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

They don't give you ISK, they give you Blink Credit. You can't spend Blink Credit in-game. Stop being silly.

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

If I understand correctly, SOMER don't actually get any of your $$$ as you buy it from one of the suppliers they have this deal with (Markee Dragon for example) and then the supplier pays the referral fee (so technically its not you its them if that makes sense?)

With regards to question 4, its also a grey area, wouldn't this apply to all the EOH * characters as well etc?

They don't give you ISK, they give you Blink Credit. You can't spend Blink Credit in-game. Stop being silly.

Let's imagine CCP did give Somer Blink some ships, despite knowing that they RMT. It wouldn't actually mean RMT is legal.

You could compare it to funding terrorism vs doing the terrorism.

They don't give you ISK, they give you Blink Credit. You can't spend Blink Credit in-game. Stop being silly.

If Somerblink can offer isk for Plex referrals

Companies (Shattered Crystal in the past) offered RL money for referrals on GTCs, half the corps in Eve probably had an account with them. GTC = 2 PLEX mmm?

All of a sudden getting isk rather than RL money for a referral is bad?

Heh good luck with that argument.

Companies (Shattered Crystal in the past) offered RL money for referrals on GTCs, half the corps in Eve probably had an account with them. GTC = 2 PLEX mmm?

All of a sudden getting isk rather than RL money for a referral is bad?

Heh good luck with that argument.

No in-game items are exchanged for out-of-game services or goods.

It's not RMT.
It's RM-for-non-game-non-ISK-tickets-to-be-part-of-a-draw-for-non-guaranteed-rewards.

No in-game items are exchanged for out-of-game services or goods.

Companies (Shattered Crystal in the past) offered RL money for referrals on GTCs, half the corps in Eve probably had an account with them. GTC = 2 PLEX mmm?

All of a sudden getting isk rather than RL money for a referral is bad?

Heh good luck with that argument.

Getting a kickback for selling stuff out of game isn't an issue, that's just advertising. It's Blink offering in-game advantages to encourage people to buy through their referral link rather than go elsewhere that's potentially an issue. If anyone is allowed to offer isk or scrip which is easily converted into isk for RL money then I'll start the bidding at one shiny Megathron token for each GTC purchased through www.dorisdents.com

[quote=Matthew97]Blink credits are the equivalent of isk, you are just forced to gamble with them.

You used the word equivalence. I don't think that word means what you think it means. If they are the equivalent of ISK, then you cannot be forced to gamble with them.

e-+quiv-+a-+lence

i-êkwiv+Öl+Öns/

noun

1. the condition of being equal or equivalent in value, worth, function, etc.

/facepalm

Another Space Lawyer fail thread. Grasping at straws.

Another Space Lawyer fail thread. Grasping at straws.

It seems to me that Somer Blink is indeed doing RMT. I very much doubt, however, that CCP will agree. They've just had to defend their involvement with Blink at length in response to the criticisms levelled at their original proposal to reintroduce the Golden Magnate. To now turn around and admit that in fact they're supporting an RMT scheme in violation of their own EULA would entail an inacceptable loss of face. Their only options are either to dispute the analysis, or to remain silent. I rather expect they'll go for the latter.

It seems to me that Somer Blink is indeed doing RMT. I very much doubt, however, that CCP will agree. They've just had to defend their involvement with Blink at length in response to the criticisms levelled at their original proposal to reintroduce the Golden Magnate. To now turn around and admit that in fact they're supporting an RMT scheme in violation of their own EULA would entail an inacceptable loss of face. Their only options are either to dispute the analysis, or to remain silent. I rather expect they'll go for the latter.

Blink credits are the equivalent of isk, you are just forced to gamble with them.

1. Visit Somerblink
2. Click on Referral Link to Markee Dragon (Usedto be Shattered Crystal)
3. Purchase Isk
4. 250mil isk is automatically transferred to your blink account
5. Somerblink receive a payment for you purchasing isk from Markee Dragon

This could be RMT could be debated however I would say yes as isk is being used to generate real life money.

In another thread I did accuse Lucas of saying CCP endorses RMT as he accused Somerblink of RMT.

I disagreed with him for the reasons he gave and I still do in that regards.

However he has throw somewhat of a curve ball here as I do believe this is can be a class of RMT.

This is where your entire argument falls apart. That's like saying Monopoly Money is the equivalent of USD, you are just forced to play Monopoly to use it. The "worth" of blink credits is essentially zero.

This is where your entire argument falls apart. That's like saying Monopoly Money is the equivalent of USD, you are just forced to play Monopoly to use it. The "worth" of blink credits is essentially zero.

Wait. What? That cant be legal.

