There Ain’t No Drama Like Spaceship Drama Cause Spaceship Drama Don’t Stop (Now With 200% More Cats)

This week in Eve:

Incarna shipped! You can now walk in your spaceship. No one else can see you walk in your spaceship but yep you’re walking. So there you go.

The in-game clothing store also shipped. You can now spend $60 on a monocle. To be fair, it’s a really nice monocle and I think monocles cost about $60 in real life. Oh wait, sorry, I meant $6. So there you go.

Most players responded with “What was CCP thinking?” This being Eve, someone promptly leaked exactly what CCP was thinking. (hint: pretty much exactly what you think they were thinking)

The Eve player base responded with the calm demeanor you’d expect by, um, literally rioting. The devs responded with, uh, yeah.

People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don’t need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don’t need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.

If you do not buy a $60 monocle A LOSER IS YOU. So there you go.

BREAKING BAD CEO EDIT: Apparently EveNews got their hands on an internal email sent out by CEO Hilmar Petturson to CCP employees regarding the rioting in the streets, er, spaceways? about Eve’s newfound love for macrotransactions (when microtransactions just aren’t big enough!). It’s important to note that there’s no confirmation Petturson actually wrote this. Because…

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

That’s right, biyotches, CCP made THREE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. Truly, this amount of money from vanity store items is unprecedented in the MMO industry.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say.

Or, as Hilmar The Very Savvy Business Cat says…

But the best/worst part, that makes me really hope for Petturson’s sake that this is some clever troll of a forgery or possibly the work of a very drunk Icelandic summer pub crawl, is this line:

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

I…. what was that, Hilmar The Cat That Leverages Synergy?

So there you go. You go.

Newer Comments →
  • VPellen

    Technically you walk around in a small box located outside your spaceship.

  • Aufero

    I don’t get all the rage, (Who cares about avatar cosmetics in a ship-based PvP game where your avatar is normally displayed as a tiny icon?) but I also don’t understand why CCP thinks anyone is crazy enough to shell out what they’re charging.  Just about every item in the new shop would be overpriced at a tenth of its present cost.

    Still, who cares? Their insanity hasn’t affected my ability to blow up internet spaceships. (Yet.)

  • Mist

    It will.

  • Anonymous

    Oddly enough you cannot walk around in your spaceship, only in stations, so that means that if you own one of the spaceships that cannot dock in stations, the new patch adds content you will never actually see. Kind of clever.

  • JuJutsu

    I blame The Mittani.

  • Now ex-Eve Player

    That $60 monocle costs the equivalent of a fully faction-fitted battleship.  WTF were they thinking?

  • dartwick

    The monocle just started the fire. The huge can of gasoline was the internal memo suggestion they sell stuff that gives you  a copetative advanatge in game – while still charging you a subscription.

    Then when CCP_ZULU refused to back off from the idea of selling competitive advantages in his blog everyone became furious.

  • VPellen

    Shit just escalated: An internal e-mail by Eve’s Producer was leaked, and, well…

    http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/25/ccp-hilmar-global-email-shows-the-reasoning-behind-ccp-zulu-devblog/

  • Anonymous

    So what?  Eve is already designed to let players spend money for a competitive advantage.    You buy another account, and have a competitive advantage.  You spend money to buy PLEX so you can go to war with an endless supply of ships.  You’ve been able to spend money in Eve to get a competitive advantage for some time.  I’d even go so far as to say it’s designed that way from the start.  The game design appeals to a particular kind of player and they pretty much attracted all the players they were ever going to, they were able to look like they were growing still by players having mutiple accounts but even that is maxed out.  Where else do they have to go but find a way to get more out of the players they have.  Incursion wasn’t going to bring in a PvE crowd, Incarna isn’t going to bring in an RP crowd.  CCP wants to be unabashedly proud of the gameplay in Eve but also unhappy with the limitations on player appeal that brings.   Welcome to business guys.  You created your niche, now play there.

  • JuJutsu

    So what? You really think this is no big deal? Are you Smedly posting under another handle?

  • Anonymous

    I think the “deal” happened a long time ago in Eve and this isn’t all that different from multiple accounts or buying ISK.  I also think there were internal memos talking about how to design things to get people to buy multiple accounts and so forth.    

