of Steve
- Band of Brothers Director Access Key
- Lost reminder to pay sov bill

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

The precise criteria isn't that scientific at the moment which is why we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

We selected to reward SOMER and his staff because the time was right to do stuff with them, Vegas sponsorship being an example. Same story with the SCL which was having an active period and doing really exciting things.

Recently CCP rewarded the staff members of SOMER Blink, the highly popular micro lottery website, with Ishukone Watch Scorpions (IWS) as a thank-you for their contributions to EVE.

In its very essence, the IWS is a skin with its own GÇ£show infoGÇ¥ description. But while thatGÇÖs certainly an important thing to realize, we of course recognize that rare items you can sell on TQ will be coveted and will have some value through the law of supply and demand despite a lack of base value or actual functionality.

Why hasnGÇÖt my favorite fansite or community enterprise received something nice too?

ThereGÇÖs no single answer to that question. Sometimes it has to do with the timing of specific events related to that fansite or enterprise, sometimes your favorite is next in line or theyGÇÖve simply gotten something different, such as free accounts, trips and/or tickets to Fanfest, CollectorGÇÖs editions, a couple of time codes, devs flown to their events, T-shirts, posters, resin ship models etc. etc.

Now on to the personal reward

The IWS is a cool thing to have and thatGÇÖs why we use it as a reward, not because it carries X ISK value. The price people negotiate is wholly decided between individuals and is hard for us to predict with any precision.

We recognize that gifting rare in-game items of potential ISK value proactively to select third-parties, whether as prizes for them to hand out or as a personal thank-you, can have implications no matter how well-meaning you are. We realize that for example in the IWS reward situation, a line was crossed in many peopleGÇÖs minds despite there being certain similarities with previous gifting events. Where the line of acceptability lies is something we need to work out together before we move forward.

4. A Dev endorsed a player run lottery and specified that it was totally legitimate. CCP endorsements of player run businesses must never be allowed to happen. Ever. By endorsing one group over another, he has potentially crippled all of the competitors. Who would risk their ISK with anyone else?

- It was given to a for-profit enterprise. SB is a for-profit website. They make plenty of ISK doing their normal operations.

There's also the seperate problem of Navigator officially declaring them Not A Scam

If the ISW Scorpion was created specifically as an item to be spawned and given away, that should be in its "Show Info" box. If people still want to spend tons of money on them, that's their own fault.

Still I support the creation of and giving away of a ship whose sole purpose was to be created and given away just as long as everyone knows or can easily know that this is the case.

Items such as the memorabilia things in the "time capsule", would reward people with a permanent reminder of their impact on the EVE world.

Those things like the "Piece of Steve", relating to the first Titan shot down, or the "Assassination Contract - Mirial", or the "Band of Brothers Director Key". Souvenir items that don't do anything much ingame, beside exist.

Those sorts of items would be perfectly fine, to reward people for contributing.

Or inspace monuments, such as was done in the past, e.g. the Jita Monument originally commemorated a competition between players, yes ?

Monuments and souvenir items, people would have far fewer issues with, than things that have a definable ISK value.

thanks for the dev blog, so far I'm liking what I read. the recent events had me quite alarmed and i did not renew the first round of my accounts that expired, awaiting CCP response first.

so, with the rewards program currently suspended and being looked at again in light of current happenings, i take it that the number of scorpion ishukone watch present in game now will remain stable and any new giveaways will be using new prizes, which are hopefully out of game or non-transferable? as some others mentioned prior, even some plex wouldn't be bad, as those can also be used for stuff like subscription or re-sculpts. just please, no more rare items!

4. A Dev endorsed a player run lottery and specified that it was totally legitimate. CCP endorsements of player run businesses must never be allowed to happen. Ever. By endorsing one group over another, he has potentially crippled all of the competitors. Who would risk their ISK with anyone else?

The "Bring Solo Back" podcast got ISK and ships for doing PvP and talking about it.
They made profit.

It's hard to draw a line with those community projects.

Yeah, this was a serious, serious problem as well. There should not have been a CCP endorsement that SOMER is not a scam and has operated completely honestly for its entire history. I don't actually believe the research to verify that was done, but it was wrong even if it was.

Secretly...nothing. And what we've given out as rewards or prizes doesn't generally come in big bundles which is one of the key reasons eyebrows were raised over this incident.