Can you clarify for those who never used their website or bought plexes via other vendors than ccp.
What you mean by #3 - Puchase isk?

Wait. What? That cant be legal.

Can you clarify for those who never used their website or bought plexes via other vendors than ccp.
What you mean by #3 - Puchase isk?

Change #3 to purchase GTC. Which is probably why this is "okay."

a) GTC purchased. CCP and Markee Dragon make $$$.
b) You receive GTC and blink credit.
c) On a large sample size, some of that blink credit will be converted to isk.
d) Somerblink receives $$$ from Markee dragon.

So, you give $$$ to Markee Dragon. You will, on a large sample size, get some isk from Somer Blink through wins from blink credit. Somer gets $$$.

Don't think this counts as RMT per se, but maybe someone else can explain it better.

Change #3 to purchase GTC. Which is probably why this is "okay."

a) GTC purchased. CCP and Markee Dragon make $$$.
b) You receive GTC and blink credit.
c) On a large sample size, some of that blink credit will be converted to isk.
d) Somerblink receives $$$ from Markee dragon.

So, you give $$$ to Markee Dragon. You will, on a large sample size, get some isk from Somer Blink through wins from blink credit. Somer gets $$$.

Don't think this counts as RMT per se, but maybe someone else can explain it better.

It's not RMT.
It's RM-for-non-game-non-ISK-tickets-to-be-part-of-a-draw-for-non-guaranteed-rewards.

No in-game items are exchanged for out-of-game services or goods.

The fallacies with this argument is that you receive ISK, the currency in exchange for real money via a convoluted route.
SOMER does never give you any in game currency and it cannot be argued they do. When you purchase a GTC you receiver the GTC and a credit to your account.
This credit holds no monetary value in the economy and can only be used to purchase "blinks". SOMER has for the sake of simplicity used a denomination of tokens that holds the same tag as currency of the game. The idea here was probably to alow flexibility between the different prizes offered and the buoyant value of items relative to currency. This prevents and argument of RMT as you are never in possession of any currency, only tokens that hold the same market value as you paid.

Strawman torched.

Create a blink
Buy all 8 tickets with your free blink credit
Claim winnings in ISK

The argument is RMT nothing more nothing less, you never are given isk.
Blinking all tickets still isn't giving you isk.

The fallacies with this argument is that you receive ISK, the currency in exchange for real money via a convoluted route.
SOMER does never give you any in game currency and it cannot be argued they do. When you purchase a GTC you receiver the GTC and a credit to your account.
This credit holds no monetary value in the economy and can only be used to purchase "blinks". SOMER has for the sake of simplicity used a denomination of tokens that holds the same tag as currency of the game. The idea here was probably to alow flexibility between the different prizes offered and the buoyant value of items relative to currency. This prevents and argument of RMT as you are never in possession of any currency, only tokens that hold the same market value as you paid.

Strawman torched.

The argument is RMT nothing more nothing less, you never are given isk.
Blinking all tickets still isn't giving you isk.
If you hold all tickets and win then you still haven't bought any money.
You still win a prize and can get isk but SOMER never gave you isk.
The option to "cash out" is the collection of the lottery prize you've won.
You didn't buy isk. You bought into a game and played it. You won. You get a prize for winning.

Not RMT
just people gaming a system because there are not any rules in place to prevent you buying every ticket.

Another Space Lawyer fail thread. Grasping at straws.

You guys don't have a grasp about how things work.

CCP are not against RMT at all.

They are against RMT that steals from their IP and servers (i.e. by overloading their CPUs) to bring money to 3rd parties.

They aren't against RMT where the beneficiary is CCP themselves.

PLEX is RMT and they are quite fine with it, they actually implement it.
The barbies dressing shop is RMT and they are fine with it.

The Somer => GTC => CCP "circle" is also fine with them because in the end CCP gets the huge majority of RL money income out of it. Yes, some trickles to Somer but that's cost of business, it's not "stolen" by unknowns.

Other companies - see Entropia but also several famous others - make these kinds of deals much more "in the open" and maybe CCP should become more transparent and structure 3rd party business deals instead of resorting to this indirect kind of shared profits. But hey, they are in charge here and we signup to whatever fanciful EULA they propose.

The fallacies with this argument is that you receive ISK, the currency in exchange for real money via a convoluted route.
SOMER does never give you any in game currency and it cannot be argued they do. When you purchase a GTC you receiver the GTC and a credit to your account.
This credit holds no monetary value in the economy and can only be used to purchase "blinks". SOMER has for the sake of simplicity used a denomination of tokens that holds the same tag as currency of the game. The idea here was probably to alow flexibility between the different prizes offered and the buoyant value of items relative to currency. This prevents and argument of RMT as you are never in possession of any currency, only tokens that hold the same market value as you paid.

