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Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Earning Event Sales

I woke up this morning hoping to see the publication of August's monthly economic report. Instead, I saw an article about Caldari Union Day. I'm going to post the complete text below. Can you tell what is missing?

Hardworking capsuleers,

For a limited time only, the EVE store is offering a new Union Day pack at a great value. The pack includes impressive looking Executive SKINs, Caldari crew jackets, an Advanced “Boost” Cerebral Accelerator, 1,000 PLEX, as well as 256,000 SP.

The SKINs included in the Union Day pack are brand new and exclusive, with bright orange nanocoating, paying homage to the stark yet harmonious contrast between the hard and fast work ethic of the Caldari workers and the virtues of honestly earned leisure time. Each of these SKINs is certain to turn heads wherever your adventures take you in New Eden.

In addition to this, the New Eden Store is offering a similar bundle, but replacing PLEX with Omega Time, as well as hosting a sale on past Executive SKINs for a limited time. Make sure you check them out.

The answer I'm looking for is: "What are the in-game activities surrounding the event?" Another acceptable answer is: "What is Caldari Union Day?" I know that the devs did an event around each empires main celebration one year. But honestly, if a game company wants to have a real-world sale around a lore event, the company really needs to have an in-game event, even a brief one, to anchor the sale to.

I know CCP has the ability. Or, at least, used to have the ability. A sale based around the Crimson Harvest, Guardians Gala, or the 20th anniversary of the game makes sense. Even a sale based around the player run Gallente Federation Day makes more sense than a lore event that I don't believe anyone really cares about.

Perhaps I've played too much Final Fantasy XIV, but the developers need to earn that sale event. Then again, Yoshi-P (aka FFXIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida) has a little different philosophy on sales. He doesn't like selling items in the game so players still need to go to an out-of-game website to give Square Enix money. Whenever an in-game event pops up, a sale does indeed occur. Items on sale always include items from previous events. Perhaps more importantly, the items are not removed from the cash shop once the event is over. The only FOMO occurring is the sale price is removed. No rush to purchase the items before they disappear again.

Look, I don't mind the random sale. But if a company is going to reference an in-game event, at least have the common courtesy to actually hold the in-game event.

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