It's worth keeping in mind that Internal Affairs has complete oversight over every single item spawned or transferred on our server and monitors all staff account activity closely as is their purpose.

The "Bring Solo Back" podcast got ISK and ships for doing PvP and talking about it.
They made profit.

It's hard to draw a line with those community projects.

This pretty much exactly, the reward of being recognized and in a way immortalized with the items you have, or monuments, or even names of planets etc is one of the best ways to show appreciation.

Things like that would be worth so much more in terms of memories and feeling accomplishment than a regular item you sell for some ISK. I've been joking since years that my personal ultimate goal would be to have a planet named after me, and I'm sure that alot of people who dedicate themselves making things to try and improve and build the community (not for profit only) would feel very rewarded by things like that.

/c

For the time being we are pausing all plans for rare in-game rewards to select third party contributors.

Do you also think that giving Red Vs. Blue advertisement was wrong?

Competitors like E-Uni will have harder time.

If fan-sites etc are rewarded with isk, be it in the form of rare ships or whatever, could it not lead to a situation whereby some folk will learn how to milk-abuse the rewards system?

I'll draw some lines for you:

Don't give out anything that can undock unless it's a part of a CCP organized event.
Don't take actions that directly increase the profits of an existing enterprise (e.g. don't tie item giveaways to Blink usage).
Giving out plexes to media people is ok.

Not that hard really.

A reasonable question, but I don't know anything about this, and so will not tender an opinion.

The two aspects of this that bug me are:
- It was not announced at the time. This makes it seem sketchy, especially since the value of the IWS in player eyes is based on how many there are.
- It was given to a for-profit enterprise. SB is a for-profit website. They make plenty of ISK doing their normal operations.

When I kill sleepers and sell their delicious gooey insides, that's my "normal operations" and I make plenty of ISK doing it.

So why exactly are they getting rewarded any more than me? It's not like they're providing a community service for free the way E-UNI or Chribba or any number of other people are.

I would be totally okay with stuff, even in-game stuff, being given to people who donate their time for the benefit of the whole community, as long as it's given out in the open.

But giving stuff to people who have as their primary goal making money off the stupidity of other EVE players? Yeah, no. That's basically saying, "Here. You're so awesome at making money that we're going to give you EVEN MORE money."

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

That's what we're pausing until we have a better system the community feels better about; All selective give-aways of rare in-game items.

If you say items you can't undock, do you also mean not tradable? Or why does the undocking part matter? And 1B ISK ship has the same value as a 1B monocle, no?

A reasonable question, but I don't know anything about this, and so will not tender an opinion.

We recognize that gifting rare in-game items of potential ISK value proactively to select third-parties, whether as prizes for them to hand out or as a personal thank-you, can have implications no matter how well-meaning you are. We realize that for example in the IWS reward situation, a line was crossed in many peopleGÇÖs minds despite there being certain similarities with previous gifting events. Where the line of acceptability lies is something we need to work out together before we move forward.

Should we stick to out-of-game things only? Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards? Give no personal rewards and only prizes? Only items below a certain expected ISK value? Always give out tons of stuff at once so early recipients canGÇÖt cash out? List all rewards publicly?

Except that the podcast is presumably written for entertainment purposes, to the benefit of everyone who wants to read it. Anybody, even those who don't play EVE, can go listen to the podcast for free. In that way, they're providing a community service for free.

If they had received ISK and ships for just doing PVP without the podcast...that's more like what's happening there. SB is being rewarded for running a business in game.

How long until CCP rewards the ISK doublers? Because that's basically the same thing.

We needed a line in the sand. I provided it. Just that simple.

If people want to put monocles on their furries, I don't give a crap. If people want special unique ships in a spaceships sandbox, I give a crap.

Hence the line in the sand; Don't give out anything that can undock unless it's a part of a CCP organized event.
It's up to the community at large if they agree with this position.

Gambling is also for entertainment :D If not that then for what?
The podcast had advertisment (for SOMER Blink, hehe), that means the listeners were the product.
If you want to take part in a Tournament you also need to have an active account.

Do ISK doublers (the scammers) give out billions of ISK for ingame events?

If people want to put monocles on their furries, I don't give a crap. If people want special unique ships in a spaceships sandbox, I give a crap.

Hence the line in the sand; Don't give out anything that can undock unless it's a part of a CCP organized event.
It's up to the community at large if they agree with this position.

the market is still part of the sandbox, unless the item is nontransferable the issue persists regardless of whether it can undock or not.

