February has come and gone and EVE Online is still running. A positive result given CCP Games spent the past month posting about all the technological changes the company made over the past year or so. But is the news the developers are still working hard to upgrade the game translating to increased player activity? Or at least, not hurting?
As always I begin with a look at Jester's average concurrent users chart. The seven-day moving average dropped below 22,000 average users at the beginning of the month but rose up to around 23,000 average users by the end of February. The 30-day average reflected the increased login activity by a small amount indicating a positive mid-term trend. But does that mean players out in space or are they just spinning their ships in the station having forgotten where to find the undock button?
The raw totals are misleading
The raw totals might leave one who doesn't look at the calendar to believe activity really fell off in February. But observant readers will note February had 3 fewer days than January this year. Taking the daily average instead of monthly totals, we can see EVE is not dying any faster than normal.
The daily average totals for February
The average number of NPCs killed by players, while down from historical measures, did rise by 2.9% month-over-month.
Year-over-year data from Dotlan Maps
Next I looked at the year-over-year data and found something concerning. After 8 months and two null sec heavy expansions, yes player ship losses are up 5.1% YoY. But the number of NPCs players are killing is down 3.3% compared to February 2024. Sure, last year February had one extra day, but we were told in a dev blog last week that the mineral price index skyrocketed due to players abandoning mining for ratting.
The number of rats killed in null sec has decreased since July
The Equinox sov system launched in June 2024 with the Equinox expansion. In the launch month an average of 7,275,132 NPCs exploded in null sec at the hands of players each day. Last month, the average had fallen to 6,360,389, or a 12.6% drop since the launch of Equinox sov 8 months ago.
Perhaps I am not looking at the same statistics as the game's designers. If the mineral price index jumped because of the sov changes, I would expect the number of NPCs exploding in null sec to increase, not decrease.
For now I want to read Wilhelm's take on the February monthly economic report before going any further. Of course, he announced he was going to cease looking at the destruction numbers, but maybe he'll have other insights on ISK faucets like NPC bounties that will help me make sense of things. Because I really don't want to conclude that CCP is back to the bad old days of misinterpreting the data.
I woke up to the news this morning that CCP Games hired an economist to oversee the economy of its new blockchain based game currently in alpha, EVE Frontier. I had to visit the EVE Frontier Discord server to get clarification that CCP's latest employee, Stefán "CCP Kalirha" Þórarinsson, does indeed only work on Frontier and not EVE Online. I feel the press release was a bit unclear. I'll paste the press release below.
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – March 6, 2025 – CCP Games welcomes the appointment of Stefán Þórarinsson as its new Head of Economy. Formerly an economist at the Central Bank of Iceland, Stefán brings extensive expertise in macroeconomic analysis, monetary policy, and market dynamics. His joining marks the next step in CCP Games’ commitment to deepening the legitimacy of virtual economies and pioneering research in the games industry.
For over two decades, EVE Online has established the benchmark for in-game economies, becoming the definitive example of a player-driven financial system. With EVE Frontier, CCP Games is taking an unprecedented approach to refining and legitimizing the concept, ensuring that in-game financial systems operate with the same diligence and analysis applied to real-world economies. Under Stefán’s leadership, EVE Frontier will continue the work of Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, whose appointment as the Lead Economist for EVE Online was a landmark first for massively multiplayer virtual worlds. Dr. Guðmundsson’s foundational contributions to in-depth economic models and monetary policies will now continue with EVE Frontier and its ability to model advanced economic theories within an open environment. Through this, the company aims to provide valuable insight into digital finance and decentralized economic systems.
“Virtual economies are no longer just systems of play; they are living, evolving financial systems that demand serious study,” said Stefán Þórarinsson, Head of Economy. “CCP Games is leading the charge in bridging the gap between in-game economies and real-world financial principles, and I am excited to contribute to this body of innovative work. We aim not just to simulate a wide variety of economic activity but to study, refine, and validate how virtual economies function at scale; EVE Frontier will set the standard for how these systems can be structured, regulated, and understood.”
As part of this commitment, CCP Games is launching a series of comprehensive economic updates within EVE Frontier, starting today. This initiative will analyze fundamental aspects of the economy, with the first update to the Frontier Economic Policy (Update I) including:
Monetary Policy & Inflation: Understanding how economic levers influence pricing, currency stability, and market behavior in a fully player-driven world.
Market Equilibrium & Trade Dynamics: Exploring how supply and demand fluctuate based on player and NPC interactions.
Assets & Currency Flows: Assessing the integration of digital assets and their impact on in-game economic activity.
Behavioral Economics in Virtual Worlds: Gathering data on player decision-making, financial speculation, and economic adaptation.
“Stefán Þórarinsson’s appointment advances our goal toward building a truly open financial system within a virtual world,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games. “Since our inception, we have strived to create worlds where players transcend the constraints of our own design — a story that has played out within EVE Online as it enters its third decade of operation. With EVE Frontier, we want to be bolder: Stefán’s experience from the Central Bank of Iceland adds vital rigor as we continue to design our economy and open it up to players. By removing currency controls and fostering emergent value systems, EVE Frontier will redefine virtual nation-building, offering insights into both digital and real-world economies.”
To ensure meaningful insight, the updates will be conducted in a fully controlled environment through Founder Access, allowing CCP Games to model, predict, and optimize how virtual economies function under different conditions, using academic and institutional methodologies. A key step in the company’s ongoing mission to push the boundaries of virtual worlds, the results will inform both the development of EVE Frontier and the broader conversation about how digital economies can be examined, structured and sustained in the future.
As a personal aside, given the political and economic inclinations of those who advocate for the use of crypto-currencies, I find that an economist who worked for a country's central bank to oversee development of Frontier's economy hilarious. I think I chuckled for 10 minutes in real life.
Anyway, the Frontier team wasted no time in putting Stefán on a stream explaining the vision for the game's economy. For those interested I've embedded the video below.
CCP Kalirha also did an interview with Decrypt in which he spelled out his initial plans. Frontier's new house economist may have let some NDA'd information slip about the planned development cycle for the game. In the initial cycle that began today the former member of Iceland's central bank plans to establish a baseline in a closed economy.
“We want to do mappings of the pricing system, so when there are changes, we know what’s going to happen.” Þórarinsson told Decrypt, “We need to get data on how monetary policy impacts the Frontier economy and, in the best case scenario, we would get the demand curves and supply curves. We need a lot of data.”
“The next experiments are contingent on the results from this experiment,” he explained. “But the goal is just to get a better understanding of the closed economy before we decide sometime in the cycle that we will open it—and then we get more information.”
By a closed economy, Þórarinsson is referring to the game not yet having a token that can be exchanged for real-world currencies. Once the economy opens up to this possibility, the stakes get much higher. Given that, he wants the financial system to be as perfect as possible before then.
