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.

Is there no plan to repair the damage already done by giving a player corp trillions of isk worth of 'stuff'? Was that plan OK'd by multiple members of CCP management or was that idea dreamed up and pushed through by an isolated group?

A lot of players really feel cheated by this whole fiasco - not in the manner that we feel we are owed something(or even want anything -I sure as hell don't). We just want the illusion of fairness restored - I mean, what is the point of playing monopoly with your friends if the bank straight up gives the third player on your left 200 bones 'because that player was cool'.

There was a limit on quotes allowed in the post, and I did my best to distill it down while maintaining the essence. If I misunderstood, please take the opportunity to explain rather than dismissing it outright.

For that matter, there were several valid and salient points in that post, and you seem to casually ignore all of them. Care to try again?

I can almost guarantee SOMER is looking at this thread and scratching his head wondering if the player base can count. If somebody hacked his account and stole "just" 100 IWSs worth of ISK he probably wouldn't notice for a long time, if at all. That's how far outclassed our wallets are by him. It's a non-factor. He hit the ludicrous ISK mark a long time ago. If he even does it for the ISK anymore it's only to see how crazy "crazy" can get.

tl;dr; what damage?

We're not looking at the value of isk related to Somer's assets, we're looking at the value of isk in relation to the reset of the playerbase, a good indicator of that value is in the value of plex. 1 plex represents a noticable 'chunk' of isk because the players have determined that that much isk is worth 1 month.

Now compare the amount of isk given to Somer to the value of that chunk.

That damage.

Sure thing. Sorry if I came off as gruff.

You said you still weren't clear on what SOMER did to deserve our attention. I replied to a similar question in this post . If there's anything more you'd like to know about it I can try but I really don't know how much more I can add. It was a judgement call at the time.

It had to do with timing, our impression of their overall track record and capability, their niche, and habit of sponsoring events...to name a few.

If you are talking about the total "damage" to the eve economy, you haven't bothered to see what the isk traded per day in game is. Those IWSs are a drop in the bucket... and when that drop fell it didn't even cause a ripple.

Sure thing. Sorry if I came off as gruff.

You said you still weren't clear on what SOMER did to deserve our attention. I replied to a similar question in this post . If there's anything more you'd like to know about it I can try but I really don't know how much more I can add. It was a judgement call at the time.

I see you obviously don't agree with that call or with the fact that SOMER or any lottery site deserves any attention. Not everyone will agree on that subject naturally.

How is it any different to running an alliance with forums, mumble, support services, politics, metagaming etc? It's creating content, takes work, gets in the news. I fail to see how you think it's at all defensible to give 1 person items which they can then sell and potentially do something like buy a small fleet of supercaps with. What would have CCP done if somer put those ships up for gambling, made a trillion profit off them at no loss to himself, then given it to say PL to go and evict an alliance from it's sov? 1 trillion would have covered all the losses from the fountain war on both sides.

do they not have alarm clocks in your timezone?

with all due respect, if you wanted them you'd log in and try and get them. if you chose not to participate; that's on you really. just like if you never turned up to whatever event it was they were giving away the noobships then you didn't have a right to moan about that one either.

They don't allow alarm clock responses at my WORK.

I can probably shed a bit of light on that although Navigator touched on that in his announcement following what was going to be the Gold Magnate event.

Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do.

In the statement we go into who else have gotten the ISWs and also what sort of giveways we usually extend to fansites.

As we said, we agree with you that we went too fast and that's why we need to re-think this whole thing. We need to keep the CSM more involved, their input is invaluable.

At some point you are going to wake up and realize what you have done and the damage you guys are causing. here is a good answer

1. We were wrong

2. We are sorry

3. We will be collecting all the scorps back or making them be bound to that charcter that got them so they cant enter the market place, so you dont have to fight CCP isk. We are sorry but we have to honor the free trips and bling from vegas and it wont happen again and we failed at truly supporting the sand box by favoring a single website that is trying to earn the same eve isk u are.

4. Any and all future give aways will be brought to the CSM first for review if we feel they are going to effect the integrity of the sandox.

5. If there is any eve player who has a gambling addiction we are sorry for endorsing a gambling site and compromising our integrity. We know some of you play online games to take the focus off of real life and our actions of being a service provider to that community was wreckless. In the past we have shown that we do not support in game and out of game actions and behavior by our players that can lead to real life problems. We as a company will hold ourselves to that same standard from now on.

Thank you

P.S. I could have gone on but will leave it at that

INB4 accusation of not being hardcore enough because you won't miss workdays for pixel spaceship.

That argument I would agree with in regards to certain rare items, but not the ISW as it was created for the express purpose of being a reward for all kinds of contributions and contests, making it inevitable that the price of the early ones will plummet. The problem more people would have with it is much rather that those who get it early gain more by selling it than those who get it late, which is a byproduct of slowly seeding rare items in this manner.

Yeah this. Wtf? Can I start a RL business in game and offer isk as a reward if people use my services out of game?

They have time and time again sponsored people and organizations who create content for our community so they can continue creating content without the need to make ISK.