I'm taking a dinner break. Going home for pizza and then I'll check in again! Thanks for the responses so far.

if you have pineapple as a topping, you're a terrible person.

Meh, the market for monocles and thousand dollar jeans is not that large and saturates far more readily. If that wasn't the case, we'd have seen far, far greater development of incarna/WiS by now.

No one would have batted an eye if CCP gave Somer 20 monocles instead of 20 IWS.

"as long as it doesn't affect my corner of the sandbox" is a bad justification.
either the rewards should affect the sandbox, or they shouldn't.

nobody massively cared that they got scorpions, the fact that CCP seem to be showering blink with benevolence and half of which was done in secret is what made eyelids bat. mostly the combination, individually i doubt either would have stirred up much interest either.

For the time being we are pausing all plans for rare in-game rewards to select third party contributors. We want to carefully consider your feedback and determine what our framework should be and what improvements to the level of transparency are needed so that the rewards program serves its intended purpose of making the EVE Universe a better place.

ThatGÇÖs it for now, let us know your thoughts.

if you have pineapple as a topping, you're a terrible person.

Spaceships are a pretty big corner of the spaceships sandbox. Monocles for furries isn't, otherwise we'd have full fledged WiS by now.

I was disappointed to see those removed after the Incarna riots. I could imagine a CONCORD system set aside for just such a NCO museum.

I actually feel that the people that have received something from CCP so far have more than deserved it, and have, in most cases, enriched my experience in the game through their community contributions.

You shouldn't be giving out cash rewards in the first place.

and spaceships can be purchased with the isk furries will pay for the monocles. as i said, it either affects the sandbox, or it doesn't.

This doesn't answer any questions at all. What ties does CCP have with Somer Blink ? First the weird community spotlight, then the lottery, followed by Billion isk ships.

But by that logic, so does purchasing plex. You can buy titans and fleets with plex, and people have done so in the past. CCP has been giving out plex/subscription time to media people for years.

The fact is, unique ships are an order of magnitude more significant than various clothing items and plex. Giving out, 20 or 30 unique ships while endorsing someone's for-profit business by tying unique handout rewards to patronage of that business?

That's a great deal more significant than a dozen monocles.

When you reward somebody by giving them PLEX nobody else suffers any serious devaluation. When you give somebody an IWS all other IWS owners and collectors get completely screwed over because the price collapses.

Just give people PLEX in future, as much as you like, but no rare items ever.

Those things like the "Piece of Steve", relating to the first Titan shot down, or the "Assassination Contract - Mirial", or the "Band of Brothers Director Key". Souvenir items that don't do anything much ingame, beside exist.

Those sorts of items would be perfectly fine, to reward people for contributing.

I am genuinely curious as to what SomerBlink has done to 'Enrich your experience in the game' ?

1) plex isn't restricted to who gets it.
2) plex aren't free handouts from ccp.

two very important differences.

My post wasn't specifically aimed at SomerBlink, as stopping the giveaway program affects everyone, not just that specific organization.

But to answer your question, SomerBlink has sponsored many other organizations, corporations and individual players in the game, financially and through ships.

Some examples of sponsoring;
- Sponsoring Kil2 (now knows as CCP Rise)
- Sponsoring the New Eden Open tournament teams
- Sponsoring Alliance tournament participants
- etc..

I think that for a large amount of playerbase the aforementioned have enriched their game experience due to the events and content being created for everyone to enjoy and even for non-EVE players to enjoy and create awareness for the game.

Apart from that they have also created a successful and interesting gambling game which many people in EVE enjoy playing.

At the very least they have allowed for a more diverse, active and vibrant EVE community to thrive through their contributions. Obviously SomerBlink is not the only entity that makes this possible, and other similar ones should also be shown appreciation by CCP too, but as you mentioned them specifically I used them as an example.

Is this review going to include the lack of opportunity for some time zones to participate in in-game events where items worth billions are "dropped"? I'm including both Dev roams and RP events.

Personally I would like the rewards to be out of game.

But the biggest thing is for CCP to be transparent in these types of things, it looks dodgy when these kinds of things are hidden. You might not have meant for these to be kept a secret but you did not announce them your selves so that makes it just as responsible.