Strawman torched.

Sigh.
Because you are purchasing into this agreement not with any money, you are buying a GTC
Right?
You get a GTC whoopedey door.
But because you bought the GTC through an affiliate you are eligible for an amount of tokens from a site.
People are getting a muddled idea because although there is real money exchanging hands.
You buy from markee and get a GTC that us one transaction.
If you came to markee from SOMER then you can get a bonus with them.
You did not pay SOMER you are not buying anything at all through SOMER.
SOMER is giving you a free bonus for "using his friend"
ergo no RMT. Your only interaction with SOMER over this entire process is getting free tokens.

The basis of your argument of it being RMT is that you can never lose, it is easy to lose BLINK. The fact there is a mechanic that you stack the draw 100% does not mean it is RMT.

Further more, OP's highly misguided statment of CCP "Officially allows" RMT is therefore even more baseless.

Caliph, regardless of what you think or not, unless you have solid proof of Markee and SOMER in cahoots that baseless defamation is going to get you nowhere.

Exaggerations of facts doesn't help your argument either, In this case with somer you can have at best a 15/16 chance of winning without reaching that magical 100% "RMT threshold" you go on about.

Your argument of cash in isk out makes sense if they were directly selling isk as a product.

Again i shall say that you purchase a product off markee, and he gives you that product.
Following a referral from SOMER gets you their credit, nowhere here is there any semblance of RMT.
Your argument of getting isk for cash (RMT) comes from the fact that SOMER has payouts, and it is possible to buy all tickets to a lottery.

Hypothetically speaking IF this were RMT and under best circumstances of getting the 250M bonus during an event. you purchase every ticket to a raven blink, it costs you 248m of your credit to stack it.
upon winning you receive a raven, or 197m isk.

Is what you are suggesting that you have bought 200m isk off SOMER for however much cut they get?
If so then a simple rule to stop complete buyouts would negate any argumentative base you hold on that it is impossible to lose.

Spin yourself a bug report and report it to them and hope you get a cookie.

But accusing them of RMT because of a common marketing strategy is kinda low don't you think?

Also i just realised how OT this thread has become.

TLDR: CCP STILL doesn't support RMT

They don't give you ISK, they give you Blink Credit. You can't spend Blink Credit in-game. Stop being silly.

RMT has nothing to do with the fact that you can win or lose.
At the end of the day it comes to one simple fact. Somer gives out ISK and in return gets cash. They are using their isk to make cash. That is RMT. If it's valid because it's hidden behind a "game" then anyone can make a site selling any in game item or isk for tokens in their "game".

In this case it's done through a referral, so Somer are giving you isk to buy something through them. That's no different from an RMTer getting you to buy some arbitrary product for which they get paid in exchange for isk. If it's allowed, it opens up enormous loopholes which allows RMT.

Right because you cannot use blink credit to win in game items and then sell those items for isk.

Having read further it seems that the arguement is that since you did not buy isk directly it is ok, So all the people that have been banned for selling navy ravens on ebay should be given their accounts back.

So CCP just need to clarify this themselves that its not against the EULA, and we can all start churning out the cash,

It is valid because it is not hidden behind a game, its use of in game functions and real world application of marketing, strategy and basic business.

Which STILL does not mean that CCP have sanctioned RMT. Which your entire thread was originally about....

No, SOMER is not perfect. Yes there could be changes made to improve its operations. And no, it is still not an example of RMTing.

I think it is clear that the only thing you buy is the GTC, just as from any other seller. Receiving the bonus is just that, if you can make a profit from it good for you. I doubt SOMER have the intention of offering this service as a (viable? or at least how viable 200m isk on a 35 USD purchase is).
People respond to positive reinforcement, free stuff is just that. They are pushing their business to where you would like to purchase through their channels and maintain operations. If there was any proof of RMTing it would likely have come up many moons ago, and beating this horse with the wrong stick still does not offer any conclusive let alone feasible shred of truth to a claim of CCP endorsing RMT

Because you seem so intent on ignoring the discussion i highlighted a bit there for you to respond to

Let's imagine CCP did give Somer Blink some ships, despite knowing that they RMT. It wouldn't actually mean RMT is legal.

You could compare it to funding terrorism vs doing the terrorism.

That's a technicality. That means any RMT would be legal as long as you run the isk through a third party. So that would mean any RMT run though paypal would be legal, since they pay paypal, then paypal takes their cash for their transaction fee and transfers you the rest.

If they are running it as an out of game business, yes it would. If it's simply a website for an in-game business it would probably be OK.

