SOMERblink: Headshot

I think that things are starting to settle down on the SOMERblink ISK for GTC sales front.  At 14:21 EVE time yesterday Katarina Reid, the player who CCP was allowing to run an ISK for GTC referral system on the EVE Online forums, made the following post:

Headshot Not sure if im allowed to link the letter given to resellers but it says to stop players trading ingame items for cash. ETC + bonus items may not be direclty or indirectly traded by the buyer for isk. EULA says cant sell ingame stuff for cash. 10 days for reseller to stop it or else. You can still support me for no reward when you buy your ETC's here $660 made for me 377 sale of ETC's $13,195 for CCP 188b given out

The letter apparently was shown to her by an employee at Markee Dragon, although Katarina didn't post the letter for fear of violating the EULA/ToS.  Good move as I think publishing violates point 18 of the EVE Online Terms of Service.  Also, when asked why he was ending the sale immediately, he replied, "Don't want to annoy GM's anymore and after 10 days it's a breach of reseller agreement. So I will shut it down now. I made my point."

UPDATE:  I've been informed by Marcus Eikenberry, the owner of Markee Dragon, that no one at Markee Dragon showed Katarina the letter.  After Mr. Eikenberry pointed this out, I reread Katarina's post and realized that it could also indicate she was contacted by Shattered Crystal, with whom she is an affiliate.  Shattered Crystal would have a definite interest in making sure that Katarina stopped giving out ISK for GTC referrals.  The link to Markee Dragon came from another post Katarina wrote in a different thread.

Also, in fairness, I think I should post the relevant part of Mr. Eikenberry's email:

"Your latest article you state that an employee at Markee Dragon provided the letter.  This is not correct.  Our employees have not seen the letter and we have not shared it with anyone.  Their source is someone else.

"I just want to make that very clear because the privacy of our business partners and customers is very important to us.  This would be a violation of trust and it would violate our privacy policy.   We would never share anything like this."

UPDATE 2: Katarina seems to have confirmed that she received the information from Shattered Crystal in this post.

I can confirm that Katarina's view of the letter is correct because a copy of the letter was in my inbox when I woke up Tuesday.  I received it from one of my many new contacts I've established while covering this story.  I can't quote from it due to the ToS.  However, I think I can safely state that the exact bonus scheme that SOMERblink uses was described as violating the EVE Online EULA, specifically Section 6B.

One important thing I think Katarina left out is that while the GTC resellers have 10 days to get their player affiliates in line, the letter did not state how long the player sites have to comply.  So I would think that websites would want to work quickly to comply.

One site which also ran an ISK for GTC referral system is EVE-GAMES.NET.  The site is an affiliate of BattleClinic Deep Space Supply.  The site quickly updated, stating, "We have discontinued the Time Code Bonus at the request of CCP."

Eve-Games.net new GTC referral page

I don't know of others except for SOMERblink.  As of 0800 EVE time today SOMERblink was still advertising their BlinkCredit promotion for purchasing game time codes from Markee Dragon on the site.

SOMERblink GTC referral page @ 2013.10.30 0754

Of course, just because one player site can change quickly doesn't mean all of them can.  Perhaps SOMERblink's web designer is only available on to work on the site on weekends.  So players should give SOMERblink a little time to get things straightened out.  Something tells me a lot of eyes will stare at that page in the coming 10 days.