svartalf
Can't get enough of FH
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2004
- Messages
- 1,632
An interesting story about microtransactions...
EVE Evolved: The day that EVE Online died, page 2 | Massively
EVE Evolved: The day that EVE Online died, page 2 | Massively
Will Eve Die?
- Thread starter svartalf
- Start date
svartalf
Can't get enough of FH
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2004
- Messages
- 1,632
- Thread starter
- #2
An interesting story about microtransactions...
EVE Evolved: The day that EVE Online died, page 2 | Massively
I think it's safe to say that this week has been an unmitigated disaster for CCP Games. Following last week's $99 license fee fiasco for third-party developers, CCP Zulu managed to claw back some player support with a segment addressing the issue during the alliance tournament. This week CCP followed up with the release of Incarna 1.0 and its long-awaited captain's quarters. Players logged in to walk around their private rooms and check out the various cosmetic items available for purchase in the new microtransaction store.
It didn't take long for people to realise that something was fundamentally wrong with the prices on the Noble Exchange. At around $40 for a basic shirt, $25 for boots, and $70 or more for the fabled monocle, items in the Noble Exchange were priced higher than their-real life counterparts. As players made some noise about the ridiculous prices, an internal CCP newsletter all about the company's microtransaction plans was purportedly leaked. In it, plans to sell ships, ammo, and faction standings for cash were revealed, plans that strictly contradict previous promises on gameplay-affecting microtransactions. Shortly afterward, all hell broke loose as a private internal memo from CCP CEO Hilmar was leaked to the press.
In the past few days, I've been contacted by dozens (if not hundreds) of concerned EVE players who are afraid that the game they love is coming to an end. I've even been in contact with an insider who is scared of the risks CCP is taking with the jobs of over 600 employees in four countries, scared enough to leak internal documents and emails. In this week's colossal EVE Evolved, I delve into EVE's latest controversy and shed some light on the biggest community flashpoint since the T20 developer corruption scandal.[/url]
Price point
Before Incarna was released, players viewed the new microtransaction shop with benign optimism. As the shop would only contain vanity items, most players either didn't care about the shop or looked forward to playing dress-up with their virtual dolls. I will admit that I fall into the latter of those two categories and would certainly have bought some cosmetic items had they been reasonably priced. It's not surprising that CCP would test the waters on expensive microtransactions; after all, the only way to tell whether players will buy them is to test and see. What's really surprising is that the cash shop opened with no reasonably priced items at all.
If the monocle had been an exceptional case, it might actually have caused more people to buy it. Seventy dollars or 1.4 billion ISK for the item is ridiculously expensive, but it does act as a status symbol of being rich that shows up on your avatar's portrait in-game and on the forums. It's the fact that every single item was equally overpriced that I think really kicked off monoclegate. If there had been cheap clothes and new glasses for under 1000 Aurum, the monocle would have stood out as a status symbol. I doubt players will be comfortable with anything basic being priced in the thousands of Aurum range until the winter expansion brings multiplayer environments to Incarna and we can actually show off those purchases. Even then, I'd expect room expansions, furniture, and store fronts to be the high-value items in Incarna and not basic clothing.
A trick of psychology
The NeX store prices seem to be designed to take advantage of an interesting trick of buyer psychology: the price anchor. In the book Predictably Irrational, author Dan Ariely showed experimentally that we tend to adopt the first price we see for a given type of item as an anchor value. With a default value set, anything lower suddenly seems like a good deal. This is the same psychology that powers sales of games on Steam and even contributed to Minecraft's early success -- even if an indie game doesn't sell well at $20, pricing it at $20 and then having a 50% off sale will net more sales than pricing it at $10 from the outset.
Having been introduced to the monocle at a price point of 12,000 Aurum, more people will probably buy it in a 50% sale for 6,000 than would have bought it if it came out for 6,000 initially. It's actually an incredibly good idea from a business perspective, especially as the items can be bought during a sale and then traded on the open market for ISK. This could have worked extremely well for CCP, but unfortunately the company tried to apply that premium pricing strategy to every single item in the store.
