we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

A SOMER Director is a regular at a Monthly EVE meet I help with. He donated tens of billions in prizes in August. And gave 250 Mil to everyone in attendance last Christmas...

Now you have heard of SOMER helping people when they didn't really need to, but wanted to!

Hard to abuse a system which isn't automatic.

You make it sound like as if creating and maintaining a well know eve online fansite + infrastructure and handling with employees is effortless.

Out of game only or vanity trash like:

- A piece of Steve
- Band of Brothers Director Access Key
- Lost reminder to pay sov bill

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

What is the differents between those items and a IWS?

The precise criteria isn't that scientific at the moment which is why we're planning to design a more transparent criteria for contributors and others as well.

We selected to reward SOMER and his staff because the time was right to do stuff with them, Vegas sponsorship being an example. Same story with the SCL which was having an active period and doing really exciting things.

Recently CCP rewarded the staff members of SOMER Blink, the highly popular micro lottery website, with Ishukone Watch Scorpions (IWS) as a thank-you for their contributions to EVE.

In its very essence, the IWS is a skin with its own GÇ£show infoGÇ¥ description. But while thatGÇÖs certainly an important thing to realize, we of course recognize that rare items you can sell on TQ will be coveted and will have some value through the law of supply and demand despite a lack of base value or actual functionality.

Why hasnGÇÖt my favorite fansite or community enterprise received something nice too?

ThereGÇÖs no single answer to that question. Sometimes it has to do with the timing of specific events related to that fansite or enterprise, sometimes your favorite is next in line or theyGÇÖve simply gotten something different, such as free accounts, trips and/or tickets to Fanfest, CollectorGÇÖs editions, a couple of time codes, devs flown to their events, T-shirts, posters, resin ship models etc. etc.

Now on to the personal reward

The IWS is a cool thing to have and thatGÇÖs why we use it as a reward, not because it carries X ISK value. The price people negotiate is wholly decided between individuals and is hard for us to predict with any precision.

We recognize that gifting rare in-game items of potential ISK value proactively to select third-parties, whether as prizes for them to hand out or as a personal thank-you, can have implications no matter how well-meaning you are. We realize that for example in the IWS reward situation, a line was crossed in many peopleGÇÖs minds despite there being certain similarities with previous gifting events. Where the line of acceptability lies is something we need to work out together before we move forward.

4. A Dev endorsed a player run lottery and specified that it was totally legitimate. CCP endorsements of player run businesses must never be allowed to happen. Ever. By endorsing one group over another, he has potentially crippled all of the competitors. Who would risk their ISK with anyone else?

- It was given to a for-profit enterprise. SB is a for-profit website. They make plenty of ISK doing their normal operations.

There's also the seperate problem of Navigator officially declaring them Not A Scam

If the ISW Scorpion was created specifically as an item to be spawned and given away, that should be in its "Show Info" box. If people still want to spend tons of money on them, that's their own fault.

Still I support the creation of and giving away of a ship whose sole purpose was to be created and given away just as long as everyone knows or can easily know that this is the case.

Items such as the memorabilia things in the "time capsule", would reward people with a permanent reminder of their impact on the EVE world.

Those things like the "Piece of Steve", relating to the first Titan shot down, or the "Assassination Contract - Mirial", or the "Band of Brothers Director Key". Souvenir items that don't do anything much ingame, beside exist.

Those sorts of items would be perfectly fine, to reward people for contributing.

Or inspace monuments, such as was done in the past, e.g. the Jita Monument originally commemorated a competition between players, yes ?

Monuments and souvenir items, people would have far fewer issues with, than things that have a definable ISK value.

thanks for the dev blog, so far I'm liking what I read. the recent events had me quite alarmed and i did not renew the first round of my accounts that expired, awaiting CCP response first.

so, with the rewards program currently suspended and being looked at again in light of current happenings, i take it that the number of scorpion ishukone watch present in game now will remain stable and any new giveaways will be using new prizes, which are hopefully out of game or non-transferable? as some others mentioned prior, even some plex wouldn't be bad, as those can also be used for stuff like subscription or re-sculpts. just please, no more rare items!

4. A Dev endorsed a player run lottery and specified that it was totally legitimate. CCP endorsements of player run businesses must never be allowed to happen. Ever. By endorsing one group over another, he has potentially crippled all of the competitors. Who would risk their ISK with anyone else?

The "Bring Solo Back" podcast got ISK and ships for doing PvP and talking about it.
They made profit.

It's hard to draw a line with those community projects.

Yeah, this was a serious, serious problem as well. There should not have been a CCP endorsement that SOMER is not a scam and has operated completely honestly for its entire history. I don't actually believe the research to verify that was done, but it was wrong even if it was.

Secretly...nothing. And what we've given out as rewards or prizes doesn't generally come in big bundles which is one of the key reasons eyebrows were raised over this incident.

It's worth keeping in mind that Internal Affairs has complete oversight over every single item spawned or transferred on our server and monitors all staff account activity closely as is their purpose.

The "Bring Solo Back" podcast got ISK and ships for doing PvP and talking about it.
They made profit.

It's hard to draw a line with those community projects.

This pretty much exactly, the reward of being recognized and in a way immortalized with the items you have, or monuments, or even names of planets etc is one of the best ways to show appreciation.

Things like that would be worth so much more in terms of memories and feeling accomplishment than a regular item you sell for some ISK. I've been joking since years that my personal ultimate goal would be to have a planet named after me, and I'm sure that alot of people who dedicate themselves making things to try and improve and build the community (not for profit only) would feel very rewarded by things like that.

/c

For the time being we are pausing all plans for rare in-game rewards to select third party contributors.