    Every game is the designers to ruin or build, CCP made its choices, it has the players it has and the game probably can’t grow a lot more.  They don’t want to live with that so they’re onto how to squeeze more out of players.  Many businesses do this and for most it’s the beginning of a death-spiral.  

    They can’t attract more customers and alienating the existing base is the beginning of the end for many MMOs.  CCP would do well to keep that in mind and govern themselves accordingly.  If they choose not to, the business will take it’s course.As to it being a big deal?  No I don’t think it is.  Taxes, the Recession and War are big deals.  This is nothing… it’s a game. If it’s pointless or not fun to play I wont, and many other people wont either.  If it’s fun and worth my time I will.  If Eve shuts down my life will go on, I’ll enjoy other games, rant about practices of other developers in the future but no, I don’t think this is a big deal.

  • JuJutsu

    “As to it being a big deal?  No I don’t think it is.  Taxes, the Recession and War are big deals.  This is nothing… it’s a game.”

    Point taken.

  • Guest

    flagonwiththedragon, so what? People already spend money on PLEX right? But plex doesn’t work they way you think it does. PLEX isn’t instantly generating money similar to the Federal Reserve. Any ISK used to buy a PLEX was made by engaging in the in game economy. So in order to gain that ISK, I need to salvage, engage in the market with other players, cultivate resources and manage production efforts… or at the very least pay someone else who is using bots doing the same for that ISK which at the very least is time limited. The core of EVE is a virtual sandbox world where corporations are dedicated to being suppliers in a supply chain for war efforts in other parts of space.

    When CCP starts selling ships (which was in the newsletter), they are undermining the gameplay of anyone (which is a large portion of players) who works within the supply chain for that ship in game. When that ship is produced out of thin air to support a war effort, it similar to the Federal Reserve printing money, and distorts the economy, undermines my role in the game, by CCP becoming a direct competitor to players. It undermines strategies like resource drain in war, where variables were dependent on the state of the sandbox, etc. It basically erodes what made EVE unique as a virtual space sandbox.

    In short, when someone buys a PLEX to sell for in game cash, they are engaging the in game economy and stimulating it. When someone buys a ship from a microtransaction store, they are bypassing the entire economy, which is a huge part of EVE and all the other players who work to manage, support, and build that economy (again, a very large number of players).

  • http://stormwaltz.myopenid.com/ Stormwaltz

    This issue will become interesting when the Goons protest the store by declaring everyone with a monocle on their avatar KOS.

  • http://brokentoys.org Scott Jennings

    Can you even SEE that an avatar has a monocle?

  • VPellen

    Yes, it’s a sort of robot eye monocle. It’s actually quite nice. Not 80 dollars nice, but nice. If you want to see a picture of it:

    http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/devblog/2011/EVE_Online_Incarna_Monocle_WiP.jpgAlso, the e-mail, when posted on the forums, was deleted by a CM guy to the tune of “internal correspondence is not allowed to be posted on the forums”, which supposedly lends legitimacy to it.

  • dartwick

    Is it a big deal?

    With respect to EVE its a huge deal, probably the biggest moment in 8 years,  Is it a big deal with respect to war famine and genocide – well obviously no, but then this this is a blog about gaming so lets I think we get that.
    CCP is highly leveraged business playing a game of chicken with its angry customer base, seeing who blinks first. This doesnt happen often.

    As for Goons last nigh Mittanni suggested if CCP doesnt back down they are probably going to leave EVE in mass.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve been playing Eve since launch so I definitely understand PLEX.  What you’re saying is true in that it doesn’t unbalance the economy.  That isn’t the same as weather spending money can unbalance gameplay.   To be clear, I’m on the benefiting end of PLEX.  I have a great job, I make good money. So if I ever get to a point where I care enough to buy PLEX for something I do.  But I also understand that the poor schlep who wardec’ed me that, unless they are in the same spot as I am, I can replace ships at will and it means almost nothing to me.  Like it or not, me and someone else are playing entirely different games and it’s entirely because of money.  

    I can buy faction battleships at will, I can hire Merc Corps if I want to.  All this is a game balance issue even if it doesn’t unbalance the economy.

