Monetizing The CSM 18 Election, Part 2

When I woke up this morning I realized exactly why CCP chose to distribute the free Council of Stellar Management election related items through the New Eden Store instead of through the redemption queue. CCP wasn't hoping to pick up a few extra dollars though impulse purchases in the up to three visits players would make to the NES. Instead, they were training players who normally never visit the NES how to purchase today's sale items from the store.

Loyal capsuleers,

You can now get three Empire-themed packs in the New Eden Store.

Each pack contains a variety of items including Skill Points, Cerebral Accelerators, or apparel - and there’s a generous selection of themed SKINs inside each one too!

Six sumptuous Luminaire Rising SKINs await Gallente loyalists, while eight Chainbreaker Khumaak SKINs are on offer for the Minmatar. Amarr pilots can pay tribute to their own faction with eight fiery Lavacore Imperial SKINs.

These packs are only available for a limited time, so make sure you grab them while you can.

The Caldari were left out of the current promotion since a Caldari-specific sale just ended.

With 19 days left in the fiscal quarter, I am guessing the sale will last until downtime on 3 October. Yes, the FOMO (fear of missing out) feature leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Although I will say having to go to the NES to pick up my shuttle SKIN for voting, ensuring I would see the three sale packages, was a bit heavy-handed. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. As I wrote yesterday:

As for the first sentence of this post, the CSM promotion is just another reminder than Pearl Abyss is not doing so well financially. The South Korean game company has run a net loss in two of the last three fiscal quarters (₩102.2 billion in Q4 2022 and ₩4.4 billion in Q2 2023). Add in the failure to announce a launch date yet despite telling investors Crimson Desert would launch sometime in 2023 and Pearl Abyss really needs the money. The fact CCP is using the CSM, not exactly the most popular feature in EVE, to scrape up a few more dollars underscores the situation.