Monetizing 3rd party apps

[tgr]

New fun decision from CCP:

tr.v. mon·e·tized, mon·e·tiz·ing, mon·e·tiz·es

    To establish as legal tender.
    To coin (money).
    To convert (government debt) from securities into currency that can be used to purchase goods and services.
    Cha-Ching.


At this year's Fanfest CCP hosted the first Dev Track in what we hope will be a regular event. To kick off the event I gave an exciting announcement about monetization, which has up to this point been a sore point for EVE Online 3rd party software development, since it has been against the ToS to charge for applications or services which use the EVE Online Intellectual Property.

Starting this summer you will be able to charge people for usage of your applications, websites and services for EVE Online.

This new system was introduced at the Dev Track and discussed at the Fanfest round tables. We got a lot of good feedback at Fanfest and would like to get more before finalizing the service.

Highlights

    Simple process - Sign up on a webpage, get started straight away
    Inexpensive - $99 per year, no other fees
    Developer-friendly - Very few restrictions
    Open-ended - You can charge subscription fees, receive donations, sell your app in an app-store and more
    Non-commercial websites and apps will now require a (free) license

Grueling legal details

    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)
    CCP may at its discretion, list developers' application or service, and provide other publicity.
    Developer may not market their application or service as being associated with CCP in any way, other than to include a logo and credit line identifying application or service as a licensed application for EVE. Or similar attribution as may be required by CCP from time to time.
    We will continue to provide technical assistance via the Technology Lab forum and IRC channel, but CCP does not offer formal technical support to developers or warrant the API in any way. It's provided as is.
    3rd Party applications and services may not accept PLEX.
    CCP also allows non-commercial apps and services, subject to simple clickwrap agreement substantially similar to the one that is provided to registered fansites.

Questions

Here are some questions that we have received so far. Please use the feedback thread to add your own questions about this program and we will do our best to answer them and add them to this list.

Will corporation and alliance websites require a commercial license?

No, private websites do not need a license. However, if you have an external facing part of the website that uses the EVE IP you will require a non-commercial or a commercial license, depending on your use.

Will services for in-game currency require a commercial license?

Yes, if you require any sort of payment for your services you will need a commercial license.

Will website ads require a commercial license?

Yes, for ad-supported websites you will require a commercial license.

Will donations require a commercial license?

Yes, for donation supported websites you will require a commercial license.

Will I be able to charge real life currency for in game services?

No, the commercial license does not allow you to charge real life money for any in-game services.

Why charge for the license at all?

The licensing fee is there to partially cover expenses from this initiative and more importantly, we need to charge a fee so that we get proper non-spoofable information about the applicant. We have kept the fee as low as possible and hope that the $99 fee is low enough to not dissuade serious developers from participating in the program.

When will this happen?

This program is something we're hoping to get up and running this summer so if things go well, you'll be able to sign up in the next few months (as always though, we can't make any promises).

The feedback to this blog is an important input into the process of finalizing the details.

Parting words

That's about it. This is a pretty simple program and hopefully it will help you convincing your significant other that developing applications for a space game until 3am in the morning is a good idea.

For us at CCP this is an important step in getting more exposure of the tremendous possibilities that the various hooks into the game provide.

I'm sure we will have plenty to talk about in the discussion thread.

Even chribba got pissed enough to write angry :words:

ok seriously, I've like Ctrl+A, backspace this post 5 times now, tbh I'm out of words.

I would like to know how many 3rd party developer/sites are doing it for the ****ing awesome income it generates?! Seriously, this if anything WILL kill development of sites and services.

As a creator of sites/applications/services for New Eden since well over 6 years now, I can tell you that I have never once created something with the goal to make money off it, this whole thing about needing a license to make something for the community is just ****ing ******ed! Just hearing this makes my interest/will for developing things crash.

This is not about the $99, this is about how you want to charge me because I want to do something for the community out of my free will - does that sense? Do you feel I am stealing your IP, making massive amounts of money off your IP? Then tell me straight up, don't try to bind it into some fluffy clouds and call it "great news".

Every IPO in Market Discussions will now require a license, since after all, it's donations. Corporations should get a license too, I mean having a corp tax of >0.0% could be seen as a donation to the corporation...

And yeah, I guess me and everyone else with an EVE IP tattoo will need a license, I mean, some other geek may think it's awesome and want to buy me a beer...

I'm just very sad to see this even being discussed, talk about a punch in the face. Don't get me wrong, I see your point of EVE IP, and yes I can agree that it may need to be controlled to some extent, but this is not the way. Not by far.