    Now other than the wardec I don’t really do this because I don’t care enough about the game, but I could.  

    CCP selling ships will unbalance the game and the economy so this is an escalation, perhaps even a significant one but I don’t think it’s entirely new as a concept in Eve.  Their toe has been in the water on this for some time.

  • Anonymous

    @381e753c943f9b1106d66c1a544ddf2b:disqus This is about gaming and I still don’t think it’s a huge deal. They haven’t locked you into a year long subscrption and then changed the game.  They haven’t tricked you into buying a false product.  A “big deal” in gaming is fraud, say Hellgate London selling lifelong subscrptions and shutting down within a year.  That’s a big deal.
    This is just a change in a very long standing game.  It may be a big shift in the game but at the end of the day it’s your choice to play or not.  If someone is so effected by this that they can’t get over the emotion of it then that is a big deal, but it’s a big deal about them not the game.

    At the end of the day CCP chooses how to run it’s game and you choose to play or not.  I think it’s unfortunate to see a overall good game to go this way but after the big pile of “meh” that was Incursion and Incarna I don’t know that I care anymore.

  • Aufero

    Breaking news: CEOs can occasionally be pompous, clueless assholes.  (cf. Donald Trump’s political career.)

  • Sinij

    This is a very predictable future of micro-transactions, next step is making “60$ monocles” pre-requisite for new in-game content.

  • Sinij

    Next step after that is intentionally making your game suck unless you purchase every single “monocle” they are offering.

  • dartwick

    If someone changes there game in such a way that I and several 1000 others(maybe more) decide to cancel with in days I consider it a big deal.

    Maybe the changes in game arent a big deal to you. But the situation as a whole is a big deal to EVE.

  • Anonymous

    @dartwick Then cancel.  As of right now though there has been no mass exodus from Eve.  The game is still operating and will be for the near future.  I doubt this is going to have much of a particular effect on Eve in terms of subscriptions. People will complain and keep right on playing.  For this to be a “big deal” something actually has to happen and as of right now, nothing has other than abuse of the submit button.

  • VPellen

    A lot of people are playing on cancelled accounts right now. Cancelling your account doesn’t make you stop playing, it lets you run out the time you have remaining.

  • Guest

    Fair point about a similar influence on 0.0, but the economy is a huge part of EVE and is what a lot of players mostly due. It’s no small thing or small escalation to cut their role out of the game with micro transactions in addition to still having an effect on 0.0.

    And BTW, players may only have a direct impact on CCPs bottom line through their own subscription, I think messaging is an important part of influencing developers and making people aware of problems (or potential problems) so telling people to stop talking about, making a big deal about it, is undermining communication, spreading of information which is still important in shifting other related costs on to CCP (bad PR, etc) in order to influence their decisions.

    Encouraging people to reduce their involvement to a binary isolated choice because you don’t like the way they are expressing their opinions (or whatever), is pretty anti-consumer.

  • Guest

    Ugh, “a lot of players mostly do.” I’m sure there’s more, but sorry about my shitty typing/grammar.

  • Anonymous

    @77a9967ee7437769d6b26d7c24ce0cbe:disqus  Fair enough, and I’ll believe it if at the end of 30 days Eve is suddenly empty or half the players have left.  I don’t think the history of “Oh my god I’m gonna quit” posts supports that this is going to happen.  I could be wrong, but we’ll find out soon enough.

    @bfd3abcd84696f6099e1d9d68ebd1d98:disqus  I don’t consider it anti-consumer, I consider it anti-meaningless-rant.    If people want to express how they feel then go ahead.  If they want to disagree then go ahead.  Above all if they want to discuss the actual impact then go ahead.   PLEASE GOD go ahead and actually discuss it instead of making blanket statements that this will actually ruin the game.  
    The past in Eve has clearly shown that players will continue to play, that changes to the game may be changes to the game but nothing has destroyed the game as of yet. I doubt this change will either.   So we’ve entered into a new change and a new series of speculations about how this will destroy the game.  The evidence is clearly not with this argument.