Perhaps CCP was hoping that ornate and pretty clothing could be sold at even higher rates if people accepted $20-$40 for basic clothing. Whatever the reason for the massive prices on basic clothing, those price anchors don't appear to have stuck. This may be because we already have a basis for comparison in real-world clothing and would automatically expect a virtual version to cost less than those existing price anchors. As the most expensive item, the monocle that may have been OK on its own has become a symbol of the ridiculous prices, and that controversy itself has fueled some sales of the item.
Halp! My computar blewed up!
One of the main worries with the captain's quarters was that they may take longer to load than the current ship hangar. These fears were initially dismissed with a promise that it would be just as fast to do anything after the patch as it would be after. While the Incarna environment loads asynchronously in the background and the full UI and neocom are available immediately, the loader does cause computers to stutter, slow, and stall momentarily. Some players have reported lower frame rates in captain's quarters than they get in Crysis II on full graphics, and the forums are filled with reports of overheating GPUs and system shutdowns.
I personally found the captain's quarters to be extremely cool and newbie-friendly for the two minutes mine worked before switching off my graphics card and causing a bluescreen. Anticipating these issues, CCP temporarily added the option to disable the captain's quarters. Management had to be convinced to let this option exist even on a temporary basis, and CCP has stated several times that it has no intention of letting players opt out of Incarna forever. CCP intends Incarna to be as integral a part of EVE as mission-running or fleet warfare and perhaps worries that if players aren't forced to use it, they'll opt out of the new paradigm.
This attitude mirrors that seen during the launch of EVE Gate, the web-based social networking platform for EVE. When EVE Gate launched, all player information and profiles were made public by default. CCP worried that if the system didn't opt players in by default, nobody would use it and it wouldn't be useful as a social networking tool. When the service went live, a surprising number of players logged in just to turn it off and make their details private. We've seen the same thing with the captain's quarters, with a huge section of the forum community opting to make use of the temporary off switch.
Incentivising Incarna
When EVE was young, development focused on helping players to do what they wanted to. When players began forming ad-hoc alliances, CCP introduced formal alliances. When players began using secure containers and logged off industrial pilots as supply depots in deep space, CCP introduced modular starbases. Somewhere along the line, this changed and CCP began cultivating an adversarial relationship with the EVE playerbase on a strategic level. EVE players have shown little enthusiasm for Incarna, EVE Gate, and other recent projects, and CCP's response has been to try to force players to use them.
These are all things that should have been optional but incentivised, for example by the inclusion of skill changing in EVE Gate and station-only content for Incarna. We could have reduced broker fees for transactions created while we're in our captain's quarters, automatic shipping of PI goods to the station, or remote access to agents within the region. We could even have special Incarna-only black market services like standings-based manufacturing slots and refineries with lower tax. It doesn't take a genius to come up with viable incentives for using Incarna, and yet CCP seems adamant that we should just be forced to use it.
[/url]
Fearless
In the midst of the controversy surrounding the NeX store, an internal company newsletter called Fearless was leaked via EVE News 24. In it, potential microtransactions like the sale of ships, ammo, and faction standings were explored, things CCP had previously agreed were off-limits. Titled "Greed is Good?", the newsletter sent players into a frenzy. In Friday's EVE Radio talk show, ex-CCP employee and current CSM delegate Seleene recalled the newsletter from his time at the company:
"It's supposed to be there to help employees digest what's going on in the company and the company mindset," he explained. "It's not just an opinion piece." In his view, the newsletter is used by CCP to "get people to have their noses pointed in the same direction" so that by the time a feature is going live, "there's been a bit of internal messaging that says this is what's coming and it's going to be awesome, so be ready for the awesome."
What's the big deal?
Most of my co-workers and friends who don't play EVE haven't really seen the big deal with the leaked newsletter. CCP is a company whose primary objective is to make money from its games, and how it does that should be up to it. For upcoming titles like World of Darkness and DUST 514, this might not be much of an issue. The issue is specifically that EVE is an eight-year-old title with a section of dedicated players. New players join and quit every day, but a core of veterans who have stuck around for years bought into EVE under the understanding that the game wouldn't have microtransactions at all.
