CCP: An alternative to microtransactions for growing CCP's income

I dont understand. You said

“I wonder what would happen if CCP implemented a process that guaranteed every person playing one or more Omega Clones had to pay one subscription in RL money”

They already do. If you are in an Omega, someone paid for the Omega time. Either that person or someone else. In addition to this, isn’t PLEXing more expensive than a monthly subscription?

What am I missing about your idea?

I mean sure, if we just assume that whatever suggestion is going to result in extra revenue. why not suggest “ccp should just make more money” because it has exactly as much merit as your idea, since after all we are not basing things on a zero sum assumption.

your suggestion is to take accounts that are currently earning ~20 dollars a month for ccp (it doesn’t matter who pays for it, that amount is still being payed) and convert those to accounts that HAVE to pay 15 dollars a month by the person using it. or not pay at all. that isn’t a zero sum assumption, that is a negative sum fact.

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All they need to do is listen to the community, up their population size and wam.

You’re assuming that the ISK-poor players who currently provide all the RL money (for themselves of course, and to obtain the PLEX the sell to ISK-rich players) will want to pay less.

It’s two different groups of people:

  • One (currently freeloaders) would start to pay “new” RL money to CCP
  • The second (ISK-poor players) will have the same amount of RL money to spend on EVE

And who is going to buy that plex from group 2, if group 1 (who is currently supplying all the isk for those plex) doesn’t need to use them anymore because they have been forced to subscribe?

If group 2 can’t sell their plex to anyone, why would they buy more?

Bjorn

Each person in group would pay one “account-month” of RL money to CCP.

They would pay the same in RL money for one account or ten … but if they had ten accounts, they would buy nine account-month’s worth of PLEX from other players.

Here’s the short version (from earlier in the thread):

In words of Mugatu, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Who do you consider “freeloaders”? Do you mean alphas?

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okay, but there is still that 1 account worth of plex that those people aren’t buying anymore, which is still a considerable reduction in the demand for plex. not even taking into account all the people who simply won’t pay for any accounts and either go alpha or just quit. so what do you think is going to prevent the plex prices from plummeting, and once they do what makes you think that people would be willing to drop 20 bucks on 1b isk, when they used to be able to get 1.8b. (or how many of them would instead go to illegal isk sellers where they could get 2.5b for the same price)

If you are going to just assume that the people who are currently buying plex for cash would just continue to do it even when the value has crashed. why not just double the price of subscriptions, after all, people who are currently paying subscriptions will just keep doing it right.

Bjorn

This is why the discussion has to be held in terms if RL money and RL behavior.

The “value” of ISK is determined by the market:

  • The aggregate price of “EVE stuff” in ISK varies based on in-game supply and demand, and the sources and sinks of ISK
  • The ISK-PLEX exchange rate varies based on the aggregate ISK-generation efficiency of ISK-rich players. While CCP’s RL-cash price of PLEX remains constant it doesn’t have to be considered, but it would certainly matter if it was changed

People’s propensity to spend money on EVE isn’t exactly constant, but my suggestion won’t affect ISK-poor players much.

I haven’t tried to predict how this would affect ISK-rich PLEX-buying players because I have no data. I suppose some would leave, and some would stay. CCP would not be happy of most of them stopped playing EVE, but it seems unlikely - this is a group of people who have (mostly) played for a long time, and spend a lot of time playing.

even if none of them leave, you are still proposing 20 dollars a month of revenue being converted to 15 dollars a month of revenue (remember, until the plex actually gets used on something, ccp cannot legally claim it as revenue, despite having received the money for it.) so you are already looking at a net loss on the per account income per month.
while simultaneously just assuming that somehow that 20 dollars worth of plex per month will just get used up on “something” resulting in an increase in revenue.
Thats before taking into account any players who would quit over the change.

so in your plan, what exactly is going to make up that 5 dollar revenue difference between the plex price and the subscription price in order to break even on the change? What do you figure is going to consume those 5 dollars in plex so ccp can report it as revenue.

And if you are having a hard time understanding the difference between ccp receiving the money, and them being able to claim it as revenue. think of it like this, if I give you 20 bucks to mow my lawn, then you go out and spend that money without mowing my lawn. that would be a breach of contract, because despite me having given you the money. you hadn’t actually earned it yet.