/c

Look at that backpedalling:

Feeback thread discussion
thank you all for your input so far. Based on your comments, I feel I should step in to clarify a few things and address some concerns.

1) The blog represents the first draft of what our bizdev department is thinking of in terms of the license agreement. We published it to get feedback from you guys. This is not the final word on the matter and we want to build this service up with you so that it's fair and empowers you to build these applications and services which better the game.

2) Regarding this clause: Q: Will services for in-game currency require a commercial license? A: Yes, if you require any sort of payment for your services you will need a commercial license. I've spoken to Biz Dev and this is something that might be revised, possibly to exclude ISK payments. I'll let you know as soon as I know more.

3) This project is not about CCP making money. Whether we charge $100 or $50 or $10 for a commercial license won't make a big difference to our balance sheet. $99 is the lowest that we estimated that we could reasonably go and still justify the cost of the service. If this is too high for app developers, this is something that could possibly be revisited.

4) Nothing is set in stone. We're willing to reconsider anything you deem unfair about the program. Donation and ad supported ventures is a tricky thing to allow without any sort of a commercial license though and that's a legal slippery slope. Whether that license needs to be $99 per year is something we might reconsider.

Please help us by continuing to give constructive feedback into how you want this service to be since our motives are really to empower 3rd party development and not to try to squeeze money out of starving programmers.

Our Biz Dev department will give us some more answers and clarify ambiguity. Rest assured this will change to suit your needs and our aim is to make you want to develop software and services for EVE and not to throw obstacles in your way.

[luckton]

TL;DR it for me...is EVEMon going to start charging people to use the program?

[tgr]

We're going to have to see what CCP's backpedalling is going to end up at, first.

[tgr]

To make it slightly less long-winded, CCP decided to try to ask people who use the EVE API, In-Game Browser, Static Data Export, Image Export and Eve Image server, to sign a license agreement with them, and if there's any donation, isk or real money, they have to pay a once-a-year fee of 99USD.

This in turn made tons of 3rd party app developers very angry and they started threatening to pull/offline all their services for 48 hours, and even Chribba got in on the bitch-fest, and CCP are now backpedalling hard on the terms.

[luckton]

To make it slightly less long-winded, CCP decided to try to ask people who use the EVE API, In-Game Browser, Static Data Export, Image Export and Eve Image server, to sign a license agreement with them, and if there's any donation, isk or real money, they have to pay a once-a-year fee of 99USD.

This in turn made tons of 3rd party app developers very angry and they started threatening to pull/offline all their services for 48 hours, and even Chribba got in on the bitch-fest, and CCP are now backpedalling hard on the terms.

Ah, yeah that makes sense.  I can see CCP wanting to get more monies, but for a game so long in the tooth, and with your only audience being the hardcore group that's followed you since the beginning, this would be rather something to rage about.

Kudos to the fansites for not rolling over.

[tgr]

If they'd been known for high quality, good value for money and never-changing APIs etc, then I suppose they could start thinking they could charge for access, but as it is right now, I think they're more in need of things like dotlan, various killboards, EFT, evemon, etc etc etc just to make their game suck less.

So if I were CCP, I'd tread lightly.

[Brolan]

I'm wondering if Capsuleer will get resurrected?

[Comstar]

Without the out of game ship designer, character skill planner or Goonswarm GARPA map program (for 0.0 fleet command and navigation), I wouldn't want to play Eve Online.

I guess CCP got jealous of Solo getting a few K a year in donations from Goons to run his message board.

[Kageru]

I've got the point where watching CCP be retarded is part of the fun of the game.

I take this, and their interest in cash-shop items, as evidence that Eve revenues are in decline. And they probably lost a couple of thousand subscriptions with the NC imploding. That said this is probably one of the most suicidal and unproductive attempts.

[luckton]

I'm tellin' ya, make Empire space have PvP immunity, drop a metric ton of PvE stuff in Empire, and invite the care bear crowd in.  They're already got everybody they're gonna get based on sandbox PvP...there's no more money to be made there.

Either that, or go with the trend; open a cash item shop and let the Free to Play times roll. 

[Kageru]

The carebears are already the ones making eve financially viable. Which is pretty impressive considering how bad Eve PvE is. And for all I know they like the small amount of PvP risk so they can brag how they play a manly game. The null-sec game is a sideline and a resource sink for the empire economy.