Also some customer service training for some ISDs wouldn't go astray. Closing a threadnaught and directing it to two different topics just showed us that they didn't have a clue. That just made it look like CCP where deliberately trying to shut down the communication on this issue by burying it in other topics.

As to the CSM some have shown (elsewhere) that they were pissed with the rest of us and others showed why the CSM regulations need the ability to recall members by the community because they had no clue what was going on.

...and this is why "we" can't have nice things.

Well, I would disagree with some of what you have said, since it's the players that donate ISK to Somer that result in the sponsoring of events you noted, but I appreciate your reply.

They put it back to the old monument a while back.

2) They are to certain media organizers and community sites, and have been on numerous occasions for quite some time.

Look, we can say "no CCP involvement in helping fan sites," but that would probably end up being a net-negative. These giveaways can have a net-positive effect, when given to the right communities/events.

But the magnitude of the reward should be kept in check. No one would care if Somer got 20 exotic dancers in-game from CCP. Everyone apparently cared when Somer was to get even a single Gold Magnate (enough for CCP to take that one off the table REAL quick).

Clearly, the magnitude of the reward is something that is quite relevant.

pineapple and anchovy, best pizza combo

I'm taking a dinner break. Going home for pizza and then I'll check in again! Thanks for the responses so far.

2) They are to certain media organizers and community sites, and have been on numerous occasions for quite some time.

Look, we can say "no CCP involvement in helping fan sites," but that would probably end up being a net-negative. These giveaways can have a net-positive effect, when given to the right communities/events.

But the magnitude of the reward should be kept in check. No one would care if Somer got 20 exotic dancers in-game from CCP. Everyone apparently cared when Somer was to get even a single Gold Magnate (enough for CCP to take that one off the table REAL quick).

Clearly, the magnitude of the reward is something that is quite relevant.

First off , Somer Blink didnt get these ships, the individuals who work for SB did ... that doesnt mean that is ISK in SB pocket..

Second .. they do contribute to the EVE community by backing almost every single contest or competition that people do..

Third.. I like the idea that CCP gives away something cool , even an ingame item... somethign not everyone has.. No where does it say CCP is obligated to maintain the value of "rare" items.. especially for an item they previously stated for an item that would be gifted to people as thank you items...

Fourth ... Haters and Cry Babbies , most people wanna cry about how much somer makes, what about the cost of running their site?? what about allll the free stuff they give away not only on their site , but to other people who run events and what not ...
SB makes the money they do , cuz they are smart and found a way to make money, while letting people gamble and basicly get ships for less then they could ingame, with a chance...

What about those of us who have played for many many years without breaks in our subscription.........where's our special rare items? We've spent years generating real content in the form of battles and participation in your game and we dont even get a thanjs. All sb does is rake in isk through controling a lottery with stacked odds in favor of fake/alt characters. And now they've been given even more isk. Sad ccp just sad.

PLEX, even in bulk, seems perfectly fine to me.

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

Edit - Removed my post.

there's a difference between "here, have a plex" and "here, let us give you a free account". i don't know how media accounts etc work but i'd imagine they're the latter not the former. and that's great because it doesn't **** with the sandbox.

pretty sure the magnate had some kind of lore issue with it too? or a story about there only being 1, or something equally noteworthy to do with it's rarity. i'll be honest; i don't really have much of an issue with the lottery prizes as i do with "here have a bunch of stuff that we're not going to tell anyone about".

i think while we disagree in the implementation, there is an issue that needs looking at.

Thanks for the statement. However, it doesn't particularly address the glaring fact that SOMER received free trips to Fanfest and unique ships for a "fair" contest "for the community" that CCP has no control over or audit power for. Further, the contest is inherently biased toward people who blow billions of isk playing blinks, giving them a disproportionate amount of entries for unique ships only obtainable through this medium (not to mention making SOMER even more isk), as well as giving a player-run, for-profit corporation the ability to decide who can even have a chance at winning it, considering SOMER Blink solely and unilaterally has the power to ban accounts at will.