Of course, another culprit for revealing the Frontier team plans to operate 60-day development cycles is CCP Games' CEO Hilmar Pétursson.
After this initial experiment, the game will enter a series of 60-day cycles in which new gameplay and economic features will be added to the game to further the “grand experiment,” as CCP Games CEO Hilmar Pétursson put it.
Given people working at central banks tend not to blab a lot (a requirement for an economist in the EVE universe), the culprit probably was Hilmar. I really feel so after reading this interesting tidbit.
Pétursson told Decrypt that he expects the economy to be opened up within the next couple of quarters, meaning a token launch would likely happen during this period. But he admits it will be years until CCP Games is “fully hands-off,” leaving Eve Frontier with a fully self-sustaining economy underpinned by autonomous smart contracts.
Did Hilmar just announce a release date of Q4 2025 for EVE Frontier? I would imagine any opening up of the economy such that the game's crypto-currency is exchangeable for a currency like ethereum would mark the game as open for business. I seriously hope not because I think Þórarinsson should have as much time as he needs to get everything ready. Unless, of course, our overlords in Anyang are getting impatient.
Over the last 24 hours newsreportscameout about how Naoki Yoshida, the head of Creative Studio 3 and Producer and Director of Final Fantasy XIV, no longer sits on the company's board of directors. The news actually was posted by Square Enix on 27 February but took a few days to receive widespread notice. Since I'm not breaking the news I get to take my time and dive into two aspects of the news of interest.
In a May 2024 financial report made public today (via Eurogamer), Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu said that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Final Fantasy 16 haven't sold as many copies as the company had hoped. "We released multiple new titles, including major titles such as 'Final Fantasy 16' and 'Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth,' but profits unfortunately did not meet our expectations," Kiryu said.
The financial results were originally shared on May 13, 2024, months before yesterday's PC release of Final Fantasy 16—which, it's safe to assume, will give that particular sales metric a bump. A PC release for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, meanwhile, still hasn't been officially confirmed. Kiryu also noted that MMO profits were down, but attributed that to "a lull in releases ahead of the launch of the 'Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail' expansion pack," which was released the following month in June.
In addition to Final Fantasy XVI, the latest expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, Dawntrail, was not well-received. According to Metacritic, Dawntrail's critics score of 79 and user score of 5.2 only surpassed the scores of the original Final Fantasy XIV which Yoshida personally blew up to begin the game again with A Realm Reborn.
Yoshida revealed to Dutch publication NRC that he has even tried to step down from the board, but Square won’t let him. “I recently tried to quit that work, but the company didn’t agree with it. I don’t want to be on the board, it’s much more fun to just make games,” Yoshida told NRC. Clearly, Square wants to utilize the director’s expertise in as many areas as possible.
Yoshida goes on to say he doesn’t understand why fellow developers want to be on the studio’s board. “They probably just want to make a ton of money, but you can also just do that as a game developer.” Yoshida wears a lot of hats at Square, and it seems he’d be happy with the money he makes from his current roles without the added pressure of being on the board.
Perhaps a look at the 27 February press release is in order. The press released explained the internal reorganization.
In the midst of dramatic changes to both the entertainment business and the Company’s business environment, the Company has decided to introduce a new management structure in accordance to the Square Enix Group's medium-term business plan it devised for fiscal year 2024. This comes as part of the Company’s efforts to establish a framework for the continued execution of various initiatives currently underway. Consequently, from fiscal year 2025, the Company will review its executive structure and form a new Executive Management Committee. The aim of establishing this committee is to expedite the decision-making process and execution of matters related to business transformation and organizational management.
The Square Enix board of directors is being reduced in size from 8 seats down to four. The four proposed members shareholders will vote on in April are:
President and Representative Director: Takashi Kiryu
Executive Officer, Creative Studio 1 and Creative Studio 2: Yoshinori Kitase
Executive Officer, Sales & Distribution Center and Customer Experience Design Center: Yu Miyake
Executive Officer, Publication Business Unit: Katsuyoshi Matsuura
Executive Officer, General Affairs Division and Human Resources Division: Tsuneto Okuno
Executive Officer, Creative Studio 4 and Creative Studio 5: Yosuke Saito
Executive Officer, Creative Studio 3: Naoki Yoshida
However, the four former board members will sit on a new organization, the Executive Management Committee.
The Executive Management Committee will be composed of the President and Representative Director (Chair) along with six other members responsible for operations in such areas as digital entertainment (game development and publishing), publication, and corporate affairs. This committee will be positioned as SQUARE ENIX management’s leadership team, striving to further enhance corporate value and the overall growth of the Square Enix Group. The committee members will drive the formulation and execution of various measures to achieve the Square Enix Group’s medium-term business plan, which will be accomplished through collaboration across internal organizations.
The Executive Management Committee will consist of:
Takashi Kiryu - President of Square Enix
Yosuke Saito - Head of Creative Studios 4 & 5
Hajime Seki - Chief Legal Officer
Toshiyuki Hirasawa - Proposed as an executive officer in April 2025
Katsuyoshi Matsuura - Head of the Publication Business Unit
Yu Miyake - Head of the Sales & Distribution Center and Customer Experience Design Center
Naoki Yoshida - Head of Creative Studio 3
Now, just looking at the list something doesn't look right. I would expect the heads of Creative Studios 1 & 2 to also sit on the new committee. Is it possible Hirasawa will take over Creative Studios 1 & 2 with Kitase receiving a promotion? Or maybe Kitase will only work on the mainline Final Fantasy games like Yoshida does the MMORPGs? Don't mind me, that is just my personal speculation.
According to Jack Coleman writing for TheGamer, the Executive Managment Committee will "drive the formulation and execution of various measures to achieve Square Enix Group's medium-term business plan." Those are fine buzzwords. Coleman went on to explain:
The "medium-term business plan" is a new direction for Square, which prioritises "quality over quantity", "bold new IP" and an "aggressive shift" towards releasing its games on several platforms. Square had previously been prioritising new releases on PlayStation 5, a long-time practice for the company. However, Square recently reported that several of its recent triple-A releases have failed to meet sales forecasts, and the decision-makers likely feel that releasing their games on more platforms will boost sales numbers. It's something that Xbox is also experimenting with - porting exclusives to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
The new committee is intended to speed up the company's decision-making, enabling the success of its medium-term plan. It seems that Square isn't willing to lose Yoshida's management expertise, even if the board allows him to step down from his executive position. Yoshida's expertise has been instrumental in many facets of the Final Fantasy series, with him acting as a producer for Final Fantasy 16 despite his ongoing work with Final Fantasy 14.
So any declaration of the demise of Naoki Yoshida's tenure at Square Enix is probably premature. One thing I am looking forward to is how will Final Fantasy XIV's next expansion play out with some of the duties removed from Yoshida's shoulders. Maybe he can even get some sleep.