You can use the ingame map to see "pilots in space in the last half hour". Null-sec has a dim dusting, empty in large parts (especially after the last nerf) while empire glows like a firey sun.

[Sparky]

I could see a lot of 3rd party developers saying "fuck it" and just pulling their shit offline over this.  Fair enough CCP wants their cut if someone is actually charging for services, but even accepting donations to cover running costs?  That's going to ding just about every alliance killboard or useful EVE app out there.  CCP always manages to pull something monumentally retarded every time I resub just to make sure I regret it.

[Goumindong]

At first I started reading and was like "this is a pretty good idea, its about time they started letting people charge for out of game and in game services related to their product"

And then I read further... licenses for donation supported? Licenses for non-commercial use? Licenses for fucking in game currency charges for services?

I always knew their economist was pretty shitty. But did they fucking fire him because he can't be that bad.

[tgr]

I always knew their economist was pretty shitty. But did they fucking fire him because he can't be that bad.

Technetium.

[luckton]

The carebears are already the ones making eve financially viable. Which is pretty impressive considering how bad Eve PvE is. And for all I know they like the small amount of PvP risk so they can brag how they play a manly game. The null-sec game is a sideline and a resource sink for the empire economy.

You can use the ingame map to see "pilots in space in the last half hour". Null-sec has a dim dusting, empty in large parts (especially after the last nerf) while empire glows like a firey sun.

Huh...guess things changed.  I thought null-sec was where all the 'hotness' occurred.

Still, I get bored/frustrated far too easily with this game to throw money at it.  They could have easily capitalized on the PvE game if they'd invested more into it back when E&B sunk to the depths. 

[tazelbain]

Null-sec is where the interesting stuff is(was) happening but it is not were the bulk of the players are.  You should read the the reports from the EvE's economist.

[Numtini]

Even the bulk of nulsec players aren't in nulsec. They're sitting in jabber while trading in Jita or running missions in empire for cash or whatever.

[Goumindong]

I always knew their economist was pretty shitty. But did they fucking fire him because he can't be that bad.

Technetium.

Point taken.

[Fordel]

The vast majority of EVE's players have never been to 0.0 and couldn't tell you which alliance was running the show at any given time. Nor do they care.



When Goons stole the BOB alliance name and that huge invasion was happening, you know what the chat line was in empire? "Who is BoB/Goons?"

[eldaec]

Even the bulk of nulsec players aren't in nulsec. They're sitting in jabber while trading in Jita or running missions in empire for cash or whatever.

This is a point often overlooked.

I am a null sec player, but of my 9 characters, 7 are permanently in hi sec, and the other 2 are in low sec more than half the time. Null sec doesn't have the resources necessary to support itself, I go to null regularly for ops, and resources generated elsewhere are used to fly internet spaceships in null sec; but the "vast majority of players" line is distorted by the fact that null sec players also spend an awful lot of time in empire.

[Fordel]

Null-sec could shit rainbows and blowjobs and people would still alt it up in empire. Even then, you could remove the entire null-sec playerbase and their alts from empire, and still have empire dwarf the null-sec population.

[Goumindong]

When Goons stole the BOB alliance name and that huge invasion was happening, you know what the chat line was in empire? "Who is BoB/Goons?"

Yea that isn't true. And frankly i doubt that that empire dwarfs the 0.0 playerbase so long as you're counting players and not alts. Larger yes. Dwarfs? Probably not.

[Comstar]

When Goons stole the BOB alliance name and that huge invasion was happening, you know what the chat line was in empire? "Who is BoB/Goons?"

BoB *was* the evil empire of Eve, a picture they tried hard to project through propaganda and Dev cheating. The day BoB fell, everyone in the galaxy was talking about it. It was an epic level event that Eve, for all it's many many faults, was the only game able to produce it.

These days? There is no BoB, and Eve is sadder for it.

[tgr]

These days? There is no BoB, and Eve is sadder for it.

Well, there's DRF, which has the potential to become the next BOB if they continue to burn the galaxy.

Anywho, update on the CCP mindfuck:

Hello all.

At the risk of sounding corporate-y, I have to say I‘m impressed and greatful for the amount of passion shown in this thread.

There are a lot of very valid points raised here. What's interesting is that most, if not all, of the issues that are being raised are because of confusing wording, terminology or misunderstandings in the draft document.

It is in no way the purpose of the program to deter or make money off 3rd party development. The core purpose is simply to have control our IP and brand and have a contract in place so we can have some form of regulation on apps and services that use the EVE name and EVE resources (API).

