I’m not going to talk in detail about the EULA changes wrt the alpha clones. Which is the rest of them. There’s nothing substantial in there. Even the 90 days thing isn’t. (before, it was ‘account expired; we can delete it now’)

What I am going to do is talk about the other change. That to gambling with EVE Online currency and assets. This is a pretty big change. It won’t directly affect a lot of people, who just play EVE and wouldn’t think about giving their money to another player to gamble with. But it will affect people more than some will think. I’ll explain that a bit further down.

Reaction

When I saw the devblog (Same time as the rest of you. The CSM didn’t get advance notice.), I was a little surprised. But not as much as I would have been a year ago. Over the last few months, there has been much more coverage in relation to gambling in video games, with some high-profile (in the industry) court cases. I was surprised, not because of the content, but only because of the timing. On reflection, with Alpha clones entering the scene, I shouldn’t have been surprised at that either.

CCP have a very big incentive to clean house. The removal of a subscription fee being required to play means that we’ll probably have a number of younger players joining us; younger players leading to greater scrutiny in this time of elevated concern about gambling in video games. CCP seriously don’t need that attention. It could prove very expensive for them, especially as it’s not something that they control.

While it’s unfortunate that some sites, such as EVE-Bet, are being hit by this, I fully understand why CCP are taking this tack. Unless you take the stance that all gambling sites are banned, you have to ban them one by one. White listing isn’t possible. Only black listing. So the ‘well behaved’ sites go down with the ones with a shadier reputation, instead of CCP opening their selves up to

Side Effects

This is where I have my only real problems with what is happening. Regardless of how you feel about them, some of the sites being forced to close did a lot of good for the EVE community, funding a variety of projects, and allowing for a richness of content which it will take time to recover. The common example is EVE-Bet. They’ve stayed above getting involved in the meta-game of EVE, instead funding a variety of streamers and other community content providers, such as EN24, Crossing Zebras and Eve-NT.

That’s something I’ll miss. I seriously doubt that donations will match that income. Even when you have something like Patreon, the number of people who will kick in real money is low. Probably because it is real money. The number of people who will donate ISK is similar. I’m lucky. I don’t run up much in the way of EVE expenses. Some of the other sites, well, they’re going to have to seriously change how they do things.

Long story short, this is a positive change for the game. But not one without collateral damage.

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