On Friday CCP Games published a dev blog about mining. In recent years the company moved away from putting an individual employee's name on a dev blog in an effort to avoid a hostile player base descending on the author blaming them for all the game's ills. But the mining dev blog was published under the name CCP Okami. I did a little research and confirmed that CCP Okami is a real individual and not an artificial construct designed to attract fire away from the rest of the developers. Although drawing player anger may indeed be included in the duties of the Game Design Director on EVE Online. Here are the duties the job encompasses:
Collaborating with the Creative Director: They work closely with the Creative Director to understand and translate the design intent into actionable work for the team.
Leading the Design Team: They lead a team of system, technical, mission, and level designers, ensuring the quality and timely delivery of documentation, levels, UI changes, gameplay tuning, and balancing.
Maintaining Communication: They maintain communication and consistency with art, audio, and feature teams to ensure a cohesive game design.
Incorporating Feedback: They incorporate feedback from Live Ops and Production teams to align with the Creative Director’s vision.
Working with Monetization Team: They integrate monetization designs into core mechanics.
Ensuring Quality: They are responsible for driving high-quality feature implementation within the game vision and desired game “feel”
CCP Okami started working at CCP Games in February 2024, meaning they are the veteran of two expansions, Equinox and Revenant. An important note as the mineral price index spiked with the launch of Revenant in November 2024.
From the January 2025 Monthly Economic Report
I want to address what appears a terminology issue. Equinox is both an expansion and the name of the feature set the developers implemented to drive gameplay under "Equinox sov". I believe during the dev blog CCP Okami is referring to the entire sovereignty gameplay system.
So, what happened to produce that big spike in the mineral price index with the launch of Revenant? One factor was the developers' wish to bring flexibility to player-owned null sec. Some of the goals included:
We wanted to give Nullsec more flexibility and choice.
We needed to make sure that more flexibility was balanced against the rest of the universe.
We needed to account for different play styles.
We wanted to make beautiful, science fiction space rocks for you to enjoy.
The goals sound nice. The implementation possibly left something to be desired. According to CCP Okami, the devs made the following changes to implement flexibility.
We introduced Tier 1 and Tier 2 mining Upgrades that allowed Sovereignty system owners to choose which ore types spawned in their owned space.
We made more ores available in Nullsec, with greater amounts of flexibility and choice via. Sov Hub Upgrades.
We introduced new ores in these sites that were curated for Equinox’s flexibility.
The sites had more asteroids with lower amounts and low to medium volume.
At this point I think CCP Okami was a bit confusing with the use of the terms ore and minerals, which might have resulted from the editing process. For years the devs worked to make each security band dominant in certain minerals. With Equinox sov mechanics that separation disappeared, at least for player-owned null sec. The minerals removed from ores in high and low security space would not return at the same time. So in theory, the mineral supply should increase. So what happened?
A major problem was the creation of the new Equinox mining upgrades. The design challenge was to make cherry-picking the valuable ore and leaving the lower-value ores until last a memory. With the seven sets of sites the dev team created for Equinox sov they had two design priorities.
They needed to get the majority of their value from a single mineral type, as their site was meant to be a specific Upgrade choice an organization made for their system. This could mean being 100% made up of that one mineral or being mostly made up of that mineral with a few traces of some others.
They needed an appropriate ISK/m3 value to be placed in large quantities in sites that would spawn in large numbers (ie. they needed to be a fairly standard ore, not a super special jackpot ore)
I do want to point out that CCP hired CCP Okami in February 2024, long before the resource distribution update of 2020 which divided minerals into security bands. So instead of putting minerals back into ore, the developers created five new types of ores specific to spawned sites in null security space. I guess the designers were focusing on improving null security space and forgot actions in one area of space impact the entire game. CCP Okami's rundown of the issues that cropped up leads me to that conclusion.
The first is that we couldn’t fully anticipate the correct distribution and choices of Upgrades and sites across the universe and what total percentage of maximum ore volume generated by the sites per day would be mined. That had a significant impact on how the overall value of these sites was being calculated and has led to a clear impact in how minerals are being mined. Next, many of these sites were actually balanced to be more valuable than previous sites. However, due to how the rocks were distributed and placed in the sites it meant that there was also an increase in micromanagement, effort and labor which leads to both a tangible felt decrease in value and a shift in paradigm that’s been regarded as a confusing change. This was done to both try and support a broader variety of playstyles and also for some aesthetic factors.
I want to state that the design goal, in a broad sense, to support a broader variety of playstyles succeeded. But mining playstyles? Not so much.
Another unintended challenge that arose is that effectively when it comes to choosing an activity in Nullsec, the ISK/hour and relative effort of ratting makes it an obvious choice in comparison to mining which has higher labor and, in some cases, offers lower ISK/hour. This has driven more people away from mining and into ratting, which means that our estimates on mining value are off even more, since we weren’t accounting for this shift in work.
The change in the size of asteroids highly contributed to the increase in labor. From my perspective from mining in low sec for years, the smaller asteroid size also means paying more attention to the mechanics of mining and less to things like observing the environment and detecting possible threats. Not an issue for fleets, but for solo or small-gang mining, possibly an issue.
My well-known allergy to bubbles kept me from thinking of the final issue EVE's Game Design Director mentioned.
Finally, we’re able to start measuring the real impact of the Metenox in the game ecosystem more thoroughly, which highlights some unintended side effects and challenges. The high ROI of Metenox's in lower and mid-tier moons, combined with its inability to extract regular ores, has contributed to the current increase in the Pyerite price, as moon mining is no longer able to supply the market with that ore.
A funny thing about the mineral affected by the 2020 resource distribution play: pyerite and mexallon. They were not included in the redistribution, at least not directly.
How the devs rearranged distribution in 2020
Is there an institutional disregard for pyerite as a common mineral? I also don't know if the 2020 changes removed ore from null sec high in pyerite, meaning the Metenox change had a far greater impact than it would in pre-2020 New Eden.
CCP Okami also addressed another issue: messaging.
I also want to touch on our messaging. I want to acknowledge that we didn’t do a great job of conveying the vision of Equinox to you all and leaned in on things like “rejuvenating” or “more wealth”, which is confusing when things don’t feel like they’re lining up that way for the average person playing out there. Our goals were more around flexibility and self-sustainability, as well as creating long-term systemic levers that we could develop onto for years to come. We definitely learned a lesson here, and we’ll work on better rolling out and being transparent with our feature visions in the future.
I will admit I like the idea of developers striving to produce better communications. I can recall other times, like during the Chaos Era, where providing information to players about development goals was considered a bad thing. Perhaps I've spent too much time playing Final Fantasy XIV and listening to Yoshi-P try to keep the player-base informed about upcoming developments. But I really prefer openness in development where possible.
