I have a bottle of shampoo in my hands. Nowhere on the label does it mention anything about cleaning my hair. It just says "shampoo" with a few ingredients and sales points based around them, and some instructions on how to use it, but no explicit claim that it's gonna clean my hair. I guess it's all intended to deceive, and by virtue of that, it probably won't wash my hair. Am I right?

So, who's really 'quibbling' with words?

Blink provides no extra ISK or bonus Blink credit for buying through the link. Instead, we make it easy to sell your PLEX and get your ISK quickly, no matter where you are-- no Jita alt required. This is a service, in keeping with CCP's new guidelines that ETC affiliate link rewards should be service-oriented.

That's where it gets clever - there is no "extra isk" for buying the Plex. The "extra isk" appears when you sell that Plex back to them. The order it is all mentioned is there to imply the "no extra isk" carries throughout the entirety of the transaction, when the wording specifically limits it to only the first part, leaving them free to crap all over the spirit of the words in the second part, and allowing them to feign ignorance and claim never to have misled anyone, since their use of "best possible price" later for the by-back signifies that of course you would get the "best possible", which by definition is "more than anyone else anywhere" (ie: the market) will give you.

It is highly heavy on the technicality, and therefore slimy as all hell wording.

Yeah I hear that his investigative skills & ability to comprehend the information provided to make the correct decisions is unrivaled at CCP.

Definitely, which is why the current situation is so baffling.

That is what sets Somer (and RMT in general) apart. It is why Somer is against the rules (and yes, I'm stating that emphatically without waiting for the result of the inquiry since we already know it is from last year's d-£-󦦦º-ó-ꦪ¦¦e¦¦-í-ë-í-󦦦+¦¦¦»-ö¦+b-¥¦º¦¦¦¦¦½¦¦-ö-ëa-Ŧ+-¥¦í¦+-à-à¦ñc¦ó-á¦í-ƒ¦«¦½¦Ö¦¦¦á-ò-çl-Ǧ¢-ü¦+-û¦ƒ¦¦-ô-ë-Ö-ô¦Ñ-ô¦¬¦½e¦+¦¿¦ù¦¦¦ÿ¦ù¦Ñ¦¼-ò-ꦽ¦¦¦+¦+-ö¦¦-à¦á¦ú¦ÿ).

How is that any better than what Blink was doing?

Buy a bunch from our reseller get some isk free.. If what Blink is doing is RMT, then so it this.

Haha no one is gonna unsub because of Somer, some may actually come back if CCP clears up some blurred lines

God damn I wish I weren't banned from their public channel on all of my characters. I'm too lazy to make another one.

I can just imagine the butthurt, especially at the time of the announcement.

Channel MOTD: SOMER Blink | http://cogdev.net/blink/>cogdev.net/blink/
_________________________________
Announcement on the site.
Refunds are in progress. It's going to take time - there was 1.4T on deposit when we closed shop.
Thank you all for years of getting to do this. It was a great experience, and a majority of you were awesome people to interact with.
This channel is closed now.

Given that weGÇÖre unable to provide reimbursements as per section 1.3 of our reimbursement policy, itGÇÖs good to see that SOMER Blink is shutting down in a controlled and stable manner, and that players will be able to withdraw their ISK and / or assets.

While we will be monitoring this closely, we have no intention of interfering with this process, as we feel that allowing players to be able to have their assets and / or ISK returned by SOMER Blink of their own free will is an important part of bringing this situation to a solid resolution.

Do ya' think?

What's the penalty for directly scamming CCP?

/for the second time

CCP needs to step up for all their faults in this mess.. Rather than throwing Blink under the bus again. The smallest amount of common sense on CCP's part would have prevented this mess ages ago.

Given the lengths some have gone to to stir up anti-blink sentiment to say there has been no witch hunt at all is hardly accurate.

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.

I am shocked and overjoyed that things turned out this way.
I didn't exactly get along with somer apparently I asked too many questions. As it turns out I was asking all the right questions.