    But if it does destroy the game then so be it.  People have spoken their mind about this, tantrums aren’t going to raise the visibility of the issue.  CCP is in the drivers seat on it and can choose to listen or not as they wish. 

  • Mordur

    The Goons leaving might be the best thing for EVE. It would totally change the playing field and make it attractive to new players.

  • Random Poster

    Except a lot of people don’t buy monthly they buy multiple months or even yearly. The fallout from this could take a while for IN GAME players to see, CCP however will have direct access to all the “cancel subscription notices” even while the account is active.

    The memo + Devblog + email is what has prompted me to not come back. All three of them show a contempt for their customers.I’m not even a hardcore player, I don’t run multiple accounts and I have been in lowsec a bare handful of times, so the shop even if they DID sell advantages would not affect me. But that attitude towards their customer…no thank you.

  • Dave

    I cancelled my account today.

    It’s paid through mid-September, but it will no longer renew. I’m downloading Perpetuum now.

    As was pointed out above, the existing system of RMT in EVE was beautifully elegant. Players buy codes that can be turned into two PLEX. Each PLEX can be turned into a month’s gameplay. They then trade these with other players for an arranged upon price in in-game currency. They then use that in-game currency as they wish.
    The model doesn’t break the sandbox, because all the money and all the items are generated by actual game-play and subject to the same sandbox rules. All that changes is which person pays for the subscription.

    CCP is currently running three studios off of one income stream. Now, I have no inside knowledge of their finances, but I’d be very surprised if they were rolling in funds (especially as reports on Glassdoor are that their salaries are not competitive with the industry as a whole).

    I’m not sure how much of a hit in their revenue stream they can afford to take without it being permanently damaging — especially since their Community Management response over the last few days has ranged from inept to incompetent. Past a certain point, people become angry enough that even if they were to back down from their current position, it may be too late to get some of those customers back. Worse, there are some customers who have a disproportionate impact on the community. Tools like EFT, EveMon, and EveCentral are used almost universally by the player base, and are frankly necessary. If those tool owners decide to pull them, that itself is a big hit to CCP.

  • Anonymous

    Ok, let’s go in order:

    Is perfectly OK for them to charge whatever they want for the stupid monocles. They are VANITY items, who cares. I also didn’t gave a fuck when the sparkle pony came out.

    That said, this is typical CCP lol-bad PR handling. Acting like they are shitting gold and players should be kissing their asses for it kinda pissed the players off. Wonder why *eyerolls*

    They really, really don’t want to back off of going pay-to-win, despite that they will probably have to, if they don’t want a riot worse than the current one. I’m talking about an NGE-game-killing riot.

    Is NOT OK to charge third-pàrty programs for the privilege of being useful for your game. They will also have to back off from that.

    The silence about the latter two points shows that they are being fought over on CCP at the moment of this writing.

  • http://twitter.com/UnSubject UnknownSubject

    “That said, this is typical CCP lol-bad PR handling. Acting like they are
    shitting gold and players should be kissing their asses for it kinda
    pissed the players off. Wonder why *eyerolls*”

    The one-eyed mindset that takes a flop and turns it into a successful game over the course of years is the same one-eyed mindset that can drive players away in other situations.

  • Ghoest9

    Actually I did cancel this week. A great many people did.
    Many of them are hoping CCP backs down then they will resub. I was hoping that up until Hilmars email was released.

    This is big deal to EVE. I think you being the guy with his fingers in his ears and his eyes closed saying “This isnt happening! This isnt happening!”

  • dartwick

    On a related not In the middle of the this firestorm CCPs PR professional left  for a family medical emergency. At least this is what CCP says and I may believe them.

    Its was after she apologized to everyone and said CCP wanted to “parley.”

    Then with in hours she disappeared and the CCP released a statement just saying  “deal with it – nothing is changing.”

  • http://nightflyergames.com Tony Fernando

    Enough players have gone to Perpetuum (at least to try), that they’ve had to implement a user limit…

    “First of all we’d like to welcome the influx of new players to
    Perpetuum. The sheer number of new players caught us by surprise, and
    we’re working around the clock to accommodate each and every one of you.

