Except for Chribba's brief remarks, I see that most web hosts are strangely quiet on this. And for good reason.

If the more mouth frothing anger management deficient among you get your way and CCP decides you are right that any income is RMT, say goodbye to your kill boards, news sites, blogs, market sites and character sheets. Anything that relies on click-throughs and affiliates to cover hosting costs. Be careful what you wish for, people. You might just get it.

Mr Epeen

Out of curiosity.

For all you folks gathering the pitchforks and torches and learning to tie ropes into nooses. Do you expect a single or mass execution? Just Somer or Somer and staff or Somer staff and anybody who has ever done business with them?

damn, that includes me.

Or if you are heading the mob towards CCP are you looking for the one person mentioned in the 'email leak' or their entire staff or (as some of you love to ask for) the entire senior management team of CCP for allowing this to take place? Community and CSM thrown in for good measure, no doubt.

damn I made the list again

How much blood, how many bodies do you need to satisfy your craving for justice?

After all, as the queen once said . . . `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.'

I am not apologizing for CCP, just reminding some that this is not an instantaneous kind of thing. But some of you want to skip sentence, verdict, and leap straight to the execution(s) so anything I say to delay that must be stonewalling and sucking up to my masters.

I read Somer's proposal text in full (linked on his site) and if you do, it's pretty obvious IMO that the wording and order of given information is intentionally misleading. Furthermore the claimed intention (provide a service to players to ease in game PLEX selling) makes no business sense in combination with a negative ISK fee unless you include the real money part.

BUT what if the scheme is altered to give out the Jita sell price -1 Mio in fees for the service?

Somer is the receiver of the real money hence it's actually a better rate for them. ... and the benefit looks still strong enough to encourage people to buy PLEX through their affiliation program.

Sure, but without a clear ISK-valued benefit for the consumer there would be not much difference anymore to any other 3rd party service being financed through CCP's affiliate program and player's ISK donations.

So does for example Dotlan ...it's an valuable in-game service financed also through a GTC/PLEX buying link. Although, as I stated earlier, this is a more indirect connection it still generates real money from an in-game service. To be clear, I'm not defending Somer/Markee, but I would consider it a challenge to formulate clear rules which do not harm all the other presumably non-profit services.

I like your shades. I need to get me some of those.

Well I took a year break from EVE and the only reason I kept one account up was to play blink and set some skills. I am sad to see Blink go the way of the Dodo.
I did get the remainder of my isk I had deposited with them back.

I understand his reasoning for shutting down the site, the witch hunt that is this investigation and community uproar and calling for Somer's head.

I think now that GTC's have been removed and plex can only be sold at CCP's price they need to remove all third party suppliers. and just have CCP as the only source of plex. that would pretty much prevent this from happening again.

The guy was out of line, everybody recognized it last year and then they basically deceived a VP at CCP into signing off on the same thing this year.

Incentives to use his button rather than anyone elses

Sadly seems to be a fair amount of "can't manage to become a success so can't stand to see others become a success" behind a good bit of the attacking of somer, don't really know enough about what somer does behind the scenes as to whether they were in the wrong or not or brought it on themselves or not but have noticed the efforts some have gone to in an effort to bring somer down with poorly hidden agendas of their own.

Spin spin spin spin spin. You make me sad, CCP. He stuck his **** so far up your ass that you couldn't see straight. Now let's watch the PLEX market unravel.

Not to be impolite, but are you stupid? Falcon is being more polite here than I would be because Somer's proposal that he gave CCP isn't actually what he did. Go read the document Somer sent them. Pay particular attention to the "no bonus isk" bit and the subtle weasely last line that betrays his actual intent.

It's not spin, it's reading comprehension. Come back when you get some.

