I think an official version of "SOMER Blink" would be the most appropriate variant ...

Plex sales , which wouldnt have otherwise arisen

perhaps reimburse the gambling addicts among us

SOMERBLINK created a huge amount of plex sales , from which CCP has been the main benefactor. Plex sales , which wouldnt have otherwise arisen , simply through the content SOMERBLINK provided , wether it be good or bad.

Will CCP be willing to disclose the real money revenue they have enjoyed as a result of SOMERBLINK's content , providing full tranparency, care and concern, and perhaps reimburse the gambling addicts among us . Or possibly fund a gambling rehabilitation program from those proceeds.

Who is really being protected here , the game, the players or the bottom line .

I'm happy to see that CCP and CSM have managed to get this resolved so quickly. While it always sucks to see it coming to actions like this I am glad that a stance was taken and violators punished properly (unless there's shady stuff that we don't know of... hope not [*not fully recovered my bitterness from last year]).

Thank you for the update.

/c

I'm more wondering why it took players to bring the issue up in the first place. CCP was perfectly capable of visiting the site and looking at the new promotion (literally all they had to do was look at it), do they not keep close tabs on their affiliates?

Paying ISK to writers for articles and opinion pieces is explicitly allowed by CCP, as long as they're Eve related.
Monetisation of websites via ads is also OK with CCP as far as I know.

What isn't allowed is offering an ISK/ingame incentive to buy ETC/GTC from an affiliate, i.e. buying the resulting PLEX back at an inflated ISK price, when that affiliate gives you a RL cash kickback for every sale.

.. its not just EVE Related. http://imgur.com/sCn0H1u


The scenario is basic, certain 3rd parties use ISK to pay EVE Players to create EVE content & services....

This is supposely OK"ed

And one (possibly more) of the 3rd parties uses ISK to pay EVE Players to create content & services that have nothing to do with EVE Online.

This hasnt been answered, and will most likely get ignored unless more focus is shined on it.

Multiple CSM are a part of the "entity" that is doing it so they will deflect away from this. There is also the forum crashers & non sense wing working at odds ends to cover up / jam up everything as best they can.

There is absolutely no way to proof a single PLEX was sold due to SOMER which wouldn't have been sold otherwise. It's all incidental claims. There are no numbers, no comparison and no verifiability. All statements like these try to do is displaying SOMER as a godsend for EVE and CCP being stupid for destroying it.


To me it merely shows what bottom tier opinion manipulation is utilised by SOMER and consorts.

... Somer is not and never has been an affiliate of CCP. They are a player in EVE, like any other. Period.

Markee Dragon, on the other hand, is an official 3rd party time-code reseller for CCP with an actual business relationship with CCP (except they don't call it a time-code now but, whatever, haven't had coffee yet and I'm not looking up the new name :)

Somer was an affiliate of Markee Dragon under whatever affiliate program Markee has, completely independent from CCP.

THERE IS NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOMER AND CCP, other than as a generic player governed by the EULA. That's kind of the point. When the community reported a player they believed to be violating the EULA, CCP investigated and took action as they would in any other case with any other regular player.

Someone in sales, who should have passed it to legal but didn't, signed off on a proposal that was worded in such a way that it appeared to say one thing, and meant another, thus obscuring the true intent.

TL;DR SomerBlink attempted to pull the wool over CCP's eyes, and failed due to those pesky Eve players.

And What about that Volcano. I am convinced this is the gods being offended by the unfair Treatment of Somer........

A huge volcano in Iceland may be getting ready to erupt:

[Update, Aug. 20, 2014: Iceland's National Crisis Coordination Center has been activated, and a large uninhabited area surrounding the volcano has been evacuated. The Icelandic Met Office reports that about 1,000 small earthquakes occurred near the volcano on Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, Iceland's Civil Protection raised the nation's threat level from Uncertainty Phase to Alert Phase.]

rather than have me try to prove what i have said .

its not just EVE Related. http://imgur.com/sCn0H1u


The scenario is basic, certain 3rd parties use ISK to pay EVE Players to create EVE content & services....

