All of those organization are potential recipients of sponsorship, remember this is a new initiative from CCP to encourage 3rd party community organizations. If they sponsor events where CCP sponsorship would be possible they will no doubt be considered. Reality has to kick in here though, they can't do everything at once.

Ranger, the fact that you don't see the problem with CCP backing and providing assets/isk for a particular player organisation who operate for their own profits and goals is just astonishing

Truthfully, I view this as an honest attempt to provide CCP backing to prominent organizations in the community... handled in perhaps the clumsiest way imaginable, but their intentions are fairly clear and honest I believe.

So are supercapital builders. What if CCP encouraged players to buy supers from a specific builder for a chance at winning CCP sponsored prizes? There is absolutely no difference between what CCP is doing right now and spawning T2 BPOs for an alliance, absolutely none.

Truthfully, I view this as an honest attempt to provide CCP backing to prominent organizations in the community... handled in perhaps the clumsiest way imaginable, but their intentions are fairly clear and honest I believe.

Truthfully, I view this as an honest attempt to provide CCP backing to prominent organizations in the community... handled in perhaps the clumsiest way imaginable, but their intentions are fairly clear and honest I believe.

That depends, are the super capital builders sponsoring Titan give away contests to their customers?

Way to miss the point.

The giving away of unique ships IS an issue, but it's not even the main issue.

YOU ARE GIVING A FOR-PROFIT GROUP HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS(now possibly TRILLIONS) OF ISK WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED.

Edit:
I would like to run a promotion, you can send me one (1) coupon good for an all expenses paid trip to fanfest, I promise my winning of my own lottery will be entirely fair and well accounted for.

And how will they decide which Level of sponsorship they get? Is it about how "Buddy" you are with the Devs?

That depends, are the super capital builders sponsoring Titan give away contests to their customers?

All of those organization are potential recipients of sponsorship, remember this is a new initiative from CCP to encourage 3rd party community organizations. If they sponsor events where CCP sponsorship would be possible they will no doubt be considered. Reality has to kick in here though, they can't do everything at once.

That's up to somer blink, this is a 3rd party event after all.

That would obviously be up to them and their Internal Affairs department. I can speculate that a lot would depend on how popular the "services" the organization provides are, and how much of the EVE community is affected by them.

WTF I just spent 16 billion on Blinks to get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a Gold Magnate, literally The Stuff Of Legends - and you change the prices? Can I get my 16 billion back?

CCP, with this one announcement you have validated the fears of every player who has believed the CSM to be pointless and powerless. The CSM was established in order to create transparency and restore player trust in CCP after previous scandals involving CCP employees showing favoritism to players and in-game entities.

By proceeding with a decision with such obvious potential for a similar scandal and accusations of blatant favoritism without even consulting the CSM, you have essentially created t20 ver 2.0. Frankly, the only chance you have to restore credibility at this point is to immediately reverse this decision and claim it as a lapse in judgement.

However, I fear that even doing this would be insufficient, as the damage is likely already done. CCP has again shown clear favoritism to a single third pary site and in-game entity, and the one regulation on CCP's integrity, the CSM, has been bypassed entirely, destroying player trust in the effectiveness of this organization and the transparency of CCP-player interactions.

The only difference between this event and previous scandals is that this time, instead of resulting from the actions of rogue CCP employees, this favoritism is officially and publicly endorsed by the company. This makes the situation even worse than any before it, as the favoritism now has a stamp of approval, indicating that it is now standard procedure and official policy for CCP to favor some players/organizations over others.

Good luck restoring trust after this one!

So are they going to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog?

Would it be fair to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog, considering there are other couriers out there trying to make a living and compete with Red Frog?

The last time CCP backed a "prominent organization" they ended up in a media disaster that destroyed their reputation with the playerbase. People have regularly accused CCP of favoritism towards in-game organizations since.

This is blatant favoritism.

As I was effectively ninja'd by this new thread, I'll repeat my statement from the previous discussion:




The fact is that changing which ships are being given away does nothing to remove the appearance of favoritism. CCP is still:

- Giving a means to make ISK to a single player organization (unique lottery prizes)
- Generating awareness of and traffic to that organization's website, ensuring their making even more ISK as players use their services, and making real life money through website ad revenue
- Publicly endorsing this organization over its competitors, ensuring that more players will use this organization's services over others, giving more ISK to this organization which may have gone to others who were not similarly favored by CCP

All of this amounts to giving a significant in- and out-of-game advantage to one group of players. How is this not favoritism?

Totally valid point. BTW, I dragged the Frog in because it's a reasonably good example of a group that provides very popular in game services and also has a third party website. I'm not actually arguing for them to receive piles of ISK. Though I do want my Black Frog Special Edition Rhea!

I think Ranger 1 somehow confuses Somer Blink for a charity.

I would totally love Red Frog to organize an event that CCP could sponsor. I think they are one of the best services available in EVE and would completely support/participate in any event they put together.

"All you scammers and legitimate businessmen out there, take heed. If you want to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, make sure you get audited by CCP and have their official seal of approval planted on your business and/or scam. It's a brand new day in the world of EVE."