It‘s obvious we have to review and iterate on the contract and program as presented in the devblog since most of the points mentioned in the comments are not in line with its core purpose.

Unfortunately that will take some time and we‘re kind of swamped for the next couple of weeks.

So what we‘ll do is take a step back, harvest feedback from this thread, do an iteration pass on the contract and terms and give you an updated version before the end of summer. Until we have a license that meets our needs and your expectations we will not make any changes to our terms or enforcement thereof.

As always, your feedback is not only welcomed but in fact essential to us. Thank you.

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason
Senior Producer of EVE Online

Any guesses on how many services which we consider essential (dotlan, eft, GTS, evemon etc) are going to go away if they insist on this "get a license" thingy?

[eldaec]

Dotlan, yes ad supported.
Gts, no, private free software (also doesn't really depend on the api)
Eft, no, AFAIK it is a private project handled in spare time.
Eve central, yes ad supported.
Evemon, not sure, not aware of any donation or ad support?
Eve kill, yes ad supported.
Any corp forum or killboard, yes if it runs ads.
Various generic kb sites, those that take payment (most) will need a licence.
EOH, definitely, pays isk in and out.
That stupid character valuer, god I hope it relies on ads.

Basically anything running from a website is going to be ad or donation supported for bandwidth, but not much else.

However, as a class of tools exists that doesn't require a licence, they are presumably leaving the api open. So it is hard to see this being rigorously enforced beyond those who want to take in game payment.

[Kageru]

These days? There is no BoB, and Eve is sadder for it.

It's worse than that really. If the DRF stays as a coherent entity there's really no practical threat to it. Goons *might* be able to resist a concerted attack, but they aren't numerous or expansionist enough to contest the space the DRF has captured. The game has reached a unipolar configuration when Mittani was concerned about their being only three 6+ months ago.

[luckton]

So with things progressing as they are, if the eventuality is that Goon will control everything, who's going to want to jump in a sandbox controlled by one group, and if you don't like their way your sandbox experience is basically over?

[Trigona]

So with things progressing as they are, if the eventuality is that Goon will control everything, who's going to want to jump in a sandbox controlled by one group, and if you don't like their way your sandbox experience is basically over?

It's absurd to draw that conclusion, the Goons are currently working out how they'll survive the collapse of the NC.

[Kageru]

There is zero danger of the goons dominating the game. Which is a shame really as the goons are actually relatively supportive of smaller alliances. It will the "Elite raiding guild" equivalent of Eve that end up dictating how the null-sec game is played.

... which is why CCP is getting scared watching revenue dry up. I'm sure they lost many thousands of subscriptions from ex-NC mains and their alt-farms.

[eldaec]

DRF don't have the capacity to control eve any more than bob or the nc did.

Nobody can realistically stop them choosing their home regions but they, like others, do not have numbers to dominate the whole map.

The obvious example is delve, which remains an incredibly rich region that none the 3 blocs can even be bothered to shoot structures for because I'm doing so they would bore their memberships to tears.

DRF are having enough trouble just clearing pos in Tribute.

[Kageru]

Not really. The sheer "fuck off" power of super-capitals has meant a very small number of active pilots can easily sit on a timer and defend it, not to mention grind Sov. That's why neither goons nor the ex-NC are bothering to even harass DRF territories. They're locked down and now have the resources to generate even larger super-cap blobs.

I honestly reckon they've allocated space. Evoke in Deklein and PL going back to reclaim its delve holdings.

[Stabs]

These days? There is no BoB, and Eve is sadder for it.

There's always an evil empire packed with smug elitists who need taking down a peg or two. It's how these games work. It's why people get so sucked in.

At the moment in addition to DRF I'd say PL have some claim to be the new BoB although they have the sense not to claim sov anywhere so they're not really an empire. They are smug elitists who need taking down a peg or two, very much like Bob were 4 years ago.

[Amaron]

They're already got everybody they're gonna get based on sandbox PvP...there's no more money to be made there.

It's not the PvP crowd they've milked to the max.   Really it doesn't matter what they do.   They can't get mass market appeal with the systems they have.   At the same time people will quit if they change those systems.  That's probably why CCP has been so desperate to get something else going via Dust or their shitty vampire MMO.

[Phildo]

their shitty vampire MMO.

When that shitty Vampire MMO turns out to be excellent, and to finally be the one that succeeds beyond its first few months, I am going to laugh at all of you.

[Korachia]

Yeah, I am sure that game will sparkle.