You can register and play a free promo blink which happen often and get an entry.

Due to complaints regarding overzealous player moderation on this channel, everyone from CCP who has been interacting here will be withdrawing from doing so. The same goes for "The Summit" and "Live Events" The reason for this is that we can't allow players to be locked out of interaction with us based on grudges that are held between players.

I encourage everyone to troll the **** out of their "SOMER Lotteries" public channel.

And? You really want to keep playing and maybe sending them occasional ISK for the small chance of maybe winning a promo some day?

CCP shouldn't be allowing third-party sites to give away expensive in-game items or collectors items. CCP should not be exclusively using one third-party site unless they off similar sites the same opportunity.

[/thread]

If CCP wants to compensate somer blink for helping promote eve vegas how is that anybody's business? Would it be ok if it were done with RL money? What if that were then converted to plex and then isk?

If the rest of you ***** had an organization that ccp thought could help promote their game you might get the same deal. But you're all just a bunch of hysterical nerds ... so no dice.

1. Eve employees aren't allowed to bid and would thus be excluded from winning prizes. I believe Chribba's Dice is used to pick winners and that CCP holds the prizes until the drawings and transfers them through SOMER to the winners (ticket numbers being available before the drawing for the public to view).

2. If so, worst case scenario is that a Blink employee might risk a lucrative position working for SOMER for the same chances to win the lottery as any other player. The third party drawing service would separate Blink from the chance to GÇÿstealGÇÖ the items. Some people are talking about Blink employee shills, without understanding that many casinos use shills (or prop players) as a customer service - people filling poker tables to keep games going being one example. In the case of Blink, it would help the games move faster and would not detract from the odds of any individual ticket winning. This is a good thing, though again IGÇÖm not sure itGÇÖs even happening.

4. CCP seems only guilty of increasing traffic through an in-game corporation's site. They aren't giving prizes directly to SOMER Blink

One could also be looking at the page when the gift was claimed, where the information is posted publicly for every player to see. I'm pretty sure that doesn't make it private top-secret privileged information.

By this logic the CCP devs cannot show up for eve vegas either. Somer blink is a sponsor of eve vegas and will have their logos everywhere. The CCP devs showing up will provide additional exposure for this event and that results in free marketing for somer blink. Marketing and exposure is the lifeblood of an organization like somer blink so CCP would be giving them an unfair advantage by showing up to eve vegas.

I don't see how any of this is unfair btw.

Straying a bit into ad hominem attacks for no reason... I'm willing to bet there are people out there, myself included, who aren't SOMER alts/brown nosers/gambling addicts and also think supporting player-driven initiatives to increase community turnout to live events is a good idea.

No. No I don't.

Somer blink has built up an organization and service that is successful to the point that they can do things like sponsor tournaments and add value/content to EVE. CCP should be able to recognize this and make whatever business arrangements they want with them.

How they compensate them for that doesn't really matter to me.

They could give them real money. (Which could be used to buy plex and then sold for isk.)
They could give them plex. (Which could be sold for isk.)
They could give them isk. (Which is already isk.)
They could give them ships. (Which could be sold for isk ... or auctioned off for isk.)

Either way CCP gets more content in their game and somer gets isk.

Annoying Gëá contributing

What is arbitrary about it? It's a business deal. It's beneficial to both parties. Does a beer company just pick an arbitrary racing team to sponsor or do they pick one they think will win some races and give their brand good exposure?

Well if you goonies think you can come up with some business deal with CCP then I welcome you to go ahead and take it to them. I think you should be prepared to be laughed out of the room though because you're a bunch of horrible trolls.

And also because while you do create a great deal of content you also create a massive cyber-bullying controversy at CCPs first fanfest with sony.

My main thought on all of this is that the people in this thread a bunch of hysterical rabble-rousers and that CCP was just trying to do something fun for eve vegas.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Well that's an interesting story there. You have first hand knowledge of this or some kind of proof, I'm sure, right?

So, you get tickets for the Blast by playing Blink. Again, you must play Blink (which involves paying ticket costs, and thus paying money to Somer) in order to receive tickets in Blast, which allows you a chance at winning the prizes from CCP.

They also fail to mention that if you are banned by somer blink you CANNOT compete for this prize.
So if you fail to follow the toc`s of a 3rd party website, then you will not be able to compete for these unique prizes.
Does this really sound fair?

Have we figured out yet what someone needs to do to get free **** from CCP? Surely Red Frog does enough work for the EVE community to be considered for the next 500 billion ISK gift? How about PL, Kingmakers of Nullsec? EVE Uni perhaps, or RvB?

Or do you have to sponsor player-run events to get free cash? In that case I'd like to enter Goonwaffe for sponsoring Hulkageddon V, and Erotica 1 for being the only honest ISK doubler in EVE and sponsoring the New Order.
E: oh and Gevlon Goblin for sponsoring TEST, thus creating some nice fights in Fountain.

Shooting each other's spaceships in the game is not real content generation though; having people play a lottery on an external website for a terrible chance at winning a ship in-game, now that's real content right there.

Some have pointed out that CCP is breaking its own ToS by backing somer.

3. You may not organize nor be a member of any corporation or group within EVE Online that is based on or advocates any anti-ethnic, anti-gay, anti-religious, racist, sexist or other hate-mongering philosophies.

7. You may not violate any local, state, national or international laws or regulations.

29. You will not encourage others to break these rules or any rules set forth in relation to EVE OnlineGÇÖs game service or web site.

You can register and play a free promo blink which happen often and get an entry.

EVE Online Contests Policy
1. ENTRY

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY

Submission addresses and guidelines will be provided in the contest announcement. All submissions will require the following information:

Your character name
Your EVE Online account name (the name you use to log into the game)
Your real name (first and last).
Your age
Your full mailing address GÇö street, city, state, zip, country (this is for prize mailing purposes ONLY).
A contact phone number (This is required for the shipping of prizes. It may also be used as a back-up method of contacting you GÇô but will be used for no other purpose).


2. ELIGIBILITY

To enter a contest (a) you must be 13 years of age or older, (b) you must have Internet access and an email account, (c) you must be a current EVE Online subscriber (meaning you must have an active account) on the announced contest start date. Employees of each Sponsor, each of their respective parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, representatives, advertising, promotion and publicity agencies and members of the immediate families (defined as parents, children, siblings and spouse, regardless of where they reside) or households of such employees are not eligible. Contest is void where prohibited, restricted or taxed by law. All international federal, state and local laws and regulations apply.

+ 1 to this. Its a big fat load of fuss over nothing

Let the tears flow, it is only a small tsunami. Don't just count the number of posts, look at where so many are coming from and the resources they have been handed by CCP in the past.

Now without naming any benefitting entity from past CCP decisions, we will see who flames me and that will tell us who wants to re-direct the attention away from their CCP gift to whatever benfit Somer my realize.

No part of this is new behavior.

Since you're apparently new to eve, here's a link where they told people to play BIG, and talked about when they gave BIG an Impoc, and then gave him more special edition ships to sell.

Edit to clarify: I'm not saying it was wrong to acknowledge BIG's accomplishments, either.