Aivo Dresden wrote:That's extremely narrow minded. He isn't advertising anything there.
He is contributing by stimulating and encouraging more players to write fiction, by offering a considerably larger prize than we previously had for such contests. This might motivate people who previously were not that interested to actually write something as well. You can call it what you want, but contributions and efforts like the one Somer made there, are vital to the community.
Vital?
Come off that one, please. EVE would do just fine without SOMERblink. Your fiction contest would run fine with 2, 3, 4, or even 10 plex as a prize. In fact, if you turned down SOMER prizes you might have more folks like myself included interested in donating. You may not get to 100 PLEX, but you'd have a decent prize either way.
In fact, what SOMER does is diminish the value of the PLEX and therefore make it harder for such competitions to exist - because a competition that gave away 5-10 PLEX would seem pointless in a world where 100 PLEX give-a-ways are common. Donations of 1-2 PLEX are diminished by his donations and therefore people are less likely to give.
And SOMER does all of this to get what they are getting now: a defense against violating the EULA. SOMER has bought your approval, even though you are approving of what basically constitutes a breach of the rules of the game. SOMER has bought CCP Guard's approval, CCP Navigator's approval, EVE Vegas' approval and countless others' approval. Not by bribing them outright, but through influence peddling. It is textbook marketing - I can only hope that David Reid and Hilmar and others at CCP who are a little bit more saavy at this stuff see through the "BS".
No one wants to play a game where one entity, an in game entity (especially one using your game for a business), wields that sort of influence over the game creators, who are supposed to be above the fray in that regard. But CCP was bought - not because this makes them isk (I actually do not necessarily believe SOMER's bonus increases their profits much - I think the economics of that are complicated by the demand for game time) but because SOMER has led countless devs to actually believe they are "vital" for their game when they contribute nothing in reality.
No they are not vital, SOMER just does a good job of making people believe they are, devs included, and therefore they have recruited proxys to their defense.
At least his 1 billion isk sell out has revealed to more people the truth about SOMER. CCP asks you to stop something, and your first thought is to milk it for all it is worth. The supporters are right at least in saying it is SOMER's right to do so. And at least their true nature as a BUSINESS entity is revealed. I can only hope that CCP shuts them down, because at this point that is what they deserve.
And CCP needs to educate its staff more on the various forms that bribery and influence peddling can take - so that this doesn't happen again.