The fact that you guys earlier compared SOMER Blink to a charity is shocking, off-putting and shows a deep disconnection between what CCP believes "a community service" is and what the players do. Many players believe that "a community service" is something that actually enriches the game or provides content to it. SOMER Blink is a third party website created solely to print isk for its founder. They provide no services in game. At all. (This doesn't even to speak to the fact that serious concerns exist for many players to the legitimacy of the SOMER Blink lottery system. For example, how is it that the player with the most blinks won, Replacement 234, doesn't appear in the most blinks played? Is Replacement 234, with an win rate at a minimum of 32.7%+ simply luckier than the next-highest winner, Featious who has a 28.8% win rate? Or the highest winner (with over 9 TRILLION isk more than Replacement 234) doesn't even appear to have played or won the most blinks?)

The difference in your example of "go to game trade show, get swag" and the SOMERgate fiasco is that as players we can choose to attend game trade show--at our wills--and get swag. We don't, however, have the luxury of playing blinks if the account is banned. Further, you're not limiting the prize pool to players attending EVE Vegas, as your trade show example would indicate. It is open to anyone willing to blow billions of isk on blinks. Even then, they would still have an inequitable chance of winning against other players who have a disproportionate amount of tickets. Your basic example of simply playing a promo blink and having an entry is pedantic at best and deceitful at worst, considering that everyone knows that blink players will have hundreds or thousands of tickets entered.

It's good that you've put future plans on hold for hopefully a better process. It's unfortunate, though, that you decided to stop recognizing community sites short of providing rewards to meaningful providers of content in the game, instead opting to enrich a for-profit corp's wallet instead. The fact that you haven't pulled the unique rewards, given the glaring deficiencies in using SOMER Blink as the provider of the contest, shows me that CCP has only a passing concern to the legitimate grievances we players have. CCP owes nothing to SOMER Blink, and if this were believed by CCP, it would have pulled the unique and fantastical prizes in favor of something more traditional like PLEX packs or Collector's Editions.

As a fan site owner I got goodies worth of about ~1B and felt honored.
I sold the items and gave my corp mates some free ships, which leads to more PvP ingame.

Character-binding things is very much not in the spirit of EVE, and I don't think that should ever happen.

no, he's right with respect to handing out plex as rewards. whether scorpions, or a stack of plex; ccp are still giving players a fist full of isk and that fucks with the sandbox.

on the other hand, people buying and selling plex isn't an issue.

here's why; plex spawned by CCP and given out is a resource that has no limit and provides wealth in conjunction with the pilots day to day activities. plex purchased by your average joe eve player is limited to the cash in their bank account; and you can either earn money at work to turn plex in to isk, or play eve (don't argue that you can do both, because you're either going to get fired or make **** isk/hour to the point of irrelevance) and hence in some capacity plex via that method is limited.

however this really isn't about how plex works and lets shut up now please?

The Devs get a cash reward for building the game. The web designer got a cash reward for building this forum. WTF is the difference if they want to pay people cash for building a community site? ...

Should we stick to out-of-game things only? Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards? Give no personal rewards and only prizes? Only items below a certain expected ISK value? Always give out tons of stuff at once so early recipients canGÇÖt cash out? List all rewards publicly?

I explained how it works. Why don't you explain to me the difference between CCP contracting a community site, paying the developer in cash, and that developer turning around and buying a truckload of PLEX, and CCP just paying the community site developer in PLEX. Do it. What the hell is the difference?

Out of game rewards only please.

read the post you quoted for the explanation of the difference!

I explained how it works. Why don't you explain to me the difference between CCP contracting a community site, paying the developer in cash, and that developer turning around and buying a truckload of PLEX, and CCP just paying the community site developer in PLEX. Do it. What the hell is the difference?

I can probably shed a bit of light on that although Navigator touched on that in his announcement following what was going to be the Gold Magnate event.

Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do.

In the statement we go into who else have gotten the ISWs and also what sort of giveways we usually extend to fansites.

As we said, we agree with you that we went too fast and that's why we need to re-think this whole thing. We need to keep the CSM more involved, their input is invaluable.

letGÇÖs go through what happened, why it happened, what else has happened, and then letGÇÖs have a discussion on what all of us want to happen in the future

I did and it doesn't address what I said at all. PLEX = $20. I'm a web designer in RL. So if I do a site for company X and charge them 5 grand, I could get 250 PLEX. I could do that right now. If CCP had me do a site I would charge them real life money for my real life work. I don't care about EvE at this point I care about getting paid for my work. They pay me 5 grand and I buy 250 PLEX. The only difference between these scenarios is who my RL client was... and what does that matter? Answer that.

