For reference, if anyone finds their accounts disabled due to this, then please file a support ticket to have the issue cleared up.

We are not banning people's accounts due to this, and any action taken against an account because of this issue has been triggered automatically due to our billing system being notified of a charge-back by the third party retailer.

If you find your EVE account locked down due to this, please file a support ticket under the billing category and the GM Team will be happy to help.

Is that even legal ? I mean the chargebacks.

I mean ... here, in Austria, if somebody screws up prices on his website,
or even on a flyer, he has to stick to these prices by law.

It's one call to the VKI (err ... like ... a government entitiy for consumers)
to make them obey said law, else they'll get punished.

Source: Some retailer hadn't updated their website and sold a camera for below regular market price
and i, of course, took the chance. Printed the website, went there, got it for the cheap price.

If this deal would have been available in Austria and i had bought 50 of them
and Amazon cancelled the deal after it's done already, they'd have a bad time ...

In many countries, this is covered by "Invitation to treat", which is a fancy way of saying "We may or may not mean that the displayed price is the correct one". This is because, the actual "contract" between you and the supplier does not occur until you have the goods at the checkout.

Also, in amazons FAQ: "If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before dispatching or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation"

I am guessing it is the cancellation which triggered the chargebacks.

What harm, exactly, is this incident supposed to have done to the EVE economy?

Given that the deal got removed fast enough so there weren't ten thousand buyers ... pretty much none.

Ten thousand people isn't actually unrealistic,
if it wasn't a deal restricted to the US market.

But imagine there were ten thousand people seeing this cheap deal,
buying 5 PLEX for the price they'd usually pay for one.

That's fifty thousand PLEX suddenly available.

The market gets flooded with PLEX,
driving the price down faster than even rich people can buy them up.


No ?

Correct me if I am wrong, but surely if an Alliance suddenly got a MASSIVE influx of money through this PLEX deal it would give that Alliance an unfair advantage?

Correct me if I am wrong, but surely if an Alliance suddenly got a MASSIVE influx of money through this PLEX deal it would give that Alliance an unfair advantage?

Correct me if I am wrong, but surely if an Alliance suddenly got a MASSIVE influx of money through this PLEX deal it would give that Alliance an unfair advantage?

OK. So what harm does that do? Except for transaction fees, no ISK is created or destroyed, no new ships, modules or items are created, and lots of players have some cheap game time subsidised by Amazon.

What's the damage?

Why would any one alliance get a particularly large influx?

OK. So what harm does that do? Except for transaction fees, no ISK is created or destroyed, no new ships, modules or items are created, and lots of players have some cheap game time subsidised by Amazon.

What's the damage?

The "damage" is, like in many other cases even in RL, done to market speculators only who sit on larger piles of PLEXes. That don't have to be individual players, but can also be investments made by corporations or alliances (so the piles can be quite big). If one thing is certain lately, it's the steady rise of PLEX prices so they make quite neat investment (especially during pre-expansion period). Individual players who bought a couple of PLEXes to fill the hole in their in-game wallets, haven't lost much because (400mil drop for 10 PLEXes is not that much after all and the price of PLEX is still good enough as it is).

It's like the Ishukone Scorpion incident, where no actual harm was done, but the outrage was fueled mainly by speculators who "lost" a good amount of ISK due to bad investment. And if the wallets of market speculators are affected then it's automatically called "market crash", "direct damage to the economy" and so on.

In reality, no damage to the economy has been done, because PLEX does not generate ISK and its final value is 30 days of game time. The only damaged party here is CCP, because they lost money with every PLEX sold in this incident. The winner in this situation is a regular Joe who buys PLEX for game time.

Actually Amazon lost money, CCP gets their money no matter how low a third party sells it.

Amazon is a distributor, they agree to pay 'x' for allotment of GTC's/plexes.

Amazon is Amazon. If you think they are just going to hand over a pile of money to CCP you have probably never had business dealings with Amazon.

In order to sell the product they have to have paid for it first.

It is the very basic principals of selling crap.

CCP and Amazon are two separate entities,

Amazon the re-seller sends CCP a purchase order for 'x' units of crap, for a predetermined cost per unit.

CCP fulfills order as agreed to predetermined cost per unit.

Amazon's button monkey key's in pricing.

Amazon sells unit expecting profit.

"Whelp" and button monkey is sent to the soup line.

Amazon corrects pricing and puts in place new button monkey.

In order to sell the product they have to have paid for it first.

It is the very basic principals of selling crap.

CCP and Amazon are two separate entities,

Amazon the re-seller sends CCP a purchase order for 'x' units of crap, for a predetermined cost per unit.

CCP fulfills order as agreed to predetermined cost per unit.

....

I wonder - what will be the next lucky "accident" which will help CCP to lower raising PLEX prices during next weekend?

Amazon is Amazon. If you think they are just going to hand over a pile of money to CCP you have probably never had business dealings with Amazon.

You genuinely can't see the problem with a small group of players (Americans who saw the deal) being offered 3 plex for $5, while the rest of us pay $17.50 for each one? In a competitive game? Offering one group of players super-cheap playtime / ISK over others is pretty bad mate.

The only saving grace in this situation is that the error was spotted quite quickly. I.e., while the harm is self-evident in my opinion, at least it wasn't too extensive.

I'm sorry, I should have phrased the question more clearly: what harm does this do to the game economy?

As for the harm you discuss, you're still talking as if this was some planned, deliberate anti-EU move on CCP's part when it was a straight up administrative error by Amazon that they fixed as quickly as possible. Regardless, what harm has been sufferred? If I get 3 PLEX for $5, how has that harmed you in any way?

The "damage" is, like in many other cases even in RL, done to market speculators only who sit on larger piles of PLEXes. That don't have to be individual players, but can also be investments made by corporations or alliances (so the piles can be quite big). If one thing is certain lately, it's the steady rise of PLEX prices so they make quite neat investment (especially during pre-expansion period). Individual players who bought a couple of PLEXes to fill the hole in their in-game wallets (outside of the Amazon offer), haven't lost much because 400mil drop for 10 PLEXes is not that much after all and the price of PLEX is still good enough as it is.

It's like the Ishukone Scorpion incident, where no actual harm was done, but the outrage was fueled mainly by speculators who "lost" a good amount of ISK due to bad investment. And if the wallets of market speculators are affected then it's automatically called "market crash", "direct damage to the economy" and so on.

In reality, no damage to the economy has been done, because PLEX does not generate ISK and its final value is 30 days of game time. The only damaged party here is CCP, because they lost money with every PLEX sold in this incident. The winner in this situation is a regular Joe who buys PLEX for game time.

Won't be voting for you next year, lost your common sense?