Events surrounding the sale of the Prospector Pack are slowly spreading. The latest move was made by a member of the EVE Partner program, New Eden Post. Run by Redline XIII, the Twitch channel was known for hosting a talk show and podcast, Trash Talk Tuesday. Now, the channel and site is more famous for streaming a site called EveBlackout.com.
The website is the work of Manic Velocity, someone historically opposed to the type of primary market RMT the Prospector Pack represents. When given the choice between streaming EveBlackout.com or remaining in the Partner program, Redline chose to keep streaming and removed himself from the program. Redline confirmed this on Ashterothi's stream Thursday.
Of course, the drama arrived on the EVE sub-Reddit with a post titled, "CCP remove Trash Talk Tuesday's partnership over the eve blackout protest." A member of the community manager team, CCP Convict, tried to correct the record.
I just want to address an error in the title which is that we didn't remove New Eden Post from the partnership program. Instead we made an announcement to partners that if they chose to participate in the campaign they would not be able to remain in the program. We also gave a grace period until midnight UTC for partners to curtail any activities like this. We weren't even going to take action retroactively against partners who had already been involved.
New Eden Post then chose to withdraw from the partnership program of their own accord.
Doesn't seem like much drama, right? CCP Convict puts out what really happened. The next day, Redline confirms the story. Of course, the stories over at MassivelyOp are much juicier and more in-line with the contents of the Reddit post.
The purpose of this post isn't to laugh at a gaming news site so credulous as to take what happens on the notoriously inaccurate EVE Online sub-Reddit at face value. Instead, I want to discuss a little bit about the EVE Online Partnership Program.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am not a member of the EVE Partnership program. My blog does not receive enough traffic to qualify. Bloggers require a minimum of 5,000 monthly readers to qualify, a number I haven't come close to achieving since the program was established from the ashes of the old EVE Affiliate program in November 2020. In the heyday of The Nosy Gamer, I would garner 15,000-20,000 page views a month, but those days are long gone.
I should also add, I was never a member of the EVE Affiliate program either. Back then, I had a concern about tying myself too closely to the company. If I said nice things about CCP or EVE Online, I didn't want people to think the company was paying me for those views. My fellow blogger and long time EVE University director Neville Smit used to laugh at me when we'd meet at Fanfest about my integrity as he walked in with a paid ticket to the event. I'd then laugh at Neville when CCP invariably had a screwup with the badges of the player affiliates. Paying a couple of hundred bucks to ensure I didn't have to wait 8 hours for my badge wasn't that high a price to pay to get into the event venue.
What are the benefits of membership in the program? First, a nice little payment in game time and PLEX.
As a partner, your main character is on us! All partners will receive free Omega on their account plus an additional 500 PLEX per month to use however they see fit. This should take the pressure off PLEX-ing your account a little so that you can keep on creating awesome content for people to enjoy.
If one uses the monthly value of the game time and PLEX, a partner receives $179.40 in game time and $239.88 worth of PLEX.
Perhaps something more valuable than game time and PLEX is the promotional opportunities.
As a partner, we will work to spread the word about all the awesome stuff you do! You’ll have the chance to be featured on CCP promotional channels including the EVE Online official website, social media, Steam, and possibly even in the EVE Online launcher!
One of the issues with the Blackout protest is that EVE Partners participating in the protest could wind up viewed on the official CCP Twitch stream. Having a negative message playing on the official channel for a couple of hours is probably not something CCP is eager to see.
More important than showing up on the CCP Twitch channel, especially for non-Twitch streamers, is access.
As a partner, you’ll get an invite into a secret enclave of partners and CCP developers where you can chat with us about your content, ask questions, trade tips and tricks, and more. You’ll also get priority access if you’d like to have a developer join you for a stream or come on for an interview!
Another benefit is receiving exclusive in-game items.
To help you draw attention to your work and engage with your audience, we’ve developed a new line of SKINs which will be available only through our partners. Every month we’ll give you a big bundle of SKINs to use for giveaways, contests, or other creative ways of rewarding your audience while hopefully encouraging more people to check out what you make. Our initial lineup has a SKIN for a different hull every month to keep things fresh and to keep people coming back!
Of course, not everything surrounding the SKINs has gone smoothly. I wrote about a little bit of drama back in February 2021.
Finally, CCP offers access to some additional advertising revenue.
CCP has recently become a part of the Admitad global affiliate network that offers incentives to websites, content creators and talents promoting EVE Online. Admitad is open to everyone but EVE Online Partners will receive better affiliate rates!
In addition, EVE Partners will probably receive tickets to CCP-run events. These tickets run into hundreds of dollars. Tickets to Fanfest 2022 cost $295.
CCP does have some rules for participants in the program. As of today, they are:
- Maintain a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Even if you do not necessarily like a certain playstyle or group, keep any chiding friendly and playful.
- In the case of contests or giveaways for CCP-provided in-game goods, you should provide all viewers with an equal chance to win. Such giveaways should not be restricted only to subscribers or patrons. For more details, please read the official EVE Online Content Creation Terms of Use.
- Avoid behavior which could be construed as racist, bigoted, harassment or otherwise exclusionary to any persons in or out of the game.
- Avoid negative or disruptive behavior towards other content creators.
- Try to keep discussion of EVE features or development constructive (you don’t have to pretend you love everything about the game)
- Try to avoid your content being predominantly negative. We do hope you’re having some fun too!
- Not promote any violation of EVE Online’s EULA or Terms of Use.
- Not contain or promote illegal, racist, sexist, hateful, pornographic or other offensive material.
Now, the Blackout protest might violate the points about keeping "discussion of EVE features or development constructive" and trying to "avoid your content being predominantly negative." But CCP Swift made a Reddit post that brought up a third issue.
Hey, just want to chime in on this too since this was directly my doing.
I saw the EVE Blackout site linking to Manic's monetization manifesto (probably not the official name, but it should be) this morning. Through the course of the day, a non-insignificant number of the EVE Partners reached out to me directly and expressed concern that an EVE Partner was promoting this and how they viewed this to be potentially damaging to their content on Twitch. I agreed, and was something I was thinking about all day.
I can believe some EVE Partners would oppose the protest. When I visited the EVE Online categories page yesterday, the protest, at least from the outside, had grown.
I can see why streamers trying to get some views might find a bunch of streams telling potential viewers the game may have some issues irritating.
I thought looking at the background of the story might provide some useful information. As far as I am concerned, the story is a big nothing-burger. As I mentioned in my first story on the Prospector Pack, Pearl Abyss needs the money to make up both for its financially underperforming keystone franchise and inability to launch Crimson Desert in a timely manner. Potentially looking bad on Twitch, especially with how few people actually watch EVE on the platform, isn't going to deter CCP from selling this type of content.
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