EVE Online has kicked off new waves of controversy as players openly revolt against a huge policy change. A plethora of bad decisions by CCP has just gotten worse this week. Players are not happy, at all, and likely only to get angrier.
This recent change also signals a pretty huge shift in CCP policy. The previous position of CCP and the players has been that there’s a red line in the sand regarding monetization. CCP had not really been using in-game items as a monetization path for years, but that has slowly been changing over the last couple of years. And now, things are being kicked into overdrive. CCP has made it much harder not to call the game pay-to-win in the worst way. Fitted ships in particular have been a space where monetization hasn’t touched. But that all changed last month. On March 9, CCP released a devblog called “Prospectors Path”, in which they announced a new Prospector Pack.
That’s pretty bad in a game where fitted ships are treated like ammo, but the problem just got worse. CCP Games announced Friday that they would be increasing the price of a one-month subscription to EVE Online by 33%. This is coming at a time when the playerbase has been slowly bleeding amid a drought of new and engaging content.
Here’s the breakdown of the PLEX and sub prices as they will change next month. CCP revealed that their adding new bundles to pricing for subs, as well as PLEX prices shifting as well.
| Omega Subscription | Monthly Cost | New Cost (Total) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | $19.99 USD | $19.99 USD |
| 2 months | $17.99 USD | $35.98 USD |
| 3 months | $15.99 USD | $47.98 USD |
| 6 months | $14.49 USD | $86.95 USD |
| 12 months | $12.49 USD | $149.90 USD |
| 24 months | $11.29 USD | $270.99 USD |
PLEX
The PLEX Tiers have been entirely restructured, offering several more options from 50 PLEX to 20,000 PLEX:
| PLEX Packs | New Cost (Total) |
|---|---|
| 50 PLEX | $2.49 USD |
| 100 PLEX | $4.99 USD |
| 250 PLEX | $12.49 USD |
| 500 PLEX | $24.99 USD |
| 1,000 PLEX | $44.99 USD |
| 1,500 PLEX | $64.99 USD |
| 3,000 PLEX | $124.99 USD |
| 6,000 PLEX | $239.99 USD |
| 12,000 PLEX | $419.99 USD |
| 20,000 PLEX | $649.99 USD |
It’s very difficult for players to justify the price increase in 2022, especially when considering the previous points. The global economy is pretty rough, and likely to get tougher to justify entertainment expenses within.
The playerbase has been very vocal when it comes to what’s going on now. The entire CSM (the council of elected players to represent the players with the developer) came together to pen an open letter to CCP about this change. And the majority of the players seem to be considering how many accounts they wish to pay for, causing a ton of players to unsubscribe their inactive accounts and slim down on CCP’s potential revenue further.
The expectation is that CCP will try to backstop the revenue loss with more sales of Skill Points, ships, PLEX and more. The biggest shift in these price increases is that the availability of PLEX and other premium items has been incredibly tumultuous. This all comes at a time when the players have been increasingly fed up with CCP’s decisions.
The general consensus among players is that the increase in price won’t likely yield huge changes in terms of in-game content and improve the quality of said content. This one-two punch of lacking value add and bad corporate monetization pressure is a terrible thing for the future of EVE. Full stop. Most MMOs had not made this kind of decision regarding price increases in 2022, for obvious reasons. It’s worth noting that previous companies that tried this were left to rot after players left the game en masse, see Trion Worlds and Rift for a classic example. Not even titans of the genre like ESO and WoW have raised their prices.
