One of the biggest elephants in the room these days, not just for EVE but for the gaming industry as a whole, is virtual goods sales and microtransactions.
You could call it that, but let’s start at the beginning of this fiasco. Eve Online recently launched Incarna, an expansion pack that both CCP and the community have been waiting for, many for years. Countless times has CCP referred to it as a technological and artistic achievement, and boy did it go down with a whimper rather than a bang. You see, when Incarna launched, the attention was not on the technology nor the artistic value. Instead, players had a bone to pick with CCP’s pricing for the cash shop.
Utilizing a new currency, the cash shop items were priced far above player expectations, up to nearly $70 for the ocular implant. To make matters even more interesting, these are all avatar clothing pieces, so not only will you be the only person who will see your $70 implant, but you’ll only see it at certain points in the game.
Not interested in just leaving a turd on the carpet, almost no time had passed before an internal memo was leaked, and then confirmed to be real. The memo, bearing a distinctly memorable “Greed is Good?” catch phrase, discussed the possibility of adding in more cash shop items, including ships and bullets and guns and more, in direct opposite to CCP’s previous promise of only selling vanity items on the cash shop. It’s worth noting that the memo was asking for employee’s opinions, and not stating a determined corporate policy. Regardless, the forums exploded.
Then CCP put out this press release, and stated the following:
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.
Did CCP just relate a $70 ocular implant, which likely took a whole two or three hours to develop, to a $1,000 pair of jeans that are likely individually hand crafted? You bet they did. Personally, I think the better analogy would be to compare it to $1,000 pajamas. If you spend $1,000 on pajamas, you are indeed a sad culmination of vainness (I don’t think that is a word) and no one is going to look at you like the coolest thing since sliced bread, given no one will see you wearing them.
This is a super shovel we’re dealing with, and it wasn’t long before yet another CCP email was leaked. Now, Eve News 24 states that this is not completely confirmed true, but their sources close to CCP say that it is. Aside from noting that 52 monocles had sold in 40 hours, this was also dropped:
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.
I 100% agree with the above statement. I love a good fight, and if the Eve Community is truly firing out of all cylinders (and not just aesthetically on the forums), the missiles will be directed right at CCP’s pockets. I’m sure my fellow writers (the ones getting paid with actual careers) will slash my tires for saying this, but the only effective way of cancelling is cutting your subscription. Not buying the items won’t work because so little work goes into them that CCP could stick at the 52 monocles and still come out making an enormous profit off of them.
Otherwise I think it’s fairly clear that the “we’re not selling non-vanity items” is about as genuine as John Smedley promising that Everquest II would not go free to play, fulfilling said promise by simply calling it something else.
But ultimately, I find myself asking a question a few others have asked me. Why am I covering this? Like I’ve said before, Eve Online’s community ranks pretty high on the loyalty scale. Where CCP will eventually throw themselves into the pit they just dug is when the community no longer trusts them, and departs for a new horizon, and if the scale is tipping against CCP’s favor, this is likely where it starts.
MMO Fallout 