EVE Online players weren't happy with the high prices of virtual goods in the NeX store, and two leaked documents made things worse. We attended a press conference to get more details from CCP and the CSM.

Following a wealth of controversy surrounding the high prices in EVE Online's new Noble Exchange store and a pair of leaked internal CCP documents, the company invited the Council of Stellar Management to Iceland on June 30 and July 1 to discuss these concerns. Both CCP and the CSM released written statements following the summit, which are required reading for any EVE Online player.

In response to the special summit, CCP held a press conference yesterday with representatives from various news outlets, including ZAM. We had the opportunity to speak with EVE Online Senior producer Arnar Gylfason and CSM Chairman Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco about the summit, micro-transaction prices, the leaked documents and more. Keep reading after the jump for their answers.

Opening Statements

EVE Online Senior Producer Arnar Gylfason: Having the CSM over for deliberation and discussion on the communications issue that followed the Incarna release was extremely beneficial. It's actually a prime example of why it's so good to have a body of people such as the Council of Stellar Management so that we can talk openly and honestly with a group of the player segment. They're an independent body that can put an independent stamp of approval on the things we're doing and saying. Trust is such an important aspect to have, and in our experience trust is best achieved with openness and honesty. That's my view on the sessions.

CSM Chairman Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco: The sessions are always very good to have. The previous summit in May went very well. We were quite pleased with what we saw. This one was a much less entertaining summit because from the perspective of the CSM, had CCP had better communication out of the gate, the entire situation could have been avoided, particularly regarding the Noble Exchange vanity store rollout. But the nice thing is that while the CSM is largely critical of the NeX store rollout and the situations leading up to the Incarna release, it's always good to work with Arnar. We think as long as he remains in charge of EVE, it's pretty much in good hands.

It was a far more contentious summit than previous ones, and I think that's been reflected in the CSM statement. The tone reflects our relief that the situations we were concerned about were resolved to our satisfaction. We do believe the specter of gold ammo and gold ships in EVE Online has been put down and that it was never there to begin with. There was a perception problem created out of the leaks and the Noble Exchange rollout, but this is something we would have hoped to avoid to begin with. But the summit went well given all of that.

Noble Exchange Store and Micro-transactions

Did the reaction of the player base to the pricing of the micro-transactions surprise CCP? Are there any planned changes to current prices? How will things be priced in the future?

Gylfason: One of the action points that came out of our meeting with the CSM was that we needed to be more transparent in telling people about the pricing strategy behind the virtual goods store. There is a low tier, medium tier and high tier of items that will have a varied price range. Those are pricing tiers, not functional tiers. We have to explain to people how those priced tiers work and we need to populate each tier more so that people start to understand the variety and the selection that's going to be available in each and every one. We actually have a dev blog planned that should come out at the same time as a couple of new items to the store. I hope that should be out this week. You'll get a lot more in-depth information on that in the next couple of days.

Is the current pricing in the store indicative of future pricing?

Gylfason: We have pricing in each priced tier, but we haven't really seen the extreme ends of the scale in either direction. While this is indicative, it's not set in stone.

Gianturco: We were quite vehement in saying that there needed to be more low-tier pricing when we were at the summit. There is only one low-tier item in the store, but because the store wasn't populated with enough in the low tier and the high tier, it was primarily middle tier. Had that tiering been populated properly, it would have been fine.

Will there be items more expensive than the monocle added to the store?

Gylfason: I fully expect so at some point. Yes, definitely. $10,000 gold-colored Scorpions? Who knows.

Gianturco: My perspective and the CSM's perspective is essentially if they want to charge a billion dollars for items, it's fine as long as it doesn't impact the competitive gameplay of EVE Online. If some crazy rich person wants to buy that, I don't care. By and large, the CSM doesn't care. That money helps go to develop EVE.

Can you say, on the record, that there will never be any non-vanity items that give a gameplay advantage sold through micro-transactions? Can EVE survive financially without them?

Gylfason: The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. Saying never puts me in an awkward position. EVE has been running for eight years now. If we do our jobs right, it's going to be running for 80 more. I don't want to put the person doing my job 80 years from now in the position where I've promised something, but I don't see being able to buy an unfair advantage with money as part of the core philosophy. I don't see it working for EVE. Can EVE survive financially without them? EVE can survive pretty much anything. It survived very well for a length of time without having alliances, incursions and planetary interaction. It's really a question of progress and evolving the concept that is EVE. EVE survived without having the CSM for a substantial amount of years, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have done it. It's a step in the right direction.

Gianturco: I think the finance question is an interesting one. One of the many issues the CSM began doing prep work with before we got to the summit is we wanted to try to independently determine the state of CCP's financials. One of the things about the player base of EVE that's different from many other player bases is that the game attracts professionals because it has time-based skills. You don't have to grind to go places. I put out the call through some of my contacts to have people with actual experience reading financial reports go over CCP's reports for the last few years. I should say that the CSM does not have access to these sort of things from our meetings, we just did independent research. My impression is that CCP is primarily doing the micro-transactions in EVE not as a revenue creation metric. I think CCP is doing it not to make money, but just to learn and get the capacity to do it such as they're not left in the dust as the industry changes.

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