Finally, I'd like to end with a conclusion CCP Okami came to about the whole experience.
Hindsight is 20/20 and we can totally see where we made our missteps. While the intention was sound, our hypotheses and estimates didn’t work out and lead us to our high MPI that we have today. I personally have a lot of learning around how to better work with you folks around messaging our intentions around big, systemic reworks and I’m going to be way more in touch with you all as we roll out changes and updates like this.
Cloud Imperium Games had a smashing month of sales from its online cash shop in February according to data from the CCU Game dashboard. February's $7.7 million in sales was a 61.6% year-over-year increase over the $4.8 million recorded in February 2024.
The $789.5 million displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of February was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $888.1 million in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2022 financial report).
Sales/Pledges: $789.5 million (through 28 February 2025)
Subscriptions: $33.0 million (through 31 December 2022)
All other sources: $65.6 million (through 31 December 2022)
In addition, the company has received a total of $63.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2022 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $951.4 million, or $946.6 million when excluding the returned funds. An additional $5 million in shares sold in January 2025 are not included in the total.
The Funding Plateau - Over the last three years, Cloud Imperium has faced a sales plateau in the company's sales of virtual good like internet spaceships. Sales have fallen withing 3% of the average of $115.9 million between 2022-2024. I believe the shakeup of upper management that began in Q4 of 2024 is designed to break through and increase revenue for the company. So in addition to providing year-over-year metrics I will also comparing the previous month's sales to the average sales for the month from the years 2022-2024. I believe if sales continue to fall within the range of $112.4 million and $119.4 million the C-Suite at CIG, if not the board of directors, will not be happy.
In February the Marketing Masters In Manchester had a lot to smile about. Not only did sales rise 61.6% YoY, but increased over the previous 3-year average for January by 41.5%. Sales really benefitted from the continued effects of the release of Alpha 4.0.1 on 28 January and the accompanying sale of both the MISC Fortune and the Red Letter event. Over the first seven days of February, the company recorded an additional $1.6 million in sales, a $900,000 increase over sales in the first seven days of February 2024.
Additionally the Coramor event, Star Citizen's version of Valentine's Day, did quite well financially.
Featuring the introductory sale of the Super Hornet MK II as well as the Anvil F7C-M, CIG racked up $3.5 million in sales over the course of 7 days as compared to 2024's total of $1.8 million. Combined, the sales held in the first seven days of the month combined with the Valentine's event accounted for approximately $2.7 million of the $2.9 million year-over-year sales increase in February.
New Account Creation - From 2022 to 2024 CIG saw the number of new accounts created each year fall by 44.5%. I'm assuming that part of the shakeup is aimed at improving that performance as well. So I came up with a simple predictive formula to estimate how big of a drop in new player account creation is expected based on historical trends. For the year, my formula comes up with a 19% drop in new user accounts created in 2025, which is twice as much as I predicted at the beginning of the year.
The number of accounts created fell by 40.9% year-over-year, from 44,060 in February 2024 down to 26,057 last month. While part of the drop is attributable to the cancellation of the Red Letter Festival's free-fly event at the beginning of the month, the marketing department is not attracting many new accounts. I have to wonder if the plan for 2025 is to not go all out to attract new players given the bad technical state Star Citizen currently faces. Instead the marketing tactics seem aimed at extracting increasing amounts of revenue from the game's whales.
Ongoing Concerns - I did not see any progress on my list of concerns at the end of January. The big question going into March is whether the Calders will exercise their put option in 2025 or wait until the first quarter of 2028. The father and son duo have until no later than the end of March to exercise the option. While I fully expect the Calders to choose to wait another three years in order to benefit from the release of Squadron 42, I see a non-zero chance of the second largest shareholders pulling the trigger.
Another concern is the lack of financial information for 2023 available. Yes, the month of March has arrived and still no financial report posted to the CIG corporate website. With my experience covering CCP Games the lack of posting information is a bit puzzling. The Icelandic studio only stopped posting financial information on its corporate website when it briefly didn't have outside investors or was bought by Pearl Abyss. I really don't see either condition existing at the moment.
In fact, the company issued another $5 million shares in the company in the middle of January. I really would like to know who obtained the shares, but that information probably will not become public until September.
A bigger concern is the late filing of CIG's accounts to UK Companies House. For the second year in a row the filings will occur after the 31 December deadline. The 2022 filings showed some issues with the accounts from the new auditors, including accessing the liability for the put options for 2024, 2025, and 2028 correctly.
Currently the company is facing a fine of £750 for filing its accounts late for the second year in a row. If the accounts are filed after 31 March, the fine increases to £1500. If Companies House chooses to do so, directors of the company could face criminal charges.
One final note on the late filing of the financial accounts with Companies House. The 2022 accounts were signed and dated on 1 March 2024, electronically submitted to Companies House on 3 March, and posted to the Companies House website on 11 March. I am interested to see if history repeats itself.
Creative Studio III deployed Final Fantasy XIV's Patch 7.18 Tuesday morning marking we are probably a little less than 4 weeks away from the release of the next major point patch. As usual Yoshi-P is releasing a stream of content and events before the patch to get everyone ready for the next major drop which I think will fall on 25 March. Instead of looking back on the boring grinding I've done since my last diary post, I'd look ahead at what I plan on doing for the next month.
Moogle Treasure Trove - The event that is the harbinger of a major patch, the Moogle Treasure Trove event gets everyone out into the world collecting tomestones for prizes. Some of the prizes quite frankly are a pain to obtain the regular way in the game, so the Moogle Treasure Trove event is popular for those looking to cut corners.
I think for me the prize most tempting is the Magicked Bed followed by any Triple Triad cards I don't already have. The Magicked Bed is a craftable mount so I may take up the challenge to create a mount instead. If so, I might just pick up the Ancient One minion instead of repeatedly running through Anamnesis Anyder waiting for it to drop.
The Moogle Treasure Trove runs from now until the launch of patch 7.2.
Little Ladies Day - The event celebrates the Shinto holiday of Hinamatsuri. While running through the event usually doesn't take very long, I do look forward to what the devs have cooked up every year. Unlike some games, the event is fresh from year to year. This year's reward, a seneschal's outfit, looks pretty good too.
The event, the 14th in the series, even has some lore.
Legend of the Lost Lady
Three centuries past, the plucky princess Edvya, tired of being sequestered within palace walls by her overprotective father—the sultan Baldric Thorne—exchanged garb with a miller girl and wandered off into town in search of adventure.
Upon learning of his daughter's disappearance, the sultan was stricken with panic. He summoned the palace guard, ordering them to tear the city apart to see that no harm befell his precious princess—and tear the city apart they did. The poor miller whose daughter assisted the princess in her escape saw his house nigh ripped from the ground, while the family was threatened with imprisonment and worse.