    However
    the number of players connected to our server has highlighted a
    previously unknown issue in the relay server to which every player is
    connected. The server team is working on fixing the issue as we speak,
    but for the time being a temporary limit on the user count has been set
    up. Once the current issue has been fixed we expect to be able to run
    without a user count limitation as this is not a hardware but a
    previously unknown software problem. (In fact most of the servers are
    running at 1-5% capacity except for the relay)”

    (http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topic/2683/server-load-issues-in-the-last-48-hours/)

  • Sinij

    1…2…3… until “open PvP” killed EVE. Somehow its always PvP, and not monocles, server stability, bad design decisions and so for that kills these games.

  • Anonymous

    Update, from CCP Zulu:

    http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=934

    ” However I let my frustration take charge of me…..”

    Son. I am dissapoint.

    “…. there are no and never have been plans to sell “gold ammo” for Aurum.”

    And there’s that. From here, is damage control.

  • JuJutsu

    Now that my tinfoil hat is firmly ensconced…from a post by a CSM member elaborating on the latest deblog from CCP Zulu

    “When CSM was asked for input on the devblog, I was concerned about this wording. Here is the alternate wording that I suggested, which I believe expresses the essence of CCP Zulu’s intent:However, I want to make one thing absolutely clear. Despite the impression given by the “point-counterpoint” debate that appeared in the Fearless newsletter, there have never at any time been any plans to sell “gold ammo” or any other game-affecting goods for Aurum.”

    Why was the ‘or any other game-affecting goods’ not included? Are they incapable of simple unambiguous language? What’s going on with their community management?

  • Dave

    So, two interesting things happened this weekend as the story unfolded.

    One was a rumor that Sony was about to buy CCP. Given that Dust is a PS3 exclusive, and given that Smed was talking about exciting news in sandbox gameplay in a recent interview, that was certainly credible.

    The second was that CCP decided to fly the members of the CSM from all over the world to Iceland on nearly no notice.

    And then the pieces came together when a third thing happened. CCP immediately and absolutely denied the Sony rumor, in their forums, within hours. Possibly within minutes.

    Now, clearly CCP can deny false rumors in a forthright manner. They just did. And their previous public stance on any kind of micro-transactions (as of 2010) was that they would be vanity items only in EVE, they would not affect gameplay.

    Well, if the primary thing that has your customer base up in arms (yeah, there are other bits, but the “Pay-to-Win” issue was the one causing the real uproar) is not true,  why were there no clear denials? Why the careful, almost Clintonian weasel wording? And most interestingly, why are you spending a not inconsiderable amount of money flying people from all over the world to talk to you, if you aren’t actually reversing policy and selling game-affecting goods directly?

    It may be a tinfoil hat, but the only answer that makes sense to me is, “CCP fully intends to sell game-play affecting items for cash”. Which to me means they either don’t understand their customer base (and why they are drawn to the game), or they are desperate for money. And, on reflection, that isn’t really necessarily an “or” question.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    I do hope that Eve-Online and CCP lose most of their customers, and keep their 53 monocles.

    As usual in this industry no one understand long-term effects.

  • Guest

    “The past in Eve has clearly shown that players will continue to play….”

    Sony thought the past in SWG had clearly shown that players would continue to play, too, so they could do whatever they felt like to SWG. They just announced they’re shutting down SWG, and it has to be assumed that the inability to recover player numbers after those changes had something to do with it.

  • Guest

    Yeah, like Shadowbane. They say PvP killed Shadowbane … and never think about how “play to crush” ended up being “pay to crash”. It was PvP, not servers that couldn’t be kept up with scaffolding. It was PvP, not an utter lack of content (and, worse, mind-numbingly dull mobs you HAD to farm to pay for your PvP). It was PvP, not abysmally terrible game design that ensured that churn was a one-way street. Etc., etc. No, even though Wolfpack did everything wrong that you could do in a game, and the only reason people even played it at all was the PvP … it was still PvP that killed Shadowbane.

    Suck is suck, and suck with PvP glued on it is still made of suck.

