“You are charging people who work for free to make your game better”
CCP Atlas has published a dev-blog about monetizing 3rd party tools for EVE, and regulating 3rd party development with a license. A license, that has to be paid for. It caused a huge negative response from EVE playerbase, including usually-very-calm Chribba: here and here.
According to the dev-blog:
- CCP will license 3rd party developers to create commercial applications and services created using the EVE API, In-Game Browser, Static Data Export, Image Export and Eve Image server.
- To become a licensee, developer must enter into a commercial license agreement with CCP. The fee for a commercial license is $99, payable annually by credit card or wire transfer (for identification purposes). We do not require further payments from developer or royalties.
- Developer can choose how they monetize their app or service, provided that they conform with the EVE EULA and ToS. Examples of monetization could be donations, one-time purchase, in-app purchase, subscriptions or ad-supported sites or apps.
- For ad-supported ventures, we require that licensed applications or services not be associated with ISK selling/buying, macros or bots. An example of unacceptable monetization would be accepting Google AdWords from sites violating our EULA and ToS. (this is essentially similar to our terms for fansites)
My blog is supported by ads (I’d say supported is too big of a word, because it barely covers the domain, not to mention hosting), so I would need a commercial license, if I want to keep my multiplatform JAVA EVE API Reader online. If this licensing feature goes live, I will remove it, because ads will not cover the $99 license fee, and I don’t want to charge this few users, who actually use my API Reader.
What about Chribba? He has multiple EVE related websites running, and forcing him to pay a license is, well, plain wrong. He is making all this non-profit and out of his own free will, trying to make it self sustaining using ads. CCP please reconsider. This thread is a serious warning from your playerbase. Stop learning from Apple.
UPDATE:
One might ask: $99 is not much if you make money by selling your app. I agree with that. The problem is AD-FINANCED websites like Chribba’s or any other, including mine. We offer free content and use ads to help cover running costs. Increasing these costs by 200-300% is what we rant about.
Other bloggers also comment on this case:
http://omnisarcanumofeve.blogspot.com/2011/06/slippery-slope-that-ccp-is-currently.html
http://www.warpdriveactive.com/2011/06/15/making-a-buck-off-eve/
http://www.ninveah.com/2011/06/who-let-lawyers-in-here.html
By the way: The forum thread is now 30 pages long.