When we were sold the idea of microtransactions, the interpretation agreed on by CCP and even the oldest veteran players was a strict vanity item scheme based around Incarna clothing, furniture, customised ship skins, and similar products. Microtransactions not affecting gameplay has become a core concept that has been accepted across the MMO industry as a safe option. When it became known that the company was discussing gameplay-affecting ships, ammo, and standings for cash in spite of a previous agreement not to implement those features, players did not react positively.
The simplest resolution
Following the release of Fearless and the renewed worry over gameplay-affecting microtransactions, players began to ask one question over and over again. In massive yellow letters all over the forum, players repeatedly asked whether CCP was going to add gameplay-affecting microtransactions to EVE. This should have been a simple question with an existing answer -- CCP had already reversed a previous decision based on the promise of having no gameplay-affecting items.
This question is at the heart of the current dispute, and answering it immediately would have gone a long way toward resolving that dispute. The complete silence for several days on what should have been a simple question has been the most damning thing yet for CCP. Soon after Fearless was leaked, CCP responded to Massively's request for an interview by offering to have CCP Zulu answer any questions we had. I compiled a reasonable summary of the events leading up to the current player outrage and a list of detailed questions that would have answered every issue players were facing.
Rather than responding to the questions, CCP Zulu published a devblog the following day attempting to address the Fearless and NeX price issues. The devblog didn't answer the main question of gameplay-affecting microtransactions and didn't answer any of the questions I had asked. Instead, the devblog served only to further enrage players with its extremely condescending tone and its assertion that it had addressed most of the issues players worried about. Perhaps the only positive thing to come out of it is that it was so unlike what Arnar normally writes or says that some players don't believe he wrote it at all.
Source of the problem
The third-party app contract and NeX store prices were both issues that anyone with even a passing knowledge of EVE or business would have recognised the flaws in immediately. It would have been obvious that these would lead to mass anger within the existing playerbase, and so these mistakes should have been easily caught long before publication. It's unreasonable then to think that these ideas went through the normal development process without any internal complaints being raised. To me, this suggested that the ideas were being pushed through in spite of complaints. The only people capable of that would have to be in upper management.
During Funkybacon's EVE Radio talk show on Friday, the evidence for this mounted. It became clear that the CSM, which is normally used as a filter for ideas to judge the playerbase's reaction in advance, was not consulted on any of the recent controversial decisions. When Hilmar's inflammatory internal email to all CCP employees was leaked on EVE News 24 while the show was live, we began to suspect that cutting the CSM out of the decision-making process was no accident. In the mail, Hilmar insisted that CCP would not pay attention to what EVE players say on these matters, evidently including the noise on the forum and the CSM in its capacity as an acceptance filter for forewarning.
Hilmar stated that he would instead be basing decisions only on what players do, which so far has meant on how many monocles are bought. This email sparked in-game protests in Jita and Amarr as well as forum threads trying to keep track of unsubscribed accounts to show that players are speaking with their actions.
In the past few months, I've written a lot about how the power players of EVE give newbies a place in the world and how the best possible thing for EVE's long-term subscriptions would be to help new players to find their place in the community. Those players who tend to subscribe for only one or two months before quitting could easily be converted into motivated members of a corporation and a community, and they would stay for months or years longer as a result.
These recent events have left me feeling that CCP has done the complete opposite, opting to discard the power players and the community they create in exchange for high sales and microtransaction turnover. As cynical as it may sound, a strategic decision to ignore everything but sales appears to have been mandated at the CEO level. Meanwhile, employees like CCP Soundwave who have been demonised by the playerbase have remained silent, perhaps not allowed to talk about the issues until official statements are made.