  • Anonymous

    @Guest You should read the sentence,  Eve has shown players will continue to play, not SWG.   Eve’s player base has been incredibly stable and the evidence just doesn’t show players leave the game under controversy.  Players (and Massively) can hold up the uptick in trials over at Perpetuum all you want but this doesn’t prove anything.  It’ll take months to prove this has an effect on Eve and I expect it wont have a big one on actual subscription unless players see a change in their gameplay.  Right now this is a problem in theory and not in reality and I doubt we’ll be seeing any real change in subscription at all but if we do it wont be until something actually impacts gameplay.

    The tantrum over this will continue for a bit, then folks will get a juice and nap and this will just recede to snarky comments in corp chat but I think that’s probably about it.

  • Sinij

    ” AT” flagonwiththedragonLet us know how sticking head into the sand works out for you in the end.

  • Vetarnias

    A bit late to this party, but I have to say: how ironic that the libertarian apologists playing EVE should find themselves hoisted by their own petard.

    I think any cash shop in a subscription game is unethical, even if it just includes cosmetic items (though a $60 monocle is an unabashed ripoff); this kind of stunt will just fuel further mistrust of subscription games in general, and accelerate their decline against the wonderful “free to play” model. If CCP starts adding game-breaking items to the cash shop, it will just get worse.

    Just saying: I was playing Uncharted Waters Online these past few months, when the publisher made the changes to the cash shop that ruined the economic endgame. All the old-timers left. Finally, the publisher (Netmarble/CJ Internet) backtracked somewhat, and removed one of the most egregiously abusive items (which was a billion ducats in investment bonds, handed out as a prize for their cash shop lottery tickets). But the harm was done already, and I don’t think any of the old players who left returned to the game after the change.  Why should they? The server was wrecked because of all this, and it did away with most of the players’ accomplishment in the first six months.  Since then, the publisher made some deal with gPotato to add UWO to its roster of games, which, given the latter’s stellar track record with Allods Online, was like Bonnie meeting Clyde.

    If cash shop excesses were enough to put “free-to-play” games like UWO and Allods on life support, what does that say about EVE, which charges a subscription on top? It’s already a good indication of where things might be going for EVE if the Goons have already hinted at leaving the game.

    But there is something else: if you can indeed start buying game-breaking items from the CCP cash shop, and that you can be scammed out of those items by other players, with the blessing of CCP (don’t they market the game with all those hijinks?), could that be construed as real-life fraud? Couldn’t CCP, under such circumstances, be accused of (at least) criminal negligence?  If you can prosecute the ex-PM of Iceland over the 2008 banking crisis, why shouldn’t you prosecute a company turning a blind eye to its players’ in-game scamming if real money is now involved?

  • Anonymous

    @04699bf8eabf84a5dfb0ddaff9561c77:disqus  Wow.  You need to cut back on the hyperbolic statements before the sun explodes and we all die!  Unethical? What a strange thing to say.
    It might be bad business practice, it might be bad game design, it might break the social contract between players and CCP but unethical?   There are some great books on ethics that may make good reads and help inform your analysis of ethics in the future.  You’re local library has a few I’m sure (http://www.worldcat.org/) and if not they can do Inter-library Loan.

  • Anonymous

    @7f6c741288ee30a2abe382bea20869c8:disqus  Head in the sand about what?  That people threaten to quit Eve all the time and they don’t?  That fact being true makes this less likely to me that people will actually quit?  That we’ll need a few months and actual data before I believe people are actually leaving the game en-mass?

    I get that  you’re emotionally stirred up, I get that a lot of people are but those are the facts.  It could be that this is the beginning of a decline for Eve.  Nothing lasts forever and this could be but game population trends just don’t put the odds on the side of the i-will-rage-quit-but-not-really forum trolls. 

    If people spent more time actually discussing game impact rather than making rage-quit threats, there might actually be a dialog.

  • Dave

    CCP has three studios, and on the order of 600 employees. They have one real income stream (and a trickle from the paper games).

    Just ballparking based on the published subscriber numbers, they aren’t rolling in money. Additionally, lost customers are basically “all profit” — the hardware is already there, the dev costs are already there, when you start losing customers, it comes right off whatever profit you have.

  • Maninblack3125

    What’s with the concern troll? If this is a bad idea and someone say’s it’s a very bad idea, don’t waste everyone’s time nitpicking whether they should have used “very” or not.

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