To the good fortune of all, Princess Edvya was soon found just outside the palace walls, and was quick to reveal the truth of recent events. Racked with guilt, the sultan had the miller's house rebuilt by his most skilled craftsmen, and offered to personally serve as seneschal to the miller girl for a day to atone.
Rumors of this unforeseen display of humility were quick to spread through Ul'dah. So well received were they, in fact, that the sultan declared one day from each solar year on which he would select, via lots, a common girl from the city and serve as her personal seneschal, as he had done with the miller's daughter.
Catch-up mechanics - For those involved in raiding, restrictions have been lifted to allow those behind on completing the 8-character content a chance to catch up. Those running AAC Light-heavyweight M4 no longer will no longer face a restriction on the number of Light-heavy Holoblades they can receive each week. Those running AAC Light-heavyweight M4 (Savage) will see the following improvements.
Treasure coffers will now always appear, with no reduction of rewards, regardless of whether any party members have previously cleared the area.
The weekly restriction on rewards obtained from treasure coffers has been removed.
The weekly entrance restriction has been removed.
Players may now proceed directly to any area.
PvP Tournaments? - Yes, although FFXIV is not known for its PvP gameplay, Square Enix is holding PvP tournaments in Europe and North America, although the action won't begin in NA until after the launch of patch 7.2.
Finishing the Role Quests - Moving on to my own personal gameplay, I only need to level Dragoon to 100 to finish the last set of role quests. I have to say I really enjoyed the role quests for Endwalker. Honestly, the role quests and the master role quests were the end of the story in a way the first three expansion point patches usually are. I've never taken advantage of New Game+ before, but I may to relive the role quests.
One unexpected development is if I need to make sure I level 5 jobs to end game each expansion, that's five times the crafting and gathering required to keep myself equipped properly. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't really a problem.
Wachumeqimeqi Deliveries - After all my talk about the crafting and gathering feature, I still have one quest remaining: Appreciated Value. And while I did link to the page, I didn't read the text as to not spoil the end of the story. But I got so caught up in doing the hard thing (levelling characters up to 100) that I haven't completed the final task at hand.
Hildibrand Adventures - Yes, the Inconceivably Further Hildibrand Adventures Quests was introduced in patch 7.15. And yes, the first quest is most likely just an introduction. But I made up a cosplay because my character looks she could be Nashu's sister.
Gearing up my crafting and gathering - Yes, I haven't crafted the latest set of crafting and gathering gear. While I've done the role quest grind, I haven't really needed the advanced abilities. But I have all the materials to craft everything so I just need to carve out a week to do so. I've got four weeks until patch 7.2, right?
A recurring feature in Final Fantasy XIV is the collaboration. Whether the collaboration is with another game like Fall Guys or a real world product like Mountain Dew, expect at least one collaboration to show up every year. The first one has shown up with the launch of patch 7.18 this morning.
We’re delighted to announce that FINAL FANTASY XIV will be collaborating with Instax™, the instant camera from FUJIFILM, to bring you an all-new emote for Patch 7.18, due for release on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. We’ll also be hosting a screenshot sweepstakes campaign on X in celebration of this snap-happy collaboration.
Now, I know a lot of my readers will express unhappiness and disdain that the contest will take place on X. But no participation is required to receive the emote. A website does exist for those interested in winning one of the 10,000 prizes available.
What we know so far
I think the emote is rather cute. Apparently Fuji is bringing back the old Polaroid camera. For those too young to remember, before the advent of the phone camera people could take pictures using a fast developing film that would pop out of the top or the front of a camera for instant gratification.
The /photographer emote
The emote does not actually take a picture. For that players still need to go into gpose to get a clear shot without the user interface showing.
I know a lot of players are looking forward to things like the removal of the weekly restrictions on Savage content. But I'll take a cute emote while I finish up my tasks to finish before the launch of patch 7.2.
Time does indeed fly when the subject is internet spaceships. Back in March 2023 CCP Games publicly announced the creation of a Web3 game based on the EVE universe. In September 2024 the company publicly announced the name of the game, EVE Frontier. Since then, those who have not dismissed the game out of hand as a typical crypto-scam have wanted more information and, perhaps more importantly, actual gameplay footage.
The situation on the information front changed over the past few days. On Wednesday PC Gamer produced an 18-minute documentary on the game.
After a chorus of "we want gameplay video" in the comments, CCP released a 57 minute video on Saturday of a group of players attempting to take down what in other games is known as a BAM (Big-Ass Monster).
As one might expect from an EVE video, the footage is not exactly compelling. Also, the footage is extremely alpha with many EVE Online assets used as placeholders for objects.
What is EVE Frontier? I personally think of the game as a Massively Multiplayer Moddable Role Playing Game (And yes, I got the idea from CCP Jötunn). From the PC Gamer video, EVE Frontier Product Manager CCP Overload gave the following explanation.
EVE Frontier is a survival game set in space with a focus on self-reliance, moment-to-moment gameplay and unlocking third party development with an inclusive business model. I think it's bordering on survival horror almost in this huge vast empty universe with the rotting vestiges of an old civilization that grew too large and eventually collapsed.
We're focusing really on the exploration. They'll be able to go vast distances. In order to do so they'll really have to prepare for that journey. They'll have to take resources with them they might be able to survive out in the cold, in the wilderness. There'll be places where
people choose to gather because there's an abundance of natural resources. Much like in our real life we expect people to do the same with their digital civilization. You may choose to go out deep into the wilderness but it will be hard to live there. It will be tough, it'll be brutal, but maybe you can forge your own destiny in that space.
And yes, at least the premise of the lore makes Frontier a role-playing game. As CCP Maximum Cats explained at the very beginning of the video:
One of the story arcs that we are trying to craft for the players is what I like to call a dark sci-fi Pinocchio story which is starting in this world as something that is probably even less than human and then gradually digging your way out of that towards becoming a real human again evolving towards a proper transhumanist form something that would be properly adapted towards life in space as opposed to if we were to go to space now.
Anyone writing about EVE Frontier has to address the elephant in the room: the use of blockchain technology. CCP Overload was joined by Senior Full Stack Developer CCP Sondheim to explain CCP's goals.
CCP Sondheim: We're excited to be introducing smart assemblies as a feature. So lets us open up this universe to a layer where other players will be able to modify and co-create this universe with us.
CCP Overload: CCP has always worked with third party developers. It's part of what makes EVE Online so good at what it does and we have just taken that and amplified it with EVE Frontier. It's open source and that means that you can go in and you can program directly into the game with our smart assemblies features.
CCP Sondheim: Smart assemblies are structures in space that you as a player will be able to modify using code that you are writing and then deploying onto the blockchain.
CCP Overload: And as part of that we're working to enshrine what we call digital physics into the immutable part of the blockchain.
