Retriever, greed and CCP

Some years ago CCP introduced Skinn Injectors and Skill Extractors. With them players could level skills without having to wait for a long time. The community was concerned about this step and told this to CCP.

What was the answer? This skillpoints were skilled by players and weren’t created out of thin air. So the economy will stay player driven and CCP promised not to change this.

But now we know that the concerns were valid, looking in EVE Online store. In the meantime CCP is selling skillpoints, not created by players, on the website. Or temporary skill packs. I wouldn’t call CCP a lier here, but they changed their views over the years. They switched EVE Online from an immersive universe to one, that is providing more real money.

Skillpoints and skills are created out of thin air today and are removed from player driven economy. Also CCP is selling frigates and destroyers for real money since some time. With them the argument could be, that they will also be handled to new players in the tutorial, so the market here is already destroyed.

Prospector pack: The end of the player driven economy

Now CCP created a new pack, the Prospecor pack, that contains a Retriver with fitting and the needed skills. The Retriever wasn’t distributed by the game in the past. Every Retriever that was in game until the release of this pack was mined and produced by players. CCP is clearly breaking with their own promises they made. A promise they give new customers on their website.

EVE Online is a community-driven spaceship MMORPG […] thriving player economy in an ever-expanding sandbox.

eveonline.com / 18.03.2022

The most important parts were marked bold by me. New Eden is moving away from beeing player driven, they player economy is reduced and the sandbox filled with additional sand by CCP, for real money. I don’t know the financial situation of CCP, but if they are doing profits right now, then the new pack is a impudence against their loysal customers. Also CCP is doing misleading marketing now with the text above. This text creates wrong expectations with new players and CCP doing false statements here.

Short update: In the meantime CCP remove the pack from it’s stores, as the negative player feedback got to bad. As reason for this pack they said, they like to help new players – with real money packs… This sounds really flumsy to me.

My personal opinion

Year after year my concern increased seeing the steps of CCP was taking. But every time CCP asserted, that they won’t intervene with player driven economy. But exactly has CCP done in the last years and the new high point in this is the selling of a fitted mining ship. In my opinion CCP crossed at latest now a line and can’t argue, that they don’t influence player driven economy. On the other hand, they have this promise written on they website until now. They are doing misleading marketing and they delude new customers. With every step CCP shows us, that they are more interested in increasing their profit instead of keeping their own ideals set many years ago.

Money makes the world go round and the gamedesigner of CCP sold their ideals and the identity of their game to the unrighteous mammon. I’m certain, that this won’t be the last pack. CCP made their steps onto the path to the dark side long time ago and is now increasing the speed they are walking on it.

Greed is also here

When I was talking about greed, I still have some partner SKINs. The first ten readers writing a comment here with their ingame name inside will receive a randomly selected partner SKIN.