:facepalm: CCP is an untrustworthy purveyor of limited edition assets

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“…the spectacular Glass Semiotique monocle is available in EVE Online’s New Eden Store for two weeks until 11:00 UTC on 14 October, so this is your only chance before it’s gone forever!..”

I noticed that CCP is trying to get into the business of selling unique/limited edition assets for money.

The issue with this is CCP has no credibility in this domain, such that no reasonable customer should be trusting them as a purveyor of limited edition assets.

To operate a business that involves limited edition assets, it is paramount that CCP honours its dealings and never reissue limited issue assets in future batches. It would need a bulletproof record of never actually doing so or being seen to do so. CCP would need to enshrine its policies on such limited issues in its corporate constitution and protect it with many safeguards. The corporate values related to this would need to be at the bedrock/foundational level.

None of these things are things that we see with CCP.

I draw your attention to how they have handled AT ships. By the circumstances of issuance, AT ships were uniques and limited edition digital assets. “Only 50 ever to exist” said they. The result of this is that the value of these ships skyrocketed (as you would expect). For example, to purchase them with real money, you would have to buy many thousands of dollars worth of plex from CCP to get the isk necessary.

Ever since the limited edition asset market became such a powerful entity in the game, CCP has been labouring to cash it out, even at the cost of dishonouring it. The first clue is how AT ships started to be sold in China on its cash store, out of the way from the main server as if nobody would notice. The latest development is their ‘exciting’ change of policy to continue issuing more of them on the main server.

If you want to know my opinion, it is only a matter of time before they cannot help themselves but sell them on the main server cash store. I have no issue with them focusing on making money; it’s just how they do it that matters to me. I believe that the CCP corporate values are far too focused on driving for short term cash and turnover to be trusted to handle a business interest in limited edition assets. Yet here we are being offered limited edition monocles in their store.

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Im very happy with my limited edition asset. I wish theyd done more of them.

Dunno what you are talking about.

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What a surprise.

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First of all, I’m about as concerned about what happens on the Chinese server as I’m concerned what happens in Eve Echoes.

Second, AFAIK, they have never re-released anything that they said was a one time deal. Now, I have seen people complain about CCP re-releasing stuff, but upon investigation, it was discovered that CCP never said that they would never release those things again, only that they were going to remove them from the NES -which is something that lots of businesses do in order to encourage FOMO. It’s like the disney vault.

Third, it’s called speculation for a reason. You are not owed a profit. And, as long as it isn’t P2W or anti-consumer, CCP should do what’s best for their bottom line, the players, and the game as a whole. If that means reissuing past skins and apparel, then so be it.

Forth, what’s the point of this post? Are you trying to say that there is no isk is cosmetics? Because there is. Of course you could simply be trying to discourage competition? Or you might be looking at this from the perspective of a NFT collector/RMT’er. In which case, I’m glad you don’t think CCP can be trusted, now go away.
No P2W

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Your personal opinions regarding if the Chinese server matters or not are completely irrelevant. We don’t have to hear them or care about them. The example of what happened there is a valid example to demonstrate my point in an objective way.

Straw man argument, I gave a specific example regarding AT ships but you are responding to something I never said.

What has this got to do with anything I set out in my OP.

Simply stating CCP should do whatever is best for their bottom line is a common unsophisticated argument that people that know nothing about business wheel out. There are many ways to focus on the bottom line, and it is possible to discern between them based on strategy etc. You saying that it is as simple as making a number bigger shows that you are a layman. I specifically explained this in the final paragraph of my OP so you clearly did not comprehend what you read properly.

Read it again yourself, or just read the title if you are confused. I doubt anyone else was unable to understand the post.

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Nice, I have that one too, together with the famous “Mistery Code”, another thing CCP boasted about but constantly forgets to actually honor what they sold.

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The book is nice to have. Goes well with Source. Also its a big book of failed promises too lol

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Yes, you are right…but…

  1. So what? They are video game things…they are not important.

  2. ccp owns all the virtual items in their game anyway. Nobody is forced to spend real money on virtual game things…including playing any video game itself. ccp could decide to simply delete something I spent thousands of real monies on and there is nothing I could do about it - so of what real value is that thing?