There is one difference. EvE players who build sites for the community do it because it's fun. Thus, they will work for peanuts. It's good business to pay eve players to develop their labors of love, and encourage more of it. It's a frickin' bargain.

yeah, my post covered that.
since you have no intention of reading, i have no intention of further encouraging you to derail the thread.

I agree with you to some point. I would say it is a matter of quantity though. If CCP decided to hand just enough cash to a non-profit 3rd party community person to help with hosting costs or such I could live with that.

If CCP were "contracting" a community dev as you call it, then they are IMO business partners and I would expect that the community dev would have to follow rigid rules regarding his in-game activities similar to a CCP dev. Basically a business partner of CCP can't be a regular player anymore cause that would indeed hurt the sandbox.

so don't give out T2 BPOs or show favoritism? A 3rd party developer wouldn't have the capability to do those things. Those dev rules are in place because devs have placement and access above and beyond any player.

Thanks for the statement. However, it doesn't particularly address the glaring fact that SOMER received free trips to Fanfest and unique ships for a "fair" contest "for the community" that CCP has no control over or audit power for. Further, the contest is inherently biased toward people who blow billions of isk playing blinks, giving them a disproportionate amount of entries for unique ships only obtainable through this medium (not to mention making SOMER even more isk), as well as giving a player-run, for-profit corporation the ability to decide who can even have a chance at winning it, considering SOMER Blink solely and unilaterally has the power to ban accounts at will.

The fact that you guys earlier compared SOMER Blink to a charity is shocking, off-putting and shows a deep disconnection between what CCP believes "a community service" is and what the players do. Many players believe that "a community service" is something that actually enriches the game or provides content to it. SOMER Blink is a third party website created solely to print isk for its founder. They provide no services in game. At all. (This doesn't even to speak to the fact that serious concerns exist for many players to the legitimacy of the SOMER Blink lottery system. For example, how is it that the player with the most blinks won, Replacement 234, doesn't appear in the most blinks played? Is Replacement 234, with an win rate at a minimum of 32.7%+ simply luckier than the next-highest winner, Featious who has a 28.8% win rate? Or the highest winner (with over 9 TRILLION isk more than Replacement 234) doesn't even appear to have played or won the most blinks?)

The difference in your example of "go to game trade show, get swag" and the SOMERgate fiasco is that as players we can choose to attend game trade show--at our wills--and get swag. We don't, however, have the luxury of playing blinks if the account is banned. Further, you're not limiting the prize pool to players attending EVE Vegas, as your trade show example would indicate. It is open to anyone willing to blow billions of isk on blinks. Even then, they would still have an inequitable chance of winning against other players who have a disproportionate amount of tickets. Your basic example of simply playing a promo blink and having an entry is pedantic at best and deceitful at worst, considering that everyone knows that blink players will have hundreds or thousands of tickets entered.

It's good that you've put future plans on hold for hopefully a better process. It's unfortunate, though, that you decided to stop recognizing community sites short of providing rewards to meaningful providers of content in the game, instead opting to enrich a for-profit corp's wallet instead. The fact that you haven't pulled the unique rewards, given the glaring deficiencies in using SOMER Blink as the provider of the contest, shows me that CCP has only a passing concern to the legitimate grievances we players have. CCP owes nothing to SOMER Blink, and if this were believed by CCP, it would have pulled the unique and fantastical prizes in favor of something more traditional like PLEX packs or Collector's Editions.

While I don't know any details I would very much hope and assume that the code of conduct for CCP employees regarding in-game activities is much broader than just devhax. I would assume that they are not allowed to do anything of major significance like e.g. FCing for Goons or funding PL supercaps or building the next Blink-like thingy. I would also guess that they might get discouraged from engaging in the shadier activities of Eve like scamming, AWOXing or stuff like that.

Some people have already mentioned this idea, and it's been done before. Immortalize individuals and corporations with permanent relics and monuments in-game as reward for their community contributions. You like what Somer is doing, why not a "Somer Gambling Hall" off Dodixie Fed Navy? You want to give credit to their members, let people warp to it and buy junk items like "1 blink credit - issued by [somer employee]." Like someone said, it's no different than "piece of steve," etc.