The thought of allowing players to mod in an online multiplayer game seems ludicrous at first glance. Allowing players to write and implement code that can negatively impact other players doesn't seem like such a good idea. But modding in single player games like Skyrim and Fallout series extended the lives of those games by years without Bethesda becoming too involved. If the demand for mods for Fallout 76 when that game first launched is any indication, perhaps the modding aspect of EVE Frontier is a selling point beyond the community of modders that always gravitates to successful video games.
One concern I have is the creation and widespread adoption of cheat software like teleport hacks. Nothing is more frustrating than spending 15-20 minutes sneaking around and fighting to a location to gather a rare spawn only to have someone using a teleport hack jump in and snatch the resource away from me at the last moment. CCP claims the use of the blockchain will solve issue like that from occurring.
CCP Maximum Cats: In the frontier everything is underpinned by digital physics very much in the same way that when we're walking around when we are throwing things putting glasses on tables we don't think about how gravity is pulling us down. Within the virtual universe that we're creating together on Eve Frontier blockchain is that physics layer that helps us to enshrine these rules to make sure that they are beyond anyone's touching – even ours at CCP.
I'd like to call out the last point. Even beyond employee or company manipulation of Frontier's crypto-currency CCP has a history of employee misconduct, most famously with 2007's T20 scandal. Addressing concerns about the game universe is extremely important in the success of any online game.
I want to bring up a section of the video from the Creative Director for EVE Frontier, CCP Sondheim. One of the visions for Frontier is to have a living world, but unlike efforts like those envisioned for Everquest Next and Star Citizen CCP is eschewing the involvement of NPCs.
CCP Maximum Cats: Despite our play test still being in very in very early form and the tools that we are providing to the parts of the player community who are engaging in this modding are still very basic. Despite all that the things that we saw emerging we are already very interesting. The thing that we provide them is basically a chest that you could find in any other survival game but it comes with the layer of programmability...
They managed to connect these individual chests spread out across the universe and network in a clever way with clever interfaces. But you come up to this kiosk and it tells you we are missing these resources here if you give these resources to us we're going to pay you. Through mechanics like this it becomes an emergent living economy which is not made by us. The only thing that we provided in there is just a singular building block.
Now imagine if we add something like a smart turret unit to that equation and then you can have these scenarios where you come to a kiosk and if you do something you know that the kiosk doesn't like it starts shooting you or vice versa. You can start creating not just market systems but emerging security systems which can be much more interesting than the security systems that we normally see in interactive media in virtual worlds. Which is you do something bad the game will just punish you. This is more like a society is punishing you and a certain part of the society that you choose to interact with in a way that we would not be able to design.
We will probably see player groups collapse not because they got defeated by someone on the battlefield but because they mismanaged their monetary policy, they didn't manage their inflation rate or things like that.
One criticism I've heard of EVE Online over the years is that the game is not really a sandbox. They point to voxel technology, say EVE does not have a similar building block system, and state players in EVE don't really build anything affecting the game world. At the very least in Frontier the developers can point to building blocks players can use to shape the universe.
Before giving my final thoughts, I'd like to provide those of three members of CCP's leadership from the video talking about where they envision Frontier winding up. First, the CEO of CCP Games, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.
Hilmar: So we have a role of a creator of the world. But a lot of that sort of world creation myth is like somebody creates and then people take over. So there will be a bit of creation activity that hopefully will fade out. Then there will be this activity of like the NPC economy is bootstrapping the quote unquote the real economy. And then ideally these things fade away, the training wheels are completely off, and the world sort of lives and breathes through the activity of the people playing.
Next, the Creative Director CCP Maximum Cats.
CCP Maximum Cats: The path that we're trying to follow is we are building the singular foundational building blocks and the the the core game mechanics and you know the engine itself. But then all of these higher level things such as social mechanics, the economy, and the high level landscape of warfare for example. All of these things are from the player base and are emerging already in like in more or less in real time whenever we're having playtests.
Finally, the project manager CCP Overload.
CCP Overload: Our motto is we create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life. We want to build EVE Frontier such that as time goes on and it becomes more and more decentralized the true long-term goal with uh open sourcing the carbon development platform means that the ownership of the game itself will essentially reside in the citizens of the frontier. They choose to be here. They choose to live here in this virtual world. They should have a say in it.
And my thoughts. I'm still not sure about the wisdom of attempting to create a massively multiplayer moddable role playing game. Sandbox games featuring unconsensual PvP activity with full loot mechanics do not fall into the mainstream of gaming. Add in a technology guaranteed to draw in people looking to gain real world wealth by shearing unsuspecting normie sheep and ruining their gameplay and I personally would hesitate to play the game. But playing up until the game's commercial launch should be relatively safe so I'll continue to cover the development of Frontier.
Correction: I confused the CCP developer names of the Creative Director and Full Stack Engineer. I have corrected the quotes.
I heard that NetEase laid off an internal development studio working on its hit game Marvel Rivals based in Seattle, Washington. MassivelyOP used the phrase "major layoffs" in the title of that sites news article. So I decided to find out just what major means.
According to NetEase, a total of six U.S. employees were dismissed, including level designer Garry McGee. Notably, this was not the entirety of the Rivals development team, the core of which is headquartered in Guangzhou, China.
“We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game,” a NetEase spokesperson said in a statement to GeekWire. “This resulted in a reduction of a design team based in Seattle that is part of a larger global design function in support of Marvel Rivals. We appreciate the hard work and dedication of those affected and will be treating them confidentially and respectfully with recognition for their individual contributions.”
Apparently most of the work on the game is performed in China. In a statement to IGN, NetEase stated:
“We want to reassure our fanbase that the core development team for Marvel Rivals, which continues to be led by Lead Producer Weicong Wu and Game Creative Director Guangyun Chen in Guangzhou, China, remains fully committed to delivering an exceptional experience,” NetEase continued.
“We are investing more, not less, into the evolution and growth of this game. We’re excited to deliver new super hero characters, maps, features, and content to ensure an engaging live service experience for our worldwide player base.”
Wow, layoffs in the U.S. workforce of NetEase. The U.S. has more expensive labor costs than China, and those on the west coast of the U.S. are higher than average. Without doing any research, the news felt like a move to placate investors right before a company has to give out disappointing financial news. I know, I know, how cynical of me. Then I saw a press release from NetEase pop up this morning talking about the company's Q4 and overall 2024 financial results. Here are the highlights.
Fourth Quarter 2024 Financial Highlights
Net revenues were RMB26.7 billion (US$3.7 billion), a decrease of 1.4% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Games and related value-added services net revenues were RMB21.2 billion (US$2.9 billion), an increase of 1.5% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Youdao net revenues were RMB1.3 billion (US$183.6 million), a decrease of 9.5% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
NetEase Cloud Music net revenues were RMB1.9 billion (US$257.6 million), a decrease of 5.3% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Innovative businesses and others net revenues were RMB2.3 billion (US$313.1 million), a decrease of 17.0% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Gross profit was RMB16.3 billion (US$2.2 billion), a decrease of 3.3% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Total operating expenses were RMB8.5 billion (US$1.2 billion), a decrease of 15.1% compared with the same quarter of 2023.