This is supposely OK"ed

And one (possibly more) of the 3rd parties uses ISK to pay EVE Players to create content & services that have nothing to do with EVE Online.

This hasnt been answered, and will most likely get ignored unless more focus is shined on it.

Multiple CSM are a part of the "entity" that is doing it so they will deflect away from this. There is also the forum crashers & non sense wing working at odds ends to cover up / jam up everything as best they can.

.. its not just EVE Related. http://imgur.com/sCn0H1u

The scenario is basic, certain 3rd parties use ISK to pay EVE Players to create EVE content & services....

This is supposely OK"ed

And one (possibly more) of the 3rd parties uses ISK to pay EVE Players to create content & services that have nothing to do with EVE Online.

Did you actually read the proposal? because if what CCP got was word for word as posted by Somer its pretty clear as to its intentions

I'm extremely disappointed, even disgusted by how this was handled. CCP Falcon, how low you have fallen. This whole thing was nothing more than a CCP sponsored and CSM fueled witch hunt.

You had a CSM fueled witch hunt, with our precious Goon CSMs leading the charge.

CCP has always known that Somer made money from his website. CCP gave this guy unique ships just for kicks. CCP's VP of Sales corresponded with this guy regularly. CCP approved this latest promotion and learned about it FROM SOMER HIMSELF, not through some SUPER-AWESOME investigation.

As far as RMT, I loathe gold farmers who then turn around and RMT because that combination breaks MMO's. But

Secondly, you take actions against Somer's accounts because he disclosed 'private' communication. These are message between in this context, corporate entities. Not CCP and a player. He is well within his rights to publish approval or permission given for certain promotions and say they were approved by CCP, if in fact your own VP approved them in the first place.

Did you actually read the proposal? because if what CCP got was word for word as posted by Somer its pretty clear as to its intentions - if Somer intentionally side stepped CCP procedure to get someone to OK it under another pretext, etc. then that is another matter and one I have no info on.

[quote=ExplorerAlTNewb]The intent was clear after the fact when it became apparent how you were meant to parse the sentences (which was different from the intuitive sense). Even so, the way it was actually enacted was now how it was described GÇö the proposal was written to suggest that no extra ISK would be paid out, and the actual scheme hinged entirely on extra ISK being paid out.

I'm extremely disappointed, even disgusted by how this was handled. CCP Falcon, how low you have fallen. This whole thing was nothing more than a CCP sponsored and CSM fueled witch hunt.

Somer had authorization from your own VP and then you go ahead claiming this was not from your 'legal' department and therefore not valid. Are you for real? What kind of shoddy internal system do you have, if your VP can make deals without running them past legal first? I don't know if that's just sheer incompetence or pure amateurism. To then come back on them, at the expense of one of your players is completely unacceptable.

Secondly, you take actions against Somer's accounts because he disclosed 'private' communication. These are message between in this context, corporate entities. Not CCP and a player. He is well within his rights to publish approval or permission given for certain promotions and say they were approved by CCP, if in fact your own VP approved them in the first place.

You had a CSM fueled witch hunt, with our precious Goon CSMs leading the charge. And CCP sponsored it all, threw Somer to the wolves. I'm so disappointed by how you handled this, words can't express.

You caused this situation and you sacrificed Somer hoping it would calm the masses. You should be ashamed of yourself, truly.

Wait wait...how do you evacuate an uninhabited area? Did they import people to evacuate?

The bit about extra ISK was context sensitive albeit in the description of a relatively complex system I can see why people might lose sight of the context but it was pretty plain to me on first read (as you can see in the Somer thread where I explained how it worked before all this kicked off).

No, they aren't. If they were, he'd already be in violation of the EULA for being a "corporate entity" using EVE for business purposes. These were precisely between "CCP and a player". Anything else would be exactly the sort of privileged/special/favouritist relationship that CCP is/was accused of fostering with Somer, which is pretty much THE source of the community backlash.

As for his rights to publish them... certainly, he is well within his legal rights to publish (in most jurisdictions anyway). But CCP can ban his accounts for any reason they see fit, and publishing private CCP correspondence is one of those reasons clearly spelled out in the EULA that people get smacked with all the time.