/facepalm

I assume Somerset Mahm is a play on Somerset Mom? Would that be Somerset New Jersey? Somerset County Maryland? Is there taxes being paid on this referral program? Is it a legit business? Should be public information.

Hi CCP
With the recent news of the collaboration between CCP and Somer blink, a lot of people have been throwing around a lot of questions to which they have received no answer. One question stands though that I feel needs an official response.

Somer blink offers isk incentives for buying GTCs though them, which in turn pays them a referral fee. This offering of ISK is no different from any other form of RMT. By giving you their isk they earn money, it's pretty much that simple. It converts Somer's isk to cash.

So the questions are:
1. Is this allowed?
2. If so, why is this allowed?
3. If any other entity wanted to pay people isk to buy GTCs through their referral, would they be banned (so specifically, is Somer receiving special treatment)?
4. Why does this form of income not go against section 2A of the EULA (which states accounts can't be run for business or profit)?

Thanks

Lucas

Prevent the non-ISK credit (deals from GTC and such) from being cashed out, until it goes through at least one blink..

That is how it works. You have to gamble the bonus credit. You can't cash it out without playing.

The people complaining are just more goon shiptoasting squad.

That is how it works. You have to gamble the bonus credit. You can't cash it out without playing.

The people complaining are just more goon shiptoasting squad.

Honestly to me, if feels no different than the "Use my referral to register an acct, I'll give you 200mil ISK (no PLEX registrations plz)" you see everywhere.

Now, if SOMER let you directly convert credits into ISK, or offered special blinks that made the conversion a trivial matter, THEN I'd start having issues.

It's different from this, as they are paying you isk, and receiving a plex. Neither side gets cash, that goes to CCP.

It is incredibly trivial to convert the credit. Just you have to remember that when you get the credit, you'll lose 20% converting it. But that would just be considered a transaction fee of sorts.

It's different from this, as they are paying you isk, and receiving a plex. Neither side gets cash, that goes to CCP.

It is incredibly trivial to convert the credit. Just you have to remember that when you get the credit, you'll lose 20% converting it. But that would just be considered a transaction fee of sorts.

Interesting, and much appreciated. Never been involved in Somer, or any real gambling, so I'm trying to get a clear picture before taking a stance.

Could you define how the trivial conversion works? In my mind, I see something like "Here, play this blink where every ticket gets a payout, the winner just gets more." I'd see that as an RMT conversion.

On the other side if it were "Here's some game credits, play them, you have a chance of losing all, what you win you can flip back to ISK", then not so much a problem.

To explain the first part of my quote,the Plex exchange goes "CCP gets cash. Player A gets PLEX, sold for ISK. Player B pays real cash, gets ISK in turn, "laundered" via Player A." To me, the only diff between that and Somer, is Somer gets a real life $ kickback from CCP. It still flows as "CCP gets cash, Player paying the cash gets ISK via a third party".

The other thing I'm concerned over, is SOMER legality, at least in some states in the USA. My state is really picky about gambling, and no amount of obfustication really protects you (A local VFW got busted for holding a "vegas" night....Players "donated" cash for monopoly money, gambled it, then used the winnings to bid on prizes). I'm unsure if in-EVE items would fall into the "items of value" category, but tickets to FanFest/EVE Vegas/Game Time sure do.

You can buy all tickets in a blink. The payout of a blink is ~80% of the total amount of isk paid into a blink. This way you know yo uare definitely getting a payout.
Think of it like this. If I ran lotteries that cost 1m per ticket, I took 10 tickes and paid out 80m to the winner, but I gave you 10m of credit, you could buy all of the tickets, knowing you'll get 80m of actual money.

You purchase a GTC and get ISK 'rewards' is RMT. Whether it's actual ISK or blink "Credit" it doesn't matter.

The difference between this and selling PLEX's for ISK by third parties is actual money is transfered to CCP. CCP wants total monopoly on RMT.

Because 1 * 10 *0.8 = 80 does it now?

It's slightly more subtle than that. When you buy a GTC from CCP, what you get is game time. An MMO company selling game time is in and of itself pretty uncontentious, and that's all that CCP themselves actually do.

CCP do allow you to swap your game time for ISK with another player, but that's qualitatively different from allowing you to just buy ISK with money.

I am quite aware that from the perspective of the dude who works a 60 hour week and just wants to blow $20 on a PLEX to make sure he has ISK for a weekend's PvP that it works out pretty much the same. But from the perspective of everyone else in the game, the PLEX system is infinitely superior to "traditional" RMT with respect to the effects on our game.

To use a loose analogy, a crack-house and a pharmacy are both places where people go to buy drugs. Which would you rather have on your street?

They turn isk into cash, surely that means everyone can do that if CCP get a cut? If we can't all do it, why do Somer have an exemption from this rule.

But in short:
Somer gets cash
Players get isk.
THAT IS RMT.

They turn isk into cash

Paying cash to CCP to get isk isn't an uncommon thing though.

That answers my question, seems that RMT is allowed to some extend and it also creates a loophole for company's who want to purchase isk.

There are half a dozen or more sites besides Blinks that do this with CCP's blessing. This is (yet another) case of an under-educated over-opinionated goon shiptoasting campaign.

Sadly, incarna made the nubbins believe if they were loud it meant they were also correct.

That isn't true.

GǪexcept, of course, that that's not what happens.
You have still not grasped what RMT is, which continuously and consistently blows every last shred of validity to your RMT claim out of the water. If you want to claim that RMT is going on, start looking where in-game assets are turned into out-of-game assets. It has nothing to do with the entirely out-of-game cross promotion going on.

No, they don't. They turn a click-through into cash. Same as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, PayPal, and indeed every other on-line advertising or retail company out there.

Yes it is, largely because it can't be done. There is no way to pay CCP for ISK.

No, you don't get those for using their affiliate links (also, unless I'm missing something, none of them are in-game items).

You are trying awful hard to show that Somer is not a bunch of crooked RMT'ers.

You affiliated?