Net income attributable to the Company's shareholders was RMB8.8 billion (US$1.2 billion). Non-GAAP net income attributable to the Company's shareholders was RMB9.7 billion (US$1.3 billion).[1]
Basic net income per share was US$0.38 (US$1.89 per ADS). Non-GAAP basic net income per share was US$0.42 (US$2.09 per ADS).[1]
[1] As used in this announcement, non-GAAP net income attributable to the Company's shareholders and non-GAAP basic and diluted net income per share and per ADS are defined to exclude share-based compensation expenses. See the unaudited reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP results at the end of this announcement.
Since I'm already looking at the press release, here are some highlights concerning the gaming parts of NetEase from 2024.
Net Revenues
Net revenues for fiscal year 2024 were RMB105.3 billion (US$14.4 billion), compared with RMB103.5 billion for fiscal year 2023.
Net revenues from games and related value-added services were RMB83.6 billion (US$11.5 billion) for fiscal year 2024, compared with RMB81.6 billion for fiscal year 2023. Net revenues from the operation of online games accounted for approximately 96.2% of the segment's total net revenues for fiscal year 2024, compared with 92.9% for fiscal year 2023. Net revenues from mobile games accounted for approximately 72.7% of net revenues from the operation of online games for fiscal year 2024, compared with 75.2% for fiscal year 2023. The change in revenue mix was mainly due to higher net revenues generated by PC games such as Naraka: Bladepoint and licensed titles.
Gross Profit
Gross profit for fiscal year 2024 was RMB65.8 billion (US$9.0 billion), compared with RMB63.1 billion for fiscal year 2023.
The year-over-year increase in games and related value-added services' gross profit was primarily due to increased net revenues from the operation of online games, such as Identity V and Naraka: Bladepoint PC and mobile games.
Operating Expenses
Total operating expenses for fiscal year 2024 were RMB36.2 billion (US$5.0 billion), compared with RMB35.4 billion for fiscal year 2023. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to higher research and development investments for games and related value-added services.
I want to make a couple of points to close out this post. The first is that the Chinese yuan fell 2.8% against the U.S. dollar in 2024, thus meaning when calculated in U.S. dollars NetEase's increases may have been due to the effect of foreign exchange valuations.
Next, while Marvel Rivals apparently is doing well, the game is not at the top of the mind of NetEase leadership who are more impressed with PC games like Naraka: Bladepoint and Identity V. If only the developers of top games are safe from layoffs, then the staff of Marvel Rivals didn't make the cut.
But even then, apparently only U.S.-based staff was affected by layoffs. Why? A very good possibility is the increasing strength of the U.S. dollar against the Chinese renminbi. If staff needs to be cut, then cut the staff with the highest labor cost. If U.S. workers are too expensive on average, then those on the West Coast are even more so.
One last thought. NetEase is a Chinese company. As such, they need to stay on the good side of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). I don't know if people realize, by the economy in China is not doing so well. If job cuts are to occur, who will they cut, Chinese citizens or those overseas? Over the past year or so, the answer has been reducing staff outside China.
I have to admit I'm more active this year in EVE Online than I was last year. But the wallet UI really exaggerates the effect.
My wallet as of this morning
Just looking at the overview the UI would leave one to believe I brought in 5.8 billion ISK in the past 30 days. But that number is vastly inflated because of a side hobby I have in EVE: running public courier contracts.
Courier contract deposits paid
Over the past month I've submitted over 5.3 billion ISK in collateral to carry out 9 courier contracts. Of course, I didn't pay all those deposits at once. The most I had out at any one time was a little less than 1.96 billion ISK. So for what I transported I needed 2 billion ISK just to accept the contracts.
Courier contracts are created to formalize the moving of items between locations by other players. The items selected during contract creation will be packaged into a "Plastic Wrap" package, which will be given to the contractor to be delivered to the target location. To prevent the contractor from simply keeping the package for his own, a collateral should always be set on a courier contract, which has to be paid by the contractor upon accepting the contract and will be returned to the contractor upon successful delivery. It the contract fails for any reason, the creator of the courier contract will receive the collateral instead.
For example, yesterday I decided to complete a courier contract from the Minmatar trade hub of Hek to the Gallente trade hub of Dodixie, a trip of 8 jumps.
My first contract yesterday
As you can see, I put up 510 million ISK for the opportunity to gain 6 million. Not a great payout, right? But the trip was completely in high sec, although half the systems were 0.5 security systems. But I didn't use, say a regular industrial ship like a Mammoth to transport the package.
I used a deep space transport
Instead I used a Mastodon, the Minmatar tech 2 deep space transport. Not only is the ship harder to gank in high sec, but with a 62,500 m3 fleet hanger due to having all skills trained to level V, I can comfortably accept contracts up to 60,000 m3. Of course, the price of a Mastodon in Hek right now is 248 million ISK.
Now, I think some people are doing math right now. I put down a 510 million ISK deposit to perform a courier contract worth 6 million ISK in a ship who's hull alone costs 248 million ISK? Am I crazy? Or, looking at my wallet, does owning PLEX worth over 8 billion ISK make me not care about loss so much? Especially since CCP game me most of the PLEX when Aurum was removed from the game years ago.
Either way, the reason isn't all the ISK I brought in over the past 30 days. Of the 5.8 billion ISK, 5.3 billion ISK was the return of my deposits upon the completion of courier contracts. I kind of wish the developers would make the interface not count the return of deposits as income. I'm pretty sure they could match up a deposit with a return deposit and zero out the amount upon completing the contract. But considering running public contracts is probably a niche activity in a niche game, I'm not sure I could make the business case for applying the resources to make the change.
I'm a little disconnected from events in EVE Online. I just tend to my planetary industry, carryout public courier contracts when available, and play the Project Discovery mini-game. Other PvE content does exist, such as the current live event in EVE called "The Drifter Crisis". We are three weeks into the event so perhaps an update is in order.
Using telemetry gathered during the Vigilant Dreamer’s destruction in Tash-Murkon, the Society of Conscious Thought has been able to synthesize new upgrades for Crisis response fleets. Targeting computer modifications and improved hyperspace tracking methodologies will ensure Vigilant Dreamers remain available for assault as long as they are in a system.
Okay, the reality is probably a little different. The devs probably needed to adjust some timing features to give players more time to engage the big bosses in the fights. But the lore spin makes the adjustment sound cooler. Especially since the players involved in the Tash-Murkon battle are now enshrined in the lore.
Three weeks into the event and New Eden has changed, at least in Empire space. First, the patch notes from 5-12 February concerning the event.
Patch Notes for 2025-02-05.1
Balancing: Drifter Crisis
Influence has been adjusted:
Removed Influence loss when failing certain Crisis sites
Increased Influence gained when completing Crisis sites
'Crisis Resolution: Vigilant Dreamer' sites will only appear if at least 2 days have passed within a Crisis system
Greatly increased the number of Observatory Spectrography items found within 'Crisis: Observatory Infiltration' sites
Added a 30-minute failure timer which will start during a lockdown if the short lockdown timer modifier is not active within a 'Crisis: Observatory Infiltration' site
Roaming NPCs within Drifter Crisis systems will no longer attack capsules
Patch Notes for 2025-02-06.1
Drifter Crisis:
Added a Patient Beacon which will spawn within a 'Crisis: Observatory Infiltration' site when the lockdown defense fleet modifier is active.
This object can be hacked to disable the defense fleet from appearing during a lockdown.
Added a minimum amount of contribution capsuleers will need to meet to be considered for a 'Crisis: Observatory Infiltration' site's payout.
Added an Info Panel objective which states if the site is in lockdown within the acceleration gate area of a 'Crisis: Observatory Infiltration' site.
Patch Notes for 2025-02-11.1
Drifter Crisis:
Remove the failure timer from ‘Crisis Resolution: Vigilant Dreamer’ sites.
Decreasing the rate of Influence decay over time within high-security Crisis systems.
Influence can now be gained incrementally within certain Crisis sites.
For example, successfully hacking a Drifter Collection will now give a share of that site’s influence rather than all on completion.
Only players within 100km of a Crisis site’s focal point will be considered eligible for payouts. The focal points are as follows:
Crisis: Field Rescue — The celestial beacon.
Crisis: Observatory Infiltration — The Unmoored Jovian Observatory.
Crisis: Deathless Research Outpost — The Wormhole Research Outpost.
Crisis: Lancer Counter Offensive — The Destructive Scrutinizer.
Crisis Resolution: Vigilant Dreamer — The Vigilant Dreamer.
Increasing the maximum number of sites available within each Crisis system.
And what does the lore say about the major players in the event?
Amarr
Following the player's victory in Tash-Mukon, the home system of Empress Catiz I, the factions had the following reactions. First, the Empress:
“Almost nine and a half years ago, my predecessor was assassinated by a fleet of the same profane monstrosities that plague our heavens once more,” The Empress began, “They dared to try usurp our Lord’s will and challenge our faith. Well, the faithful have risen to that challenge like a righteous flame! In these skies, as in Kobam and in Anath, we have proved that none can stand against us!”
Next the opposition, which in typical Amarr fashion is all the other royal houses:
Lord Tunir Tash-Murkon, heir and head of House Tash-Murkon, welcomed the empresses' words, adding his gratitude for the support of the other Heirs during this trying time. The other Royal Houses have historically held mixed sentiments towards the Tash-Murkon. Their Udorian heritage and pragmatic economic approach have caused some members of the Holder caste to join militant terrorist organizations like the Disciples of Purity (formerly Purity of the Throne) rather than acknowledge Empress Catiz Tash-Murkon I as their ruler. Today, not a single negative sentiment could be found in print regarding the House as people took to the streets to celebrate across the Empire. Lord Arim Ardishapur even went as far as to call their victory “a sign of divine purpose”, going on to say that “in this time of conflict, we are blessed to have an Empress from such a resilient people.”
Caldari
The Caldari did suffer a setback in Fuskunen but chose to focus on their successes.
Chairman Akimaka Saraki has once again commended State forces and capsuleers alike for their successes in Ichinumi, Silen, and Ruvas. “Swift in their response, our loyal ships were the first to force a Drifter retreat. A unified and disciplined response with capsuleer support has proven once more to be the key that unlocks triumph.” Megacorporations Lai Dai, Sukuuvestaa, and Hyasyoda joined the chairman in his praise as their stations within the affected systems were able to return to business as usual. Saraki commented that, “When faced with an outside threat, there are no factions, only Caldari.”
Minmatar
The Minmatar system of Hadozeko was hit hard by the Drifters. While the factional warfare facilities survived relatively unscathed, the tribes on the system's planets were not so fortunate. The overall political impact of the Drifter attacks was rather muffled compared to those of the Amarr.
Despite their initial lack of preparation, an incredible effort by Minmatar forces and their capsuleer allies was more than enough to defeat the Drifters first in Geffur, then in Nein. Sanmatar Maleatu Shakor has cited these victories as “proof of the importance of tribal unity.” Thukker Chief Ennar Aeboul who has been openly critical of the Republic’s response declined to comment.
Gallente
I don't want to say anything about the way Gallente fight, but I really wouldn't take a drone boat in against Drifters. Then again, perhaps my way of thinking is archaic.
The first to warn of the coming Crisis, the Gallente Federation has suffered most greatly as it unfolds. The systems of Hare, Niballe, and Gererique all experienced significant losses despite capsuleers' best efforts. President Celes Aguard has called once more for capsuleers to “join us in standing up for liberty. These invaders openly call themselves tyrants, they must not be allowed to harm our citizens. Even now they attack us once more in Nausschie, Ravarin, and Uphene. It is up to us to secure the future of our democracy, our liberty, against these aggressors.”
Then again, perhaps the uproar over an “irresponsible” Niballe mindclash tournament whose fans disrupted evacuation efforts shows the Gallente sometimes don't have their priorities in order.
Society of Conscious Thought
The SoCT took over the Jove's role as the provider of advanced technology years ago.
Using telemetry gathered during the Vigilant Dreamer’s destruction in Tash-Murkon, the Society of Conscious Thought has been able to synthesize new upgrades for Crisis response fleets. Targeting computer modifications and improved hyperspace tracking methodologies will ensure Vigilant Dreamers remain available for assault as long as they are in a system.
The Drifters
And as players wouldn't have direct knowledge of Drifter plans and motivations, the Society speaks for them through their intelligence network.
At the same time, however, SOCT intel indicates that Drifters are committing to more persistent Vigilant Dreamer deployments. Dreamers are now expected to remain in system until they have completed their task or are destroyed in the attempt. This will mean no more retreats by Drifter forces as long as their Vigilant Dreamers remain operational.
The SOCT has also observed a spike in Drifter hyperspace communication traffic throughout the Amarr Empire simultaneous with drops in traffic throughout Gallente space. These changes followed the recent successes against the Drifters in Amarr space, along with uninterrupted streams from Drifter sites in Federation space.
At the end of January the number of players logged into EVE was in decline. When Jester's next ACU graph is published I'll be interested to see if these changes had any effects on the activity in New Eden.