Even better, let them name their junk item with your final approval. CCP gets an ISK sink. Somer employees get a very VERY special in-game achievement, and players get something to do other than buy a passport from Poitat. This would be an achievement most of us will never accomplish because of what they've done for the community, respect or hate it, their name will be remembered even after they unsub and nobody gets a tangible ISK advantage over anyone either directly or indirectly. I get that a couple billion ISK to outfits like Somer is just a rounding error, but it's still an in-game advantage. I also get ships and junk have been given before, so what? Things change in this game.

-RvB gets some magical kill number in their eternal war, how about a flaming statue named after the pilot who died or something?
-Some event attracts 10k people in local with super duper reinforced nodes, maybe they'll get a station named after them in that system?
-How about an item for sale at SOE stations called "A Map of Eve - by Dotlan"?

It's not that hard.

Nobody will have a problem with this. The player is immortalized and the community gets FREE content; free as in I'm not paying $14/mo for in-game corps to get marketable items which benefit them in some tangible, non-existential manner, that may or may not be used against me.

For comparison, for most players their corporate titles and medals are more meaningful and treasured than ISK gifts and their equivalencies (rare items and such). Usually you get them for spectacular in-game feats, or spectacular in-game failures. It's hard to say which kind is more regarded by the individual they were conferred upon

I hate to dash your hopes but that is not the case. As long as they aren't spawning stuff out of thin air (devhax) even devs are encouraged to participate in the community. There's a long list of rules that go with it... for instance if someone with a player account is outted as a dev by a player, I think the dev has to stop playing that account. I don't know them all... but no we play alongside everyone. For all you know you've flown with CCP Greyscale himself on several occasions.



...something about pineapple pizza, i think.

The precise criteria isn't that scientific at the moment which is why we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

We selected to reward SOMER and his staff because the time was right to do stuff with them, Vegas sponsorship being an example. Same story with the SCL which was having an active period and doing really exciting things.

...something about pineapple pizza, i think.

ThatGÇÖs it for now, let us know your thoughts.

Should we stick to out-of-game things only?

Create non-transferrable in-game items as rewards?

Give no personal rewards and only prizes?

Only items below a certain expected ISK value?

This has been asked several times since page 1, but it conveniently remains unanswered.

http://funkybacon.blogspot.com/2013/10/learning-from-past-and-moving-forward.html

My thoughts moving forward. I know some of you in Reykjavik have already seen it, but wanted to make sure I included it in your thread here too. Thanks you guys for pausing to put some thought into this.

This is a good point actually. While we totally understand that everyone has different opinions on different projects, there's no denying that it's not an everyday task to build something that a lot of our players like and use regularly. That goes for a lot of our fansites and other contributors. I'm constantly amazed at the sheer number of high level stuff we see coming from our community members.

Are you a magician? I just put a Hawaiian Pizza in the oven. :O

I know some tricks, but I'm no space wizard

...you know that sounds really good to me right now. Hawaiian pizza for dinner it is!

with or without slugs?(mushroom)

Because again; this isn't about the prizes given out. It never was. It's about who got them.

1. Somer did not support any events the eve community and it players did by playing a out of game gambling lottery.

2. They used the profits the took as the house to gain your favor and then gain legitimacy as a trusted CCP site to further there ability to make more isk.

3. So is Somer Blink a CCP owned Fansite? If not they are in the sandbox and are now 100% CCP approved and that my friend is more valuable then any ship or ingame item. Every player of this game will see somer and in turn see CCP. I guess all we need now is a eve player who started playing eve to kick his gambling habit to start playing somer and commit suicide over losing all his isk and then blaming CCP. Then we will see how much support CCP wants to give somer.

4. Running a penny lottery is not hard CCP so why don't you run it yourself?

On and On

This is a good point actually. While we totally understand that everyone has different opinions on different projects, there's no denying that it's not an everyday task to build something that a lot of our players like and use regularly. That goes for a lot of our fansites and other contributors. I'm constantly amazed at the sheer number of high level stuff we see coming from our community members.

End conclusion; the ships have been given out as prizes and as community rewards over 100 times before. Obviously the ships nor their value were EVER an issue before. Anyone screaming this is about the huge value of these ships can buzz off right now.

The core of this entire thing is simple; it's the perceived unfairness in peoples mind where an entity that is already making tons of money is getting tons more money for free. Even though its not tons of money, it's a ship with no real value.

It's a ridiculous statement really. And frankly it disgusts me that players of a game are bashing on the game's developer and ordering them who they can and can not reward. Because again; this isn't about the prizes given out. It never was. It's about who got them.