Before Incarna went live, Torfi Frans Olafsson compared the expansion rollout to changing the engine on a racecar while it's doing 200 miles an hour on a track. This week we found that CCP may be intending to change the driver at the same time. While I do believe players are over-reacting and a lot of old anger has come out in these past few days, I find myself drained of my normal enthusiasm and wondering how CCP will ever claw its way back from this latest media disaster. The CSM is being flown to Iceland to discuss the issue in an emergency meeting, and I seriously hope that something good comes out of it. I don't want to look back on this weekend in years to come and say to people, "This was the day that EVE Online died."
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of [url=http://www.massively.com/category/eve-online/]EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.
EVE Evolved: The day that EVE Online died, page 2 | Massively
I think it's safe to say that this week has been an unmitigated disaster for CCP Games. Following last week's $99 license fee fiasco for third-party developers, CCP Zulu managed to claw back some player support with a segment addressing the issue during the alliance tournament. This week CCP followed up with the release of Incarna 1.0 and its long-awaited captain's quarters. Players logged in to walk around their private rooms and check out the various cosmetic items available for purchase in the new microtransaction store.
It didn't take long for people to realise that something was fundamentally wrong with the prices on the Noble Exchange. At around $40 for a basic shirt, $25 for boots, and $70 or more for the fabled monocle, items in the Noble Exchange were priced higher than their-real life counterparts. As players made some noise about the ridiculous prices, an internal CCP newsletter all about the company's microtransaction plans was purportedly leaked. In it, plans to sell ships, ammo, and faction standings for cash were revealed, plans that strictly contradict previous promises on gameplay-affecting microtransactions. Shortly afterward, all hell broke loose as a private internal memo from CCP CEO Hilmar was leaked to the press.
In the past few days, I've been contacted by dozens (if not hundreds) of concerned EVE players who are afraid that the game they love is coming to an end. I've even been in contact with an insider who is scared of the risks CCP is taking with the jobs of over 600 employees in four countries, scared enough to leak internal documents and emails. In this week's colossal EVE Evolved, I delve into EVE's latest controversy and shed some light on the biggest community flashpoint since the T20 developer corruption scandal.[/url]
Price pointBefore Incarna was released, players viewed the new microtransaction shop with benign optimism. As the shop would only contain vanity items, most players either didn't care about the shop or looked forward to playing dress-up with their virtual dolls. I will admit that I fall into the latter of those two categories and would certainly have bought some cosmetic items had they been reasonably priced. It's not surprising that CCP would test the waters on expensive microtransactions; after all, the only way to tell whether players will buy them is to test and see. What's really surprising is that the cash shop opened with no reasonably priced items at all.
If the monocle had been an exceptional case, it might actually have caused more people to buy it. Seventy dollars or 1.4 billion ISK for the item is ridiculously expensive, but it does act as a status symbol of being rich that shows up on your avatar's portrait in-game and on the forums. It's the fact that every single item was equally overpriced that I think really kicked off monoclegate. If there had been cheap clothes and new glasses for under 1000 Aurum, the monocle would have stood out as a status symbol. I doubt players will be comfortable with anything basic being priced in the thousands of Aurum range until the winter expansion brings multiplayer environments to Incarna and we can actually show off those purchases. Even then, I'd expect room expansions, furniture, and store fronts to be the high-value items in Incarna and not basic clothing.
A trick of psychologyThe NeX store prices seem to be designed to take advantage of an interesting trick of buyer psychology: the price anchor. In the book Predictably Irrational, author Dan Ariely showed experimentally that we tend to adopt the first price we see for a given type of item as an anchor value. With a default value set, anything lower suddenly seems like a good deal. This is the same psychology that powers sales of games on Steam and even contributed to Minecraft's early success -- even if an indie game doesn't sell well at $20, pricing it at $20 and then having a 50% off sale will net more sales than pricing it at $10 from the outset.
Having been introduced to the monocle at a price point of 12,000 Aurum, more people will probably buy it in a 50% sale for 6,000 than would have bought it if it came out for 6,000 initially. It's actually an incredibly good idea from a business perspective, especially as the items can be bought during a sale and then traded on the open market for ISK. This could have worked extremely well for CCP, but unfortunately the company tried to apply that premium pricing strategy to every single item in the store.