Same thing with plex. when someone buys plex from ccp, the company hasn’t actually earned the money yet, they have received the money in exchange for a promise of some future good or service such as game time.
Until someone actually redeems that plex for game time, a ship skin, etc, ccp legally cannot touch the money because it hasn’t been earned yet.

Bjorn

Indeed: if CCP want more total income (as per the title of the post) they’ll have to get it by increasing the average RL cost of an “account-month”.

Exactly how this might be done is up to CCP. If I was CCP I’d make both changes (imposing a direct RL cost on PLEX-buying players and increasing the RL price of PLEX) gradually, perhaps over six months.

But they understand their customers (at least to some extent) and I don’t, so don’t take that as a recommendation.

BTW - on another topic: are you sure PLEX aren’t recorded as actual revenue when they’re sold? Accounting can be a little weird of course, but of the three cases I can think of (air miles, gift certificates for real objects like books or toys, and PLEX (delivery of an intangible service), I’d expect PLEX to be the most likely to be treated as immediate revenue.

50 players plexing their accounts for 1 year is like 100 players subbing their account for that same time. every person that plexes is ensuring that who ever buy the plex will buy more and increase CCP Income when it comes to subs

ALso im making this tread now as trolling as apparently there is the lack to understand microtransaction economics.

Also the only freeloaders in the game are people that are staying alpha. ive known people that either dropped to alpha since it came out since it has what they want to do like playing in cruisers, or alphas that started find out as omega theres not much they actually want to do and go back to alpha, or only omega when they want to dto do something for a while, get bored and return to alpha play.

Air miles are a “rewards point” and so are an entirely separate type of transaction from the other two, since under normal circumstances you can’t simply “buy” air miles. From the standpoint of IFRS the sale of plex would be treated virtually identically to that of a gift card, where upon the sale it would be added to a liabilities account for unredeemed plex, and could only be debited out of that account and claimed as revenue once the plex is redeemed.

The only real “value” that a plex has, is in its ability to be translated into a good or service, since ISK is not a real currency (not counting the icelandic ISK obviously) any transactions that occur within the game have absolutely no bearing on the real world financials, regardless of if you trade 500 plex for 1.8b isk, or if you gave it away for a whistle and a song, its exactly the same from the companies perspective. just like in the real world if you give someone a gift card, or trade it for a favor or sell it for monopoly money. the company doesn’t care, they only record the transaction when the gift card gets used.

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Thanks for the accounting info. Unexpected but interesting :slight_smile:

your welcome, its grossly over-simplified obviously. and there are ways that a company can “write off” a portion of that unearned revenue every year in order to claim it.
But what I posted above is the basics of how the accounting standards work, and the reason why its the person who redeems the plex who actually earns the company revenue, not the person who paid for it.

Different behavioural triggers, basically. Bit of history, this is a CCP trauma, not just game industry buzzword evolution. Twice in its history did CCP stumble into a brand perception / value issue, both times they felt it. Because of subscriptions being used as - so CCP put it at the time - a weapon.

Basically the upstairs version of “never again” meeting resource allocation having gone down the road.

Easily triggered passive junkies being schizofrenic and shiny > connected passive schizofrenic’s. Out of trauma CCP committed themselves and they did the math along the way, every step since in service.

Unused PLEX sold by CCP is recorded in their financial statements as deferred income, it is money received for a service not yet delivered; in short PLEX is a liability until it is redeemed for game time or services.

CCP, send us Injector Farmers some love!

My core business operation, alone, consumes over 300,000 PLEX per month.

And you do realise that they already do that right?

PLEX are not free, and everyone using PLEX is paying MORE than a normal months subscription, at this point you’re really not helping to make yourself not look like a troll >.>

Except that someone had to pay for those PLEX, all that is happening is the person actually paying for each omega account is shifted, and at a profit to CCP, a fact you really do seem to be deliberately ignoring at this point, because nobody is actually that dumb, atleast i hope not, but then again people voted for trump so its entirely possible for people to actually be dumb enough to not put 1 and 1 together to make 2

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And the total income IS higher with the current idea than with yours, 500 PLEX costs MORE than 30 days of gametime when purchased directly from CCP, they literally make more money if you use PLEX than if you pay direct

At this point everything you say misses the point by about 12LY

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