The Slippery Slope

Okay, so after opening my eyes and actually seeing that SOMERblink engages in RMT activity, I would think that sometime before the end of the year that CCP would seize the assets of the Cognative Distortion alliance and permanently ban the alliance executor, Somerset Mahm.  With GTC seller Markee Dragon having sold over 1 million EVE time codes, it is entirely conceivable that SOMERblink has made over $100,000 as an affiliate. That $100,000 figure I gave represents slightly over 57,000 time codes sold over two years.  Is it possible that SOMERblink has referred an average of 1,200 GTC sales a month to Markee Dragon over the past two years?  While I have no hard sales figures, I can believe that 5% of Markee Dragon's sales have come from SOMERblink.

UPDATE: 27 October 2013 -The link to the article on the CCP site, as well as a video put out by Markee Dragon himself, both refer to Markee Dragon as having sold over 1 million GTC.  But a source indicates that the 1 million is the number of GTC sold by Marcus Eikenberry the person, not Markee Dragon the website.  This seems to be confirmed by a story Mr. Eikenberry told in a video about helping to fund Goonswarm's wars.  I'm pretty sure he was referring to Goonswarm during the Great War, when Mr. Eikenberry was still with Shattered Crystal.

Also, a source at Shattered Crystal revealed that during SOMERblink's first 32 months, when it was an affiliate of Shattered Crystal, that SOMERblink received approximately $135,000 for GTC referrals.

But will that happen?  That entirely depends on CCP's relationship with SOMERblink.  The most important part of that relationship, at least for this argument, is what was Somerset Mahm told was allowable when first starting the enterprise.  If Somerset Mahm was told that this GTC for ISK scheme was allowable, I don't see how CCP can enact punitive measures for past actions. If that is the case, I think the most that could happen is for SOMERblink to stop the RMT offer.

If CCP told Somerset Mahm that the GTC for ISK scheme was allowable, it would not be the first time that CCP had told players to do something that violates the EULA and/or ToS.  Anyone remember the cache scraping controversy?  Yes, cache scraping is not allowed, but because a dev many years ago told players cache scraping was okay (and CCP subsequently put in features to make cache scraping easier), CCP is not enforcing that portion of the EULA.  Here is the statement from CCP Peligro concerning the use of cache scraping...

"After consulting with CCP Legal and Team Security, we are not prepared to amend the EULA at this time to address your concerns. However, your comments are good ones, and we will consider incorporating them with the next scheduled update to the EULA (expected this fall, 2013).

"In the meantime, CCP confirms that we will only impose penalties on cache scraping if used in connection with other illegal activities in the game (i.e., botting). We will not take action against cache scraping for other uses."

The same holds true for the use of ISBoxer.  Anyone remember this statement by CCP Stillman concerning section 9c of the EULA?

"Some of the multiboxing software out there is powerful enough to count as “client modification” if used for that purpose."

That's a direct reference to ISBoxer.  But because devs had ruled that the use of ISBoxer was okay, or at least that people wouldn't recieve a ban for using it in the past, that CCP would not enforce this part of the EULA concerning ISBoxer.  The funny thing is that someone who is detected running a bot using Inner Space is not banned for botting, but permanently banned for client modification.  Using Inner Space to run ISBoxer, however, isn't currently a bannable offense even though the same client modification is performed.

Let's take a look at CCP Stillman's entire statement on the ISBoxer question...

"This extends to multiboxing software. Some of the multiboxing software out there is powerful enough to count as “client modification” if used for that purpose. Our stance on third-party software is that we do not endorse such software as we have no control over what it does. As such, we can’t say that multiboxing software isn’t against our EULA. But the same goes in this case, that unless we determine that people are doing things beyond “multiboxing”, we will not be taking any action. We only care about the instances where people are messing with our process for the purposes of cheating, and running multiple clients at the same time is not in violation of our EULA in and of itself unless it involves trial accounts."

So as you can see, CCP has set precedents over the past year allowing players to break the EULA as long as they don't do "bad things".  Of course, I maintain that RMT is a bad thing.  But the precedent exists for CCP to rule that what SOMERblink is doing does not qualify as bad and to allow it.  I think that would be a huge mistake, but the player base has spoken loud enough on other issues to force a bending of the rules.  What's to keep CCP from doing the same in the case of SOMERblink?

UPDATE: 24 October 2013 - Darius JOHNSON (the former CCP Sreegs) left this comment on Facebook that's relevant.

""So as you can see, CCP has set precedents over the past year allowing players to break the EULA as long as they don't do "bad things"." - Correction... VERY junior members of CCP have gone on record in the past year and prior to that regarding EULA violations. In most cases VERY junior members of a company don't get to decide which portions of their legal contracts a company is going to honor."