  3. PA owns ccp completely. I suspect they bought ccp as part of getting a position into the Chinese market. So ccp is not dependent on any of our business to survive. We can scream into the void all we want, and they may even placate us for now…but really I doubt they actually care.

4 caveat emptor, friend…
ya puts ya money down an ya takes ya chances

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I’m not sure how we got to the point where deliberately causing FOMO in your customers to psychologically manipulate them into spending more money isn’t considered “anti-customer”.

I have serious issues having a business relationship with companies that engage in this kind of manipulations.

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You do know that the Chinese server is run by netease right? Don’t know what kind of control CCP can exert on what they do, but I do know that CCP needs Netease in order to operate in China, which likely gives them a lot a leeway to do their own thing when it comes to monetization. Thus, just because Netease decided to do something, it does not necessarily mean that CCP will follow suit -especially considering the fact that the different server populations seem to have very different values and priorities concerning monetization (as well as when it comes to game play).

Anyway, I think I’ll stop now because you are rubbing me the wrong way.

Man, that’s been done since long before the Sumerians. That’s at least most of all business’ we all - worldwide - deal with.

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I don’t see what your point is. What you said is true, but just because it is common, I don’t see how this isn’t “anti-customer”, especially if it isn’t even honest when it comes to the exclusivity of the availability of said items.

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I agree. Just because those kind of things have been common doesn’t make such things necessarily right - but here humanity is and has been, eh? *sogh

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I don’t know exactly what the terms of the licencing would be between the developer (CCP) and the Chinese operator, however, it would contain terms relating to payments, and terms relating to boundaries within which the Chinese operator can operate.

To make a long story short, it is perfectly plausible to assume that there are authorisation parameters in place around things such as what they can sell on the cash store, and what they cannot. I think I read somewhere (cannot cite it) that CCP authorised it specifically.

So I think reviewing what happens on the Chinese server and extrapolating it onto CCP the developer and ultimate owner of the IP / authorities in the licence agreement is perfectly cogent. If you don’t think so you are probably in the very bad company of people that cannot think straight.

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This. Well said.

Blablabla, normal people don’t care, at all. Welcome to reality, rather than your ideal concept of how reality should be.

Why don’t you sue McDonald’s for re-releasing the McRib?

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I didn’t say that I agree with all of their monetization methods.

As for fomo in particular… yeah, it is anti-consumer. However, I don’t consider it egregiously anti-consumer. Moreover, the simple fact of the matter is that ignoring player/veiwer/customer psychology usually ends in disaster for creators and businesses (see attached video). It would be nice if creators and businesses could achieve success by treating their audience/customers fairly, but humans, as an aggregate, have proved that they are anything but rational actors, and that treating them as such is… well… irrational.

Yes, exploiting the “quirks” of human psychology is bad for the consumers, but can you blame them? Can you blame them when trying to treat audiences/consumers fairly has such disastrous results?

Of course, I do have my limits, like intentionally trying to induce addiction, or preying on children, but if a grown man buys a skin only because CCP says that they are going to stop selling skin, then I really don’t have much sympathy for him. He not only allowed himself to be played, but he’s the type of customer that incentivizes business to try to play their customers.

Meh. How depressing.

No P2W

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They’re only available for a limited amount of time so I guess that could be considered as Limited Edition. The fact that they say they’ll be gone forever after October 14 definitely makes it Limited Edition, just have to see if they become available again some time in the future. More than likely they will, probably be listed as a ‘Special Re-release’ just for those who missed the original release.

Also I think you’ve got it backwards. The Monocles are being sold in the NES for PLEX. It’s the Cyber Suit packs that are being sold on their website for cash money…

https://secure.eveonline.com/packs/details/?pack=cyber-suit-pack-2021

What’s really messed up is the fact that the same pack is being sold on other websites such as Epic Games for 1/4 of the price. Yeah, $4.99 cash whereas on CCP’s own website it’s selling for $19.99 cash.

And yes, I bought the Cyber Suit pack and the Monocles for my Apparel collection. I now have a total of 636 different male and female items in my collection.

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This might be as good time for us to review Dr. Bjork’s seminal treatise on psychology:

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Well, if you agree that what they do is exploitation then we already agree we can blame them.

But that’s not the windmill I’ll go against.

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