Perhaps CCP was hoping that ornate and pretty clothing could be sold at even higher rates if people accepted $20-$40 for basic clothing. Whatever the reason for the massive prices on basic clothing, those price anchors don't appear to have stuck. This may be because we already have a basis for comparison in real-world clothing and would automatically expect a virtual version to cost less than those existing price anchors. As the most expensive item, the monocle that may have been OK on its own has become a symbol of the ridiculous prices, and that controversy itself has fueled some sales of the item.
Halp! My computar blewed up!One of the main worries with the captain's quarters was that they may take longer to load than the current ship hangar. These fears were initially dismissed with a promise that it would be just as fast to do anything after the patch as it would be after. While the Incarna environment loads asynchronously in the background and the full UI and neocom are available immediately, the loader does cause computers to stutter, slow, and stall momentarily. Some players have reported lower frame rates in captain's quarters than they get in Crysis II on full graphics, and the forums are filled with reports of overheating GPUs and system shutdowns.
I personally found the captain's quarters to be extremely cool and newbie-friendly for the two minutes mine worked before switching off my graphics card and causing a bluescreen. Anticipating these issues, CCP temporarily added the option to disable the captain's quarters. Management had to be convinced to let this option exist even on a temporary basis, and CCP has stated several times that it has no intention of letting players opt out of Incarna forever. CCP intends Incarna to be as integral a part of EVE as mission-running or fleet warfare and perhaps worries that if players aren't forced to use it, they'll opt out of the new paradigm.
This attitude mirrors that seen during the launch of EVE Gate, the web-based social networking platform for EVE. When EVE Gate launched, all player information and profiles were made public by default. CCP worried that if the system didn't opt players in by default, nobody would use it and it wouldn't be useful as a social networking tool. When the service went live, a surprising number of players logged in just to turn it off and make their details private. We've seen the same thing with the captain's quarters, with a huge section of the forum community opting to make use of the temporary off switch.
Incentivising IncarnaWhen EVE was young, development focused on helping players to do what they wanted to. When players began forming ad-hoc alliances, CCP introduced formal alliances. When players began using secure containers and logged off industrial pilots as supply depots in deep space, CCP introduced modular starbases. Somewhere along the line, this changed and CCP began cultivating an adversarial relationship with the EVE playerbase on a strategic level. EVE players have shown little enthusiasm for Incarna, EVE Gate, and other recent projects, and CCP's response has been to try to force players to use them.
These are all things that should have been optional but incentivised, for example by the inclusion of skill changing in EVE Gate and station-only content for Incarna. We could have reduced broker fees for transactions created while we're in our captain's quarters, automatic shipping of PI goods to the station, or remote access to agents within the region. We could even have special Incarna-only black market services like standings-based manufacturing slots and refineries with lower tax. It doesn't take a genius to come up with viable incentives for using Incarna, and yet CCP seems adamant that we should just be forced to use it.
[/url]
FearlessIn the midst of the controversy surrounding the NeX store, an internal company newsletter called Fearless was leaked via EVE News 24. In it, potential microtransactions like the sale of ships, ammo, and faction standings were explored, things CCP had previously agreed were off-limits. Titled "Greed is Good?", the newsletter sent players into a frenzy. In Friday's EVE Radio talk show, ex-CCP employee and current CSM delegate Seleene recalled the newsletter from his time at the company:
"It's supposed to be there to help employees digest what's going on in the company and the company mindset," he explained. "It's not just an opinion piece." In his view, the newsletter is used by CCP to "get people to have their noses pointed in the same direction" so that by the time a feature is going live, "there's been a bit of internal messaging that says this is what's coming and it's going to be awesome, so be ready for the awesome."
