Was promotion of Eco Credits a Scam?

[Afrozzi]

First let’s look at the definition of a scam: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.

The CEO of Strange Loop Games recently came forward and said there is no real revenue sharing with Eco Credits. There is no way to redeem virtual currency or any actual plan to allow this. However, many people defended this system with the reasoning they are giving back to the community.
Let’s look at some of the languages developers used to describe the credit system:

• “proceeds shared with server hosts and eventually others”
  
• "Proceeds are being shared with the community"
  
• “50% of the value of credit purchases will be given back to community and charity. We start with the server owner and charity getting a share.”
  
• ”We gave the Marketplace a unique spin that also gives back and "doesn't just take”

There is clearly an attempt to persuade people that there is a revenue-sharing system. There seems to be an intentional goal to blur the distinction between the revenue promised to charity (cash) and the payments going to the community (virtual currency)
Virtual currency can only be used for cosmetic skins or game keys. There is an option to buy a gift certificate from one specific expensive server host, however that gift certificate isn’t even going to pay for one month of game time, let alone ongoing expenses.

How can the devs possibly defend this as not intentionally misleading the players? Getting a share of the proceeds means to get a share of the money. Doesn’t this match the dictionary definition of a scam?

[TheFounder]

Since its being ignored, i'll post a response :D

I mean a scam sounds maybe a bit harsh. I'd call it miss represented probably. In my opinion is not the biggest problem this game has though, there are a lot of design choices made that just makes me go "why?".

The repair system, i get what you are trying to do, but you made blacksmiths as a repair profession, yet sprinkle all repair parts over all different professions and then nerved the blacksmith prof even further by making tools go worse every repair.

Speaking of professions, Blacksmith does not have enough content to warrant it as a profession. You can barely even get it to lvl 7 without spamming nails nails nails. Then there's paper milling. You made it needed, by making paper needed for advanced and modern papers, but not by expanding on it. So now someone on the server has to spend a star just to que paper and do nothing else with it. The painting profession has a few more things to do, but in my eyes still doesn't warrant a full profession, the few things it does could've have been spread out over tailoring and milling.

Most design choices are made to make cycles last longer and keep professions needed, since it is a common complaint. But from what i have seen is that it has the opposite effect. Most things are now just more tedious, people burn out even faster now on runs and half of them don't even finish shooting down the meteor. People wanted more fun things to do, not more tedious things to do.

I think this reflects back in the steamdb player numbers. its been on a decline for quite a while. V10 took a long time, but brought back a lot of players for a short while to check the game out again. V11 didn't even reach half of that. With every update bringing back less and less players who have moved on or given up on eco, i am afraid for its survival. Since i got into the pre alpha testing and Alpha 2 release coming this friday of Ashes of creation, i am one of those players probably not coming back.

[Afrozzi]

Okay, ignore the word scam. Let's say same thing without using it.

How can the developers possibly defend this as not intentionally misleading the players? Why was there even a need to come forward and say there is no revenue sharing, only after players began questioning this?

Developer if you read this, what does "sharing proceeds" mean to you? Why did you use this language if nothing earned by SLG is being shared?

Are charities getting paid in Eco Credits? Why was it presented that server owners and charity are getting a cut in the same sentence with NO explanation of the difference anywhere in the multiple announcements or discussions about this?

[Afrozzi]

After checking in game, this is the tool tