IMHO CCP should never have allowed users to buy game time with in-game credits. That's effectively tying the security of their in-game economy with the security of their real world revenue. With the ability to do something like this, it's possible that users could find an exploit large enough to never have to pay for their game time again, potentially without CCP knowing about it.
I would suggest that they limit the number of "30 day game codes" that can be bought with in-game credits to something like three per year per user. At least then you're guaranteed that players are paying something (as long as they're not also sockpuppeting).
The number of people exploiting the game and playing for free forever is vastly smaller than the number of people who hemorrhage a lot of real money on space money so they can buy a new spaceship.
It totally makes sense from CCP's point of view to allow gamecards. People get silly about purchasing them so they can buy <shiny new object>. It is also a great carrot to keep people playing...since you can technically play for free if you have enough ISK.
I spent quite a while on the treadmill of "Have enough ISK to buy timecards...but need to keep hustling so I have enough for next month". Sometimes you miss your target and have to pay for a month, sometimes you don't.
I eventually became "profitable" in that my businesses generated more revenue than what I had to pay in timecards, so I could pay for free as long as I kept them running. But most people like to blow up spaceships, not run businesses, so I was definitely in the minority. Furthermore, the vast majority of players live in crappy space which is not very lucrative. Making that 500m a month for a timecard is a very difficult proposition.
Note: I, like most people, had 2-3 accounts that I was playing on. So that's a lot of timecards to buy each month.
When you buy a 30 day time code with in-game ISK, CCP gets real money. This is because the time codes are bought by other players with real money, and then sold in game for ISK to other players.
By allowing time-code's to be traded for ISK CCP has basically created a system where more accounts(= more $$$) are active than would otherwise exist. I find this method to be particularly ingeneous, because people who want to farm and horde ISK can have many accounts without having to pay big bucks every month, and people who just want to sit down and shoot at others in PvP can pay some other player to do their ISK generation for them.
Ah, I didn't know this. Thanks. This is a much less dangerous situation for them, but I would still rather keep real money and in-game money completely separate since if they're not, it creates powerful incentives to cheat the system.
CCP doesn't lose a dime when players use in game currency to buy game time, simply because for that game time to exist in the game economy, another player had to purchase it from CCP. That player then sold it to someone with more game currency. In fact, buying time cards that way is more expensive in real world dollars than paying for a subscription, so CCP is making more money this way.
It's just a terrible idea and the reason why tons of MMOs die but surprise surprise like a phoenix they turn a decent profit free to play.
MMOs die because the creeping feeling of an empty game wold spreads like a virus and people start to question whether it's worth the money and largely decide no. Anyone who decided yet then re-evaluates when there's even less people around. Continue until income drops below the threshold of staying afloat. If you change the value proposition to allow people to stay by being in the game more (that's the really clever part of this particular model) then you combat the sinking-feeling paradox on 2 fronts.
It's kind of worked out for them OK so far. Why would they need to change it due to unrelated issues that may or may not be an exploit?
Comments
IMHO CCP should never have allowed users to buy game time with in-game credits. That's effectively tying the security of their in-game economy with the security of their real world revenue. With the ability to do something like this, it's possible that users could find an exploit large enough to never have to pay for their game time again, potentially without CCP knowing about it.
I would suggest that they limit the number of "30 day game codes" that can be bought with in-game credits to something like three per year per user. At least then you're guaranteed that players are paying something (as long as they're not also sockpuppeting).
The number of people exploiting the game and playing for free forever is vastly smaller than the number of people who hemorrhage a lot of real money on space money so they can buy a new spaceship.
It totally makes sense from CCP's point of view to allow gamecards. People get silly about purchasing them so they can buy <shiny new object>. It is also a great carrot to keep people playing...since you can technically play for free if you have enough ISK.
I spent quite a while on the treadmill of "Have enough ISK to buy timecards...but need to keep hustling so I have enough for next month". Sometimes you miss your target and have to pay for a month, sometimes you don't.
I eventually became "profitable" in that my businesses generated more revenue than what I had to pay in timecards, so I could pay for free as long as I kept them running. But most people like to blow up spaceships, not run businesses, so I was definitely in the minority. Furthermore, the vast majority of players live in crappy space which is not very lucrative. Making that 500m a month for a timecard is a very difficult proposition.
Note: I, like most people, had 2-3 accounts that I was playing on. So that's a lot of timecards to buy each month.
When you buy a 30 day time code with in-game ISK, CCP gets real money. This is because the time codes are bought by other players with real money, and then sold in game for ISK to other players.
By allowing time-code's to be traded for ISK CCP has basically created a system where more accounts(= more $$$) are active than would otherwise exist. I find this method to be particularly ingeneous, because people who want to farm and horde ISK can have many accounts without having to pay big bucks every month, and people who just want to sit down and shoot at others in PvP can pay some other player to do their ISK generation for them.
Ah, I didn't know this. Thanks. This is a much less dangerous situation for them, but I would still rather keep real money and in-game money completely separate since if they're not, it creates powerful incentives to cheat the system.
CCP doesn't lose a dime when players use in game currency to buy game time, simply because for that game time to exist in the game economy, another player had to purchase it from CCP. That player then sold it to someone with more game currency. In fact, buying time cards that way is more expensive in real world dollars than paying for a subscription, so CCP is making more money this way.
And I'd be willing to bet that much like with gift cards, there's a nontrivial number of time cards which have been bought but will never be used.
It would seem so:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/08/09/197219/eve-player-l...
Or well, blown up.
Evidently there was a massive Corp that was transporting a huge (1700 'months') amount of ISK and got blown up.
Tidy profit, for the ones who run the game.
It's just a terrible idea and the reason why tons of MMOs die but surprise surprise like a phoenix they turn a decent profit free to play.
MMOs die because the creeping feeling of an empty game wold spreads like a virus and people start to question whether it's worth the money and largely decide no. Anyone who decided yet then re-evaluates when there's even less people around. Continue until income drops below the threshold of staying afloat. If you change the value proposition to allow people to stay by being in the game more (that's the really clever part of this particular model) then you combat the sinking-feeling paradox on 2 fronts.
It's kind of worked out for them OK so far. Why would they need to change it due to unrelated issues that may or may not be an exploit?