What's the big deal?Most of my co-workers and friends who don't play EVE haven't really seen the big deal with the leaked newsletter. CCP is a company whose primary objective is to make money from its games, and how it does that should be up to it. For upcoming titles like World of Darkness and DUST 514, this might not be much of an issue. The issue is specifically that EVE is an eight-year-old title with a section of dedicated players. New players join and quit every day, but a core of veterans who have stuck around for years bought into EVE under the understanding that the game wouldn't have microtransactions at all.
When we were sold the idea of microtransactions, the interpretation agreed on by CCP and even the oldest veteran players was a strict vanity item scheme based around Incarna clothing, furniture, customised ship skins, and similar products. Microtransactions not affecting gameplay has become a core concept that has been accepted across the MMO industry as a safe option. When it became known that the company was discussing gameplay-affecting ships, ammo, and standings for cash in spite of a previous agreement not to implement those features, players did not react positively.
The simplest resolutionFollowing the release of Fearless and the renewed worry over gameplay-affecting microtransactions, players began to ask one question over and over again. In massive yellow letters all over the forum, players repeatedly asked whether CCP was going to add gameplay-affecting microtransactions to EVE. This should have been a simple question with an existing answer -- CCP had already reversed a previous decision based on the promise of having no gameplay-affecting items.
This question is at the heart of the current dispute, and answering it immediately would have gone a long way toward resolving that dispute. The complete silence for several days on what should have been a simple question has been the most damning thing yet for CCP. Soon after Fearless was leaked, CCP responded to Massively's request for an interview by offering to have CCP Zulu answer any questions we had. I compiled a reasonable summary of the events leading up to the current player outrage and a list of detailed questions that would have answered every issue players were facing.
Rather than responding to the questions, CCP Zulu published a devblog the following day attempting to address the Fearless and NeX price issues. The devblog didn't answer the main question of gameplay-affecting microtransactions and didn't answer any of the questions I had asked. Instead, the devblog served only to further enrage players with its extremely condescending tone and its assertion that it had addressed most of the issues players worried about. Perhaps the only positive thing to come out of it is that it was so unlike what Arnar normally writes or says that some players don't believe he wrote it at all.
Source of the problemThe third-party app contract and NeX store prices were both issues that anyone with even a passing knowledge of EVE or business would have recognised the flaws in immediately. It would have been obvious that these would lead to mass anger within the existing playerbase, and so these mistakes should have been easily caught long before publication. It's unreasonable then to think that these ideas went through the normal development process without any internal complaints being raised. To me, this suggested that the ideas were being pushed through in spite of complaints. The only people capable of that would have to be in upper management.
During Funkybacon's EVE Radio talk show on Friday, the evidence for this mounted. It became clear that the CSM, which is normally used as a filter for ideas to judge the playerbase's reaction in advance, was not consulted on any of the recent controversial decisions. When Hilmar's inflammatory internal email to all CCP employees was leaked on EVE News 24 while the show was live, we began to suspect that cutting the CSM out of the decision-making process was no accident. In the mail, Hilmar insisted that CCP would not pay attention to what EVE players say on these matters, evidently including the noise on the forum and the CSM in its capacity as an acceptance filter for forewarning.
Hilmar stated that he would instead be basing decisions only on what players do, which so far has meant on how many monocles are bought. This email sparked in-game protests in Jita and Amarr as well as forum threads trying to keep track of unsubscribed accounts to show that players are speaking with their actions.
In the past few months, I've written a lot about how the power players of EVE give newbies a place in the world and how the best possible thing for EVE's long-term subscriptions would be to help new players to find their place in the community. Those players who tend to subscribe for only one or two months before quitting could easily be converted into motivated members of a corporation and a community, and they would stay for months or years longer as a result.
These recent events have left me feeling that CCP has done the complete opposite, opting to discard the power players and the community they create in exchange for high sales and microtransaction turnover. As cynical as it may sound, a strategic decision to ignore everything but sales appears to have been mandated at the CEO level. Meanwhile, employees like CCP Soundwave who have been demonised by the playerbase have remained silent, perhaps not allowed to talk about the issues until official statements are made.
