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Thursday, March 4, 2021

Slow Down The Monetization Soap Opera, Please

I was doing pretty well today. I posted about cookies yesterday and spent a good amount of my play time cooking in FFXIV. I woke up this morning, checked my market orders in EVE Online and found I'm up to 300 million ISK in sales over the last two weeks. I need to make some money because I purchased 5 Vagabonds. With the scarcity era in EVE continuing, I figured I better buy one of my favorite ships before inflation hits too hard.

Then lunchtime hit and I did a little internet surfing. MassivelyOP had a post up about CCP sending out emails offering the direct sale of skill points to some players. I point out "some players", as I have not received such an email.

No offer to buy $43 worth of skill points for me

The MassivelyOP article was in large part based on a post by Wilhelm, who did receive emails from CCP. If you have not read Wilhelm's post, please do so now. It is the correct take on the situation.

I'm not going to expand on what Wilhelm wrote, because I can't. I also won't discuss what CCP Rattati said about monetization during his interview with Oz earlier this week. Just because MassivelyOP included the video in their story doesn't mean I need to address the point.

I'm just going to revise the timeline in the latest episode of the soap opera we call EVE Online.

16 February 2021: Pearl Abyss holds its Q4 2020 earnings call. On the call, Pearl Abyss announces its plans for the EVE franchise. To increase revenue, PA plans to expand EVE into Asian markets. As part of the effort, PA listed "regional languages" and "cultural elements" as examples of the deeper localization needed for penetrating Asian markets on one of the slides in the presentation.

25 February 2021: The Icelandic newspaper Viðskiptablaðið published details of Pearl Abyss' purchase of CCP Games, revealing that CCP did not achieve any of the goals required for bonus payments under the deal.

25 February 2021: CCP announced a new feature called Expert Systems. This feature would allow players to rent a set of skills for 7 days. 

4 March 2021: Players receive emails from CCP offering them to purchase 1,620,000 skill points for $43.99.

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