You can't seem to divorce Falcon the person from Falcon the CCP representative. He has the unfortunate task of being the community punching bag (do your duty, sir, we in the corporate world understand your position all too well). Somer scammed CCP and they let themselves be scammed. They were so interested in selling PLEX, they chose not to see the forest for the trees. Go back to being clueless, Derrick. This part of the game is so meta, its off the ******* charts.

the talk about the proposed plan has been too hard and fast for me... will someone break it down nice and slow, Barney style please. I want to understand it the way other people seem to, but I still don't see it. (help plz)

SOMER's games are consistent in generating more ISK than he puts into them.

people in this thread have pointed out SOMER is not a charity... so outside of the closed loop of SOMER games that simply generate more ISK, what do you suppose he should do with his ISK besides finding reasons to give it away and promoting his site and [CCP's revenue via] PLEX in the process?

if you don't think of something, the ISK would only accumulate.

even if SOMER became an ETC reseller, that still leaves the question of what to do with that ISK outside the closed loop of SOMER games.

I can't think of anything that makes more sense than what he's done... can you?

This is a ridiculous edge case and you'd probably be in violation of the law if you did this, as you don't have the right to redistribute software that you buy. Additionally, TMC pays for their own web hosting in RL $$, and the articles they pay ISK for are all related to CCP IP, conforming to guidelines CCP handed down to them after last year's Somergate. The difference is that they haven't tried to weasel their way around it by deceiving CCP.

The only one who really knows why is Somer.
A wild guess, some people are allowed to RMT from CCP, and others arent.

I have played EVE since 2003 with different accounts. Each time there have been a scandal because of CCP i have cancelled my subscription for many months to protest.
I have lost all trust in CCP years ago (Incarna was the final nail in the coffin).
If they again play it "blurry mafia" instead of being clear and straight, i will cancel again, but this time for good. I'd better pay 15Gé¼ monthly to people who have a minimum of sense of probity.
By the way, CCP, i'm also watching you on the matter of null sec sov, which for me is another form of mafia issue.

RMT= converting ISK to real money.
That's what Somer, Evenews24 and TMC are doing, they jump thru some hoops to get there, but the end result is the same.

I wonder if neighbourhood junkies complain when the local dealer is arrested.

m

Thankfully, the National Council on Problem Gambling has a 24-hour confidential support hotline you can call.

Get help here: http://www.ncpgambling.org/

That would be fine, provided the crowd didn't kill you first based on circumstantial assumption, bias, and the fact that they just never liked you to begin with.

Last I remember hearing, CCP's policy towards ISK buyers is to remove the ISK and warn them on the first event.

ISK sellers are the only ones who get the instant perma-banhammer.


Also, Blink advertised the RMT scheme as CCP approved. That lie from a formerly reputable source reduces the level of responsibility the buyers have.

"the people who took part in this by taking advantage of the bonus shouldn't be banned because it'd be unfair but here's why they should be banned to make it fair"

This thread is the sole reason USA needs military vehicles for their police forces...

*AHEM*
50m over sell orders that is available if and only if you buy through the link is:
"extra,"
it's
"ISK,"
and it's
"for buying through the link."
i.e. exactly what Somer promised not to do.

3) Why wouldn't Somer go to the community team who they have talked to many times before? Why go to someone far less likely to be well versed in the nuances of EVE?

If it was offered at Jita buy prices, or even (at a stretch) sell prices, it would be fine. Somer would have actually been providing a "let me be your Jita alt" service. But then that's not a particularly good incentive since Jita alts are so ubiquitous, so Somer wouldn't have stood to make nearly as much money.

It's not the buyback program in principle that's the problem, it's the premium Somer was paying to encourage purchase through the affiliate link. (And a buyback program would be a horrible pain to keep on the right side of RMT because of constant market fluctuations.)

I'm assuming that Somer was truthful when he said this:

Indicating that CCP is OK with providing services as affiliate link rewards. Whether that's good policy or not, I'm not sure.

"This medic has saved hundreds of lives. We should definitely overlook the fact that he beats his wife."

He's getting hammered because he attempted to circumvent the rules regarding the monetisation of CCPs intellectual property.

His charitable donations do not excuse that, just as they didn't excuse Bernie Madhoff when he got clobbered for running a huge Ponzi and ripping people off for their pensions.