Before Incarna went live, Torfi Frans Olafsson compared the expansion rollout to changing the engine on a racecar while it's doing 200 miles an hour on a track. This week we found that CCP may be intending to change the driver at the same time. While I do believe players are over-reacting and a lot of old anger has come out in these past few days, I find myself drained of my normal enthusiasm and wondering how CCP will ever claw its way back from this latest media disaster. The CSM is being flown to Iceland to discuss the issue in an emergency meeting, and I seriously hope that something good comes out of it. I don't want to look back on this weekend in years to come and say to people, "This was the day that EVE Online died."
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of [url=http://www.massively.com/category/eve-online/]EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.
Ctuchik
FH is my second home
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2003
- Messages
- 10,460
Man there seems to be some issues within CCP as well, even the CSM's didnt get filled in and Mittani is not pleased...
Not to mention that he's REALLY fucking abusive on twitter, calling people gays and asking one to commit suicide just because he/she asked if it was a typo (gays = guys?)....
Not quite what i'd expect the CEO of the CSM's to spew out tbh....
Not to mention that he's REALLY fucking abusive on twitter, calling people gays and asking one to commit suicide just because he/she asked if it was a typo (gays = guys?)....
Not quite what i'd expect the CEO of the CSM's to spew out tbh....
Punishment
Resident Freddy
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2005
- Messages
- 8,604
lol
svartalf
Can't get enough of FH
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2004
- Messages
- 1,632
- Thread starter
- #5
THis is the news:
This has been a difficult week for EVE Online developer CCP Games, with massive controversy hitting the media surrounding what should have been a momentous expansion release. The first stage of the eagerly awaited Incarna expansion went live this month, bringing with it the new captain's quarters. Unfortunately, simple complaints over some very overpriced microtransactions soon escalated into outright panic and even in-game riots with the release of an internal company newsletter and subsequent internal email casting doubt on the game's vanity-only microtransaction policy and its development direction in general.
A devblog released in response to the issue only served to make things worse, so CCP opted to fly the game's democratically elected Council of Stellar Management to Iceland for a series of emergency meetings to get a handle on the situation. Those meetings were concluded yesterday, and both the CCP and CSM made statements today to clarify the decisions reached. During the meeting, the CSM negotiated on behalf of the playerbase to hammer out an agreement on EVE's microtransaction policy, overheating issues with the captain's quarters, and other recent hot topics.
Skip past the cut to watch the video accompanying the statement, and head over to the EVE devblog to read the official statements. If you have any further complaints or issues relating to the recent controversy, please mail them to brendan@massively.com or leave them in a comment and I'll do my best to ask the CSM delegates or pose your questions to CCP at Tuesday's upcoming press conference.
http://www.youtube.com/v/7kat_uoAvnk
This has been a difficult week for EVE Online developer CCP Games, with massive controversy hitting the media surrounding what should have been a momentous expansion release. The first stage of the eagerly awaited Incarna expansion went live this month, bringing with it the new captain's quarters. Unfortunately, simple complaints over some very overpriced microtransactions soon escalated into outright panic and even in-game riots with the release of an internal company newsletter and subsequent internal email casting doubt on the game's vanity-only microtransaction policy and its development direction in general.
A devblog released in response to the issue only served to make things worse, so CCP opted to fly the game's democratically elected Council of Stellar Management to Iceland for a series of emergency meetings to get a handle on the situation. Those meetings were concluded yesterday, and both the CCP and CSM made statements today to clarify the decisions reached. During the meeting, the CSM negotiated on behalf of the playerbase to hammer out an agreement on EVE's microtransaction policy, overheating issues with the captain's quarters, and other recent hot topics.
Skip past the cut to watch the video accompanying the statement, and head over to the EVE devblog to read the official statements. If you have any further complaints or issues relating to the recent controversy, please mail them to brendan@massively.com or leave them in a comment and I'll do my best to ask the CSM delegates or pose your questions to CCP at Tuesday's upcoming press conference.
http://www.youtube.com/v/7kat_uoAvnk