Last post before bed: we went through this a year ago. Word for word. They knew or should have known full well who and what they were dealing with. This is EVE for God's sake. The scam should always be foremost in your mind.

I agree that SOMER closing shop is highly indicative that he only pursued RL profits, but I doubt the guy is dumb enough to evade taxes in the US. The Iron Bank (sorry, IRS) will have its due.

The issue isn't the ad revenue. The issue is that you can trade isk for RL labor and services. This lets you make profit off of the labor that you otherwise would have had to pay for.

Imagine that I ran a software company and had a ton of isk. Based on the current rules, I could totally pay people isk to write code for me, which I then sell on the market. Mittani does that, but instead pays people isk for writing and webhosting.

Somer just wasn't clever enough to pull off a scheme like this and resorted to direct isk/plex for cash transactions.

You say you represent the players but that is a lie. You might represent the 50 or so loudmouths here, but there are far more players that use the blink website, and you sure arent representing them.
You just showed how valuable the CSM is.

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.

I love how everyone is demanding justice!!!

Justice to you idiots would be Somer being banned, in turn banning every user who took part in Somerblink for bonus rewards and or "the new plex system" basically crippling eve online because 50% of users in eve played blink at some point.

Which leads me to suggest that they should be lenient towards those who used it. Warnings perhaps, but no isk removal (that would be a ridiculous mess) and no bans.

They will be removing alot of isk from many accounts should their investigation turn out to be a RMT, fair enough?
Also, assuming we done it multiple times, does it count as a first offense or multiple offenses?
So again, multiple PLEX purchases for bonus or "new scheme" would be bannable.

Hardly seems fair but valid and i don't disagree with this.

Everyone is going by the assumption that somer's mails he advertised on the site aren't legit, should they turn out to be accurate and true and the intent behind the new RMT scheme was legit, who then takes the blame?

Also, it's not mob justice. CCP leaves a thread open for angry posters to be angry in and reduce moderator workload while the grownups at CCP talk. I doubt a single post in this thread was even considered in those discussions.

1) I just read the proposal again to be sure: For what's it worth Somer followed it to the letter, meaining you are wrong.

2) The proposal is neither vague nor misleading. Even if it were, it would be in CCPs responsibility to ask about anything they think is unclear before agreeing to the proposal. Meaning you are wrong again.

3) Are you sure the VP of sales is not the person to go through with this? If she isn't shouldn't SHE know this better than anyone else and provide the correct person(s) to talk to? And if she isn't yet continues to talk to Somer as if she were, why do you believe that Somer knew better? I don't think you got this right either.

Justification: Blink provides no extra ISK or bonus Blink credit for buying through the link

It looks like Somer clearly overstepped the bounds of the agreement, but to be fair that proposal should never have been given the green light. Even if it was followed to the letter it still constitutes RMT.

I have to disagree with this. RMT is not just defined by making a profit, it's the trade of any in-game items, services, or currency for out-of-game items, services, or currency. Trading the services of a Jita alt for the use of their referral would still constitute RMT.

This is a service, in keeping with CCP's new guidelines that ETC affiliate link rewards should be service-oriented.

I didn't miss that line about "no extra ISK". And if you take this one sentence out of the context of the proposal I would agree that it sounds like saying one thing but doing another. But this line isn't stand alone. And if you reread the proposal you should realize that it means "no extra ISK in addition to the price paid for the PLEX".

Justification: Blink provides no extra ISK or bonus Blink credit for buying through the link. Instead, we make it easy to sell your PLEX and get your ISK quickly, no matter where you are-- no Jita alt required. This is a service, in keeping with CCP's new guidelines that ETC affiliate link rewards should be service-oriented.

Because the community team is most certainly NOT the correct counterpart in getting formal approval for such an agreement.

You have a point there, I assumed that line was a bit of marketing wordsmithing. I'm not aware of any new policy or guidelines regarding affiliate links, do you happen to know what that's in reference to?