UPDATE 2022-03-19: CCP did remove the pack in question from the store – for now.
Last year I wrote one of my favorite blog posts. A favorite, because it describes accomplishments and my best time I ever had while playing Eve Online. The internet space ship single shard sandbox MMO. At the very end of it I wrote:
I’m carefully optimistic.
About one year later, I wouldn’t write that again.
It’s Dead, Jim
The reason is a new pack of in game stuff CCP is offering for hard cash. But instead of cosmetic commodities that do not directly interfere with the games economy, they now are selling an actual mid-tier ship, including fitting.
Not a starting frigate or destroyer – there were frowned upon packs like that before, but they were no big deal as you would also get those from the carrier agents to start out with. Even in masses, they could hardly influence the grand scheme of Eve’s economy.
A Retriever, a T1 mining barge, will realistically not have a big impact either. And there won’t be many who buy this pack. However, what this makes very clear once again is intention. It proofs that CCP is willing to comprise one of their greatest USPs Eve has to offer.
The Problem
Selling ships/items directly is a problem. By doing so, CCP is entirely bypassing all of the player driven economy and actively removes content from their game. I would go so far to put in the same, game-eroding level as botting.
The difference to purchasing PLEX is the following: When you buy PLEX, sell it on the in-game market for ISK and then buy the Retriver and fitting, someone has played (or ran a bot) to earn the ISK that is involved. A player has mined the ore that went into it. A player has researched and copied the blueprint to build the ship, the modules too. Someone did ship around the goods. Someone listed the items on the market.
People played the game.
All those things, all that game play and possibilities for people to engage with each other in the sandbox during those activities just get skipped. They never happen when someone decides to swipe their credit card for the “Prospector Pack”.
It won’t be many cases when this happens, but that’s not the point of my complaint.
What You Actually Get
Suitonia made the sacrifice and bought the pack to see what you would actually get from it – because CCP isn’t exactly that precise in describing what you get for your money.
Eve Forever?
A claim, a lot of seniors at CCP Games, including CEO Hilmar Veigar, love to make at every occassion.
I do not believe that by invalidating one of your greatest unique selling points, the player driven economy, is how that is going to be acchieved.
And Now?
No, I’m not quitting and you can not have my stuff.
Let’s enjoy it while it lasts, and see what comes next.
More voices from the Community:
- An Open Letter from the current CSM
- Noizy looking at recent numbers from Pearl Abyss
- With A Barge Pole – Comment by Rixx Javix
- What if: CCP would buy the ship from the in game market?
- The Nosy Gamer: End Of The Prospector Pack… Almost
the greybill 
Things like this just make me sigh out loud rather than making me angry. This looks like a short term gain for very little long term benefit. And when CCP Rattati gets defensive and says that he’ll only listen to polite, respectful comments on CCP’s actions, I want to remind him respectfully and politely that CCP has made its bed when it comes to player trust, he is merely reaping the rewards. And the seeds he is planting now will yield similarly bitter fruit in the future is he is not careful.
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While I agree this time, I would not want to single out one person. From episode 231 of the Declaration of War podcast, I understood that three people share the responsibility of product ownership.
And a bunch more will have been involved in what led to this foolishness.
I have lost my optimism. CCP as a company has lost my respect.
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[…] start to sell questionably fitted t1 mining barges from the cash shop, I wrote an article titled The Day My Optimism Died. And I fear Fanfest 2022 could not change that. When it comes to CCPs monetization strategy my […]
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[…] it is still. At least as long as CCP is not starting to sell ships for hard cash again like fools. If you argue, that with “scarcity” this has changed, then you also have to argue that […]
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