Of course they shouldn't get sponsorship. They're an in-game organization composed of a group of players who should not get any sort of special treatment from CCP.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Glad to see that you reviewed these giveaways and decided to do something different of them. Our history and what is created with said history is one of the key things of EVE - so glad to see this!

More thoughts might come, but this is my initial one.

/c

Of all the convoluted logic...

If they could pay them in real money, why can't they pay them in isk?

0.00000001% of the eve population care that you changed what ships you're giving away.

90% of the eve population care that CCP is funneling isk to a player corporation.

Why not just shuffle moon minerals around to favor TEST while you're at it?

Of course Blink being a serious sponsor of the in and out of game activities of certain CCP devs (prior to employment of course) wasn't an influence on CCP's decision here. No sir.

Sweat, Blood, Some Tears, Teamwork, and time put into game, should be the only way to advance yourself in this game. Any other way is unjust and unfair to all other parties that play this game. This Affects every aspect of eve. From the Miner to the Pirate. So Support a Fair and just Eve. Real Money, Game Time, Smile and a HandShake and maybe a few dancers is the only Fair way to handle this.

Because they do not provide priceless in-game compensation to other entities that promote EVE.

I would be fine with this if CCP also provided unique ships to entities like Goonswarm (who I believe promote the game among Something Awful forum members), TEST (who I believe do something similar on Reddit), the New Order (who also promote EVE quite a bit) and no doubt hundreds of lesser-known entities. They do not.

As it stands this giveaway smacks of the CCP employee fraud around giving BOB members tech 2 BPOs back in the days before I played.

Not to say that I support Somber, but I want to play the Devils Advocate for a moment since a majority of the post about this scandal are fairly one sided against CCP actions in all this. Somber Blink funded the New Eden Open, gave 10 billion isk to all the teams, funded the whole thing I think, right? It was during that time, if memory serves me correctly that CCP gave a statement about supporting more of these player driven events. I understand the anger that many of you are expressing. I'm with you on that, but at the end of the day it is their intellectual property. I would imagine that, let's say a scam were to happen and it be nothing short of the Italian Job, that whatever ships that were "won" would vanish from hangers, isk would appear from thin air, refunded in the wallets of the participants. Somber Blink is rich my brothers and sisters of New Eden. These ships are the rarest of the rare..... but they got 10 times that in the business they conduct and it would be baffling to think they would risk the payout and publicity they are getting to do anything too shady... but I also could be dead wrong.

Not to speak for CCP, but I think their thought process on it was that Somber had a lot of praise in past events from the community and they did not think it would not get the backlash it did, because letting a billionaire hold on to your credit card when you have fraud protection on it really doesn't seem like a big deal until you hear how the guy made his billions. Anyway, it is just a game, with internet spaceships, lottos, bots, trolls, elitist, pubbies, and last but not least evil Goons that deserve trillions of isk because, they have done a lot to keep this game interesting at any rate.

Not to say that I support Somber, but I want to play the Devils Advocate for a moment since a majority of the post about this scandal are fairly one sided against CCP actions in all this. Somber Blink funded the New Eden Open, gave 10 billion isk to all the teams, funded the whole thing I think, right? It was during that time, if memory serves me correctly that CCP gave a statement about supporting more of these player driven events. I understand the anger that many of you are expressing. I'm with you on that, but at the end of the day it is their intellectual property. I would imagine that, let's say a scam were to happen and it be nothing short of the Italian Job, that whatever ships that were "won" would vanish from hangers, isk would appear from thin air, refunded in the wallets of the participants. Somber Blink is rich my brothers and sisters of New Eden. These ships are the rarest of the rare..... but they got 10 times that in the business they conduct and it would be baffling to think they would risk the payout and publicity they are getting to do anything too shady... but I also could be dead wrong.

Not to speak for CCP, but I think their thought process on it was that Somber had a lot of praise in past events from the community and they did not think it would not get the backlash it did, because letting a billionaire hold on to your credit card when you have fraud protection on it really doesn't seem like a big deal until you hear how the guy made his billions. Anyway, it is just a game, with internet spaceships, lottos, bots, trolls, elitist, pubbies, and last but not least evil Goons that deserve trillions of isk because, they have done a lot to keep this game interesting at any rate.

3. CCP Navigator is straight up claiming that CCP has audited all of somers operations over the years...

...and vouching for them for the future, both ingame and on their site.

First :)

Edit:

While the changes are indeed nice. Me and other CSM members still share concerns over the following things:

1. Giving away ships through a single player driven entity and excluding others.
2. Giving away a lot of in-game value to a profit driven entity.
3. Trusting EvE players to distribute very unique ships in a fashion they deem right.

Nobody cares how much Isk Somer claims to have paid out, as it is just as irrelevant as how much Isk Erotica1 has doubled (as honest as she may be) when it comes to getting CCP freebies and endorsement.

The big question that deserves an answer is why is CCP breaching the sandbox favouring this player run organisation by spawning them a set of ultra rare ships worth trillions of isk?

Followed by why they have chosen to say this about Somer:


These are very specific claims and give way to questions that deserve an answer.

Have they audited every transaction Somer has performed?

During this audit did they check every recipient account to be sure none were shill accounts of one type or another?

Did CCP audit the out of game books of this organisation to rule out it being a sophisticated RMT operation?

Which other organisations have CCP audited/plan to audit and why?

What do other in game organisations have to do to gain the open favour/patronage of the Developers and be showered with incredibly valuable gifts worth 10s of thousands of real world dollars?

I'm glad to see that CCP thinks a repeat of T20 is OK as long as they announce it first. Giving hundreds of billions of ISK to individual players is a fantastic idea. It's not completely ******** at all. It's so far off the stupid scale Its gone full circle and is clearly to clever for most of us to understand.

I too run a betting service and need some ships which I can then sell for ludicrous profit. I don't need the same amount you gave to somer, just enough to buy several supercaps and maybe a titan will be fine.

Shhhh..

People (well most seem to be goons + alt on this thread don't want to here about how Somer funded New Eden Open and provided player driven content.