CCP’s Six Month Struggle to Deliver New Eden Open Prize Money

GameSkinny was recently approached by a concerned EVE player who was aggrieved by the delay in distribution of the $10,000 New Eden Open prize money to the still waiting winners.

The EVE Online PvP tournament, which took place in November and December 2012 and was won by Asine Hitama’s team, should have seen money awarded to both the winning team and the runners-up.

But the unfortunate collapse of Vienna-based video streaming provider and tournament sponsor, Own3D, saw their pledged prize fund vanish as they filed for bankruptcy in January 2013.

Honouring the Debt

Own3D had been struggling in the shadow of competitors Twitch TV and the breakdown of $5m buyout negotiations with Machinima was the final curtain. CCP Games was left to honour the prize money payout, which they offered to do:

“We at CCP are saddened by the closing of Own3d and the content they streamed to gamers worldwide will be greatly missed. We had partnered with them to bring the New Eden Open to the EVE Online Community and to Own3d’s stream viewers, and we feel that it is only right for CCP to ensure that the unfortunate closing of Own3d does not affect the prizes that the winners worked so hard to earn. We appreciate your patience while we at CCP work out some of the finer details in delivering these prizes. Winners should look to receive an email containing information on their cash prizes within the next 10-14 business days.” – CCP Dolan, Community Representative, 6th February 2013.

However, the process of delivering payment has since taken several months to conduct, with some prizewinners allegedly still awaiting their money.

GameSkinny contacted CCP Games to find out what was going on.

Bureaucracy is Primary

Earlier today, CCP Manifest, Public Relations and Social Media Manager, offered GameSkinny this explanation:

“I spoke with Dolan and he said that for the people who have given us proper bank account details for payment, we’ve paid out the majority of them with just a few invoices left at the bank in the process of being paid. The remaining people either haven’t responded to EVE mails or e-mails or didn’t submit proper bank details. Sadly, some of the eligible people were account sharing, had banks that require special conditions to do foreign transfers, don’t have bank accounts or improperly filled out their information (like not including their real name). Dolan is planning one more round of trying to fix things for the remaining people before paying them in the PLEX equivalent.” – CCP Manifest, 19th June 2013

So it would seem that a combination of poor communication, red tape and user error is to blame for much of the delay and that most of the prize money has now been awarded. But was this really an acceptable explanation for a delay of six months?

At time of publication, the aggrieved player has yet to furnish GameSkinny with any further details beyond their desire to “safe-guard the player’s interests”, but in an effort to examine what went wrong, I braved the EVE Online forums to get a better idea…

Next: Unpaid Tournament Prize Money Investigated