[wccrawford]

You know what the best way to protest a game is? Stop playing for a while and send an email.

I know this sounds absurdly little, but look at it this way: If you're out doing other things, you might find something you like and -never come back-.

This scares the bejeezus out of game developers who exist solely on the fact that people are addicted. If their playerbase actually went and did other things, they couldn't keep going.

So yeah, a few thousand people clogging up the arteries of the system is impressive, but having your numbers drop from 30,000 people at a time to 25,000 at a time is really scary.

[DannoHung]

Okay, two things that are relevant to this particular instance of outrage that you may not be familiar with regarding EVE:

1) The real rage is not over the Incarna vanity items, which are priced silly, but ultimately pointless. It is over a leaked memo which suggested that RMT was planned for game affecting items like ships, weapons, and faction standing.

2) If you quit EVE for even a little while, you are ceding control over space and resources to other players in the game. EVE is one of the few games that has fulfilled the promise of a truly persistent and meaningful game world. In the major alliances, there are political and military structures designed to ensure control over null-sec systems and the planets and facilities that can produce high-grade equipment.

For your suggestion to work, either players would have to decide that their protest is worth throwing away the time and effort they've put into territorial control and asset development OR that everyone in the game would have to agree not to take territory while the protest was going on.

[tsotha]

People in empire corps could take a month off without risking anything. When I was playing all the action was in 0.0, but most of the players were in high security space.

[mattmanser]

Yeah, but the impact of a RMT system on non-vanity items has the greatest effect on the players who actually engage in pvp a lot, the null sec players.

[kevingadd]

One of the big problems with 'stop playing' protests is that gamers have to pay for a month of playtime in advance, and in many cases, they pay in 3-12 month intervals to save money. This is the case for World of Warcraft subscriptions, for example - they give you a discount if you pay up front.

If you stop playing after you already paid, the company isn't really going to suffer any immediate impact, and any visible dent in their metrics will probably be deferred until they see people not renewing subscriptions. A delay that large will basically kneecap any attempt at drawing attention to players' reaction to a change.

[cynest]

Also, Eve especially has problems with continuous commitments to your alliance. No spaceholding alliance would give up defending their space to protest vanity monocles and the possibility of microtransactions.

[antihero]

Hahaha, this is so fucking telling. I love how in depth Eve is because it makes players mirror real world issues.

[tricolon]

Some alliances are, as a means of protest, banning players who buy the new vanity items.

[JamesBlair]

Obvious solution would be to use empire/hauling alts. Although I noticed a fair bit of laser fire in the live feed as well, missles seemed to be a minority.

[JamesBlair]

In EVE (and many other MMOs), unsubscribing doesn't immediately deactivate your account, it just stops adding time to it. Quite a few players have unsubscribed. By using their remaining time to protest ingame, they're ensuring that other players see their protest, not just CCP.

[lloeki]

> You know what the best way to protest a game is? Stop playing for a while and send an email.

By not playing, you're not making anyone else currently playing the game aware of the protest. Although you're making CCP aware of your protest, you're becoming essentially invisible to the other users.

[joblessjunkie]

Especially when the "protest" generates news, and gets the product name in front of casually interested gamers who might actually sign up for new accounts.

[ctide]

That doesn't work when most hardcore Eve players aren't paying for it in cash, they pay for their subscription with in game currency.