Blink credits are the equivalent of isk, you are just forced to gamble with them. Either way ~80% of the isk you receive will go to players on prizes.
So you buy a GTC, Somer gets their cut (let's say for example they get $2). Somer then gives you 250m credit. Of that credit, they give 200m to players and take 50m back in their cut (since payout is around 80% of the blink value on a regular blink).
This means they have sold 200m isk for $2.

It's not RMT.
It's RM-for-non-game-non-ISK-tickets-to-be-part-of-a-draw-for-non-guaranteed-rewards.

No in-game items are exchanged for out-of-game services or goods.

Somer Give out isk to gain real world money. THAT IS RMT.

Hey, I for one am glad they exist. I'm meeting mine at Space Court for not paying my Space Taxes

The basis of your argument of it being RMT is that you can never lose, it is easy to lose BLINK. The fact there is a mechanic that you stack the draw 100% does not mean it is RMT.

Further more, OP's highly misguided statment of CCP "Officially allows" RMT is therefore even more baseless.

Caliph, regardless of what you think or not, unless you have solid proof of Markee and SOMER in cahoots that baseless defamation is going to get you nowhere.

Exaggerations of facts doesn't help your argument either, In this case with somer you can have at best a 15/16 chance of winning without reaching that magical 100% "RMT threshold" you go on about.

Your argument of cash in isk out makes sense if they were directly selling isk as a product.

Again i shall say that you purchase a product off markee, and he gives you that product.
Following a referral from SOMER gets you their credit, nowhere here is there any semblance of RMT.
Your argument of getting isk for cash (RMT) comes from the fact that SOMER has payouts, and it is possible to buy all tickets to a lottery.

Hypothetically speaking IF this were RMT and under best circumstances of getting the 250M bonus during an event. you purchase every ticket to a raven blink, it costs you 248m of your credit to stack it.
upon winning you receive a raven, or 197m isk.

Is what you are suggesting that you have bought 200m isk off SOMER for however much cut they get?
If so then a simple rule to stop complete buyouts would negate any argumentative base you hold on that it is impossible to lose.

Spin yourself a bug report and report it to them and hope you get a cookie.

But accusing them of RMT because of a common marketing strategy is kinda low don't you think?

Also i just realised how OT this thread has become.

TLDR: CCP STILL doesn't support RMT

So you're saying you know Somer does not get a referral bonus in cash for helping his "friend"?

He's saying that Somer getting money from Markee for sending customers their way is not the same thing as you giving Somer money in return for ISK.

If you want to call that RMT, then it applies equally to Chribba, EN24, EVEUni, Battleclinic, EVE Radio, and any fansite using google or amazon or whathaveyou GÇö after all, they all get paid referral cash for various game-related services.

And if they had out of game services for giving you ingame items for doing so, it would be the same.

GǪexcept that Somer doesn't give anyone in-game items for using their affiliate links.

Yes they do.

What items are those?

All of the items that you can spend blink credits on.

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

Then what do you get for using their affiliate links?

GÇ£Blink's GTC bonus gives you 250M Blink Credit for each 60-Day GTC you purchase, and 125M Blink Credit for each 30-Day GTC you purchase. For every four 60-Day GTC (or eight 30-Day GTC) you purchase in the same transaction, you'll receive an additional bonus 250M.GÇ¥

And what can you use those credits on?

Lottery tickets.

What are the lotteries for?

Foolish people.

Foolish people.

So just to confirm your answers, you are saying you cannot win ingame items using out of game currency is that correct?

No it is not. Maybe if you used my answers rather than your own, you'd be able to confirm what I said more readily.

I'm saying that Somer getting money from Markee for sending customers their way is not the same thing as you giving Somer money in return for ISK.

But that has nothing to do with my questions.

GǪapart from answering it. Just because you don't like that answer doesn't mean it isn't one.

Let's place the websites inside a black box. What happens?

The gambling aspect isn't important at all since buying all the tickets guarantees a certain payout.

We get an incomplete picture of what's actually going on, which makes it wholly inadequate for determining whether ISK has been traded for cash or vice versa.

GǪand again, if there is any part of this that even remotely resembles RMT, it's that transfer between ISKGåÆCredits and CreditsGåÆItems GÇö the GTC part isn't important at all since, at best, if we fallaciously collapse all the intermediate steps it's just an out-of-game-for-out-of-game trade.

Of course, since that's a closed system with in-game items entering at one end and in-game items exiting at the other (and some skimming taking place in the middle), it's not really something that's worth enforcing.

So you're saying it's perfectly okay if I set up the system as I described above, that I can send players ISK for buying GTC from my affiliate who in turn sends me cash.

So replace "buying GTC" with "making a purchase."
How is that irrelevant in any way?

Because you're trading out-of-game for out-of-game, in accordance with the rules set up for affiliate sales of these goods.

Last I checked an ISK payout is not "out-of-game".

No, but the CashGåÆGTCGåÆKickback parts all are.
My point is that if people want to cry GÇ£RMTGÇ¥ about all of this, they should stop trying to squeeze the affiliate sales into it because that part is completely irrelevant.

The entire point is that you have a cash transaction that turns into ISK for the player, apart from the standard and accepted way that GTC are supposed to work.
Saying that the cash part doesn't count because it's out-of-game is the most preposterous thing I've ever seen you say.

I wonder if Somer Blink is involved with Markee Dragon outside of game?

You know employees, partners or contracters? Seems legit.

Put another way if the Markee Dragon owner were to to do exactly what Somer does would it affect the argument?

It's not a straight forward trade of money for ISK.

No, it's advertising, because you are neither giving them real-world money nor receiving any ISK from them.

He's saying that Somer getting money from Markee for sending customers their way is not the same thing as you giving Somer money in return for ISK.

If you want to call that RMT, then it applies equally to Chribba, EN24, EVEUni, Battleclinic, EVE Radio, and any fansite using google or amazon or whathaveyou GÇö after all, they all get paid referral cash for various game-related services.

No, but the CashGåÆGTCGåÆKickback parts all are.
My point is that if people want to cry GÇ£RMTGÇ¥ about all of this, they should stop trying to squeeze the affiliate sales into it because that part is completely irrelevant.

The basis of your argument of it being RMT is that you can never lose, it is easy to lose BLINK. The fact there is a mechanic that you stack the draw 100% does not mean it is RMT.

Further more, OP's highly misguided statment of CCP "Officially allows" RMT is therefore even more baseless.

Caliph, regardless of what you think or not, unless you have solid proof of Markee and SOMER in cahoots that baseless defamation is going to get you nowhere.

Exaggerations of facts doesn't help your argument either, In this case with somer you can have at best a 15/16 chance of winning without reaching that magical 100% "RMT threshold" you go on about.

Your argument of cash in isk out makes sense if they were directly selling isk as a product.

Again i shall say that you purchase a product off markee, and he gives you that product.
Following a referral from SOMER gets you their credit, nowhere here is there any semblance of RMT.
Your argument of getting isk for cash (RMT) comes from the fact that SOMER has payouts, and it is possible to buy all tickets to a lottery.

Hypothetically speaking IF this were RMT and under best circumstances of getting the 250M bonus during an event. you purchase every ticket to a raven blink, it costs you 248m of your credit to stack it.
upon winning you receive a raven, or 197m isk.

Is what you are suggesting that you have bought 200m isk off SOMER for however much cut they get?
If so then a simple rule to stop complete buyouts would negate any argumentative base you hold on that it is impossible to lose.

Spin yourself a bug report and report it to them and hope you get a cookie.

But accusing them of RMT because of a common marketing strategy is kinda low don't you think?

Also i just realised how OT this thread has become.

TLDR: CCP STILL doesn't support RMT

I assume Somerset Mahm is a play on Somerset Mom?

They don't give you ISK, they give you Blink Credit. You can't spend Blink Credit in-game. Stop being silly.

The service i am wondering about if its RMT or not is the renting of servers like teamspeak servers for isk.
Basicly this is also RMT because in this case the ISK is being exchanged into a out of game value.

As you can see in the UELA you are not allowed to sell your isk for anything outside the game, in this case you are selling your isk for a out of game service which holds value on its own.
Because if you did not pay it with isk you would have to pay with a real currency, so the isk now holds a real currency value so it has been sold outside the game.

Which is against the UELA.

These are the kind of services i am talking about
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=273547&find=unread

1. Only sales of In-Game items for In-Game ISK is permitted in this forum.*

...

*This has been extended to include Characters, EVE Time Cards (ETCs), website hosting and voice chat services.

It's Somer's ISK. They earned it and they can use it however they like.

Just like any other entity in the game. From the five dozen regulars in the Buddy Invite thread giving away the ISKies they don't have until someone actually uses their service, to corporate GTC resellers giving it away as incentive.

As long as you aren't printing it or using it against the TOS , you can do whatever you like as to giving it away.

It's the very foundation of Capitalism. Use money to make money. I'm sure if there was something hinky going on, CCP would be right on top of it. Forum lawyers don't actually know more about these things than the actual corporate lawyers that CCP pays the big bucks to, so just give it a rest, people.

Mr Epeen

/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?