Not sure I understand the EVE economy. Have a bunch of players (a) told EVE to burn a bunch of in-game currency, so (b) EVE will make a donation to the Red Cross of the current USD / SKR market value of said currency, and (c) then EVE hopes that a bunch of players will then, net, purchase $190K-worth more stuff than they would have otherwise?
The massive space battle earlier this year supposedly destroyed £15K worth of stuff (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/eve-onlines-biggest-ever-battle-was-the-games-battle-of-the-alamo-8739330.html). How much of this was stuff that people had paid actual real-life money for, and would then immediately pay that money again to replace, and how much of it was stuff that you'd get by patiently being online?
Is it possible that a bunch of people deciding to donate in-game money might instead act as radical deflation? e.g. a whole bunch of people who are normally opposed agree to each sacrifice in-game currency, this all gets dubbed as generous donations to charity, but in fact all it means is that spending physical money to beef up your stats in-game is (maybe briefly) cheaper, because everyone else is at a lower level?
Presumably EVE understand their game's economy, but if player politics is involved they could easily have ended up being punked. Does anyone here understand the EVE economy and politics and can enlighten me?
The PLEX they talk about are each worth one month of game time, and you buy them directly from CCP for ~$15 each, which are spontaneously generated. You can also get them on eBay from users for ~$10, and these are existing PLEX that are traded to you. Normally you redeem them for game time, but since it's an in-game item, it's also a tradeable commodity. So yes, people either had PLEX on hand and redeemed/burned them for the fundraiser, or bought new PLEX and then redeemed/burned them. And yes, being EVE, someone was probably trying to game it during the volume spikes below.
Looking here, there was definitely a volume spike and price drop on 23 November, three days after the initial announcement. Maybe some of the big corporations (guilds/clans) finally organized? Maybe it got posted to Reddit? I dunno. There was another volume spike/price drop on 1 Dec, a week before the live event.
But otherwise, the price has returned to its pre-event price of a smidge under 600 million in-game credits.
I've never played, but it's my understanding that plex is bought with real-world money, and can be traded between players for non-fixed amounts of in-game money, but is not itself in-game money. I think it is an in-game object, however, that can be destroyed, and there aren't any refunds.
According to the economy section of the entry for Eve Online on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online), I'm at least in the right ballpark: "Players may only pay real world currency to CCP for in-game items (specifically the Pilot License Extension (PLEX), a token for renewing one's game subscription that can be traded in-game for virtual currency)."
In addition to what they said: EVE money is pegged to real currency, so you can trade in-game money for real-money at a specific exchange rate, or vice versa.
So in-game money *is* fractional amounts of realmoney, because you can convert it to realmoney.
No, you can't sell spacebux for real currency. You can only legally convert spacebux to 30 days of playing time via PLEX. CCP cracks down very hard on Real-Money Trading.
It also isn't pegged, the PLEX are freely traded on the in-game market and the price tends to vary due to various factors.
Yep, that's the other side of it - you either buy PLEX direct from CCP or one of their partners for real money and it shows up in the redeeming system. You redeem the PLEX as an in-game item, from there you can either apply it as game time, use it for some other in-game purpose (activating a trial account to a real, allowing an alt to train, pay for tournament entry or the yearly Fanfest) or sell it on the in-game market. Preferably you redeem the PLEX in a trade hub so you don't have to move it, since it's a destroyable in-game item and could be destroyed if someone kills your ship en-route.
It's a great mechanism for buying spacebux if you have real money, or buying game time if you don't have real money but a lot of spacebux, while making the real-money trade less lucrative since there's a legal alternative.
Small point: it's not illegal to sell spacebux or PLEX for real money, it's just against the company's TOS. They have the right to delete the items/revert the in-game sale/drop a ban hammer if they want to, but I don't know that that happens very often outside of huge game-breaking infractions.
Speaking of, that EVE Dev Blog is pretty neat even for non-players. They talk about boring stuff like improvements to the game and the above-mentioned tournaments, but also about fascinating (to me) things like market fluctuations from ship changes and the aftermaths (both in-game and real-world) of hugebattles.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-13 05:07 am (UTC)The massive space battle earlier this year supposedly destroyed £15K worth of stuff (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/eve-onlines-biggest-ever-battle-was-the-games-battle-of-the-alamo-8739330.html). How much of this was stuff that people had paid actual real-life money for, and would then immediately pay that money again to replace, and how much of it was stuff that you'd get by patiently being online?
Is it possible that a bunch of people deciding to donate in-game money might instead act as radical deflation? e.g. a whole bunch of people who are normally opposed agree to each sacrifice in-game currency, this all gets dubbed as generous donations to charity, but in fact all it means is that spending physical money to beef up your stats in-game is (maybe briefly) cheaper, because everyone else is at a lower level?
Presumably EVE understand their game's economy, but if player politics is involved they could easily have ended up being punked. Does anyone here understand the EVE economy and politics and can enlighten me?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-13 05:24 am (UTC)Looking here, there was definitely a volume spike and price drop on 23 November, three days after the initial announcement. Maybe some of the big corporations (guilds/clans) finally organized? Maybe it got posted to Reddit? I dunno. There was another volume spike/price drop on 1 Dec, a week before the live event.
But otherwise, the price has returned to its pre-event price of a smidge under 600 million in-game credits.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-13 05:41 am (UTC)According to the economy section of the entry for Eve Online on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online), I'm at least in the right ballpark: "Players may only pay real world currency to CCP for in-game items (specifically the Pilot License Extension (PLEX), a token for renewing one's game subscription that can be traded in-game for virtual currency)."
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-13 01:17 pm (UTC)So in-game money *is* fractional amounts of realmoney, because you can convert it to realmoney.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-14 06:05 pm (UTC)It also isn't pegged, the PLEX are freely traded on the in-game market and the price tends to vary due to various factors.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-14 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-14 08:43 pm (UTC)Preferably you redeem the PLEX in a trade hub so you don't have to move it, since it's a destroyable in-game item and could be destroyed if someone kills your ship en-route.
It's a great mechanism for buying spacebux if you have real money, or buying game time if you don't have real money but a lot of spacebux, while making the real-money trade less lucrative since there's a legal alternative.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-14 09:49 pm (UTC)Speaking of, that EVE Dev Blog is pretty neat even for non-players. They talk about boring stuff like improvements to the game and the above-mentioned tournaments, but also about fascinating (to me) things like market fluctuations from ship changes and the aftermaths (both in-game and real-world) of huge battles.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-20 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-20 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-20 09:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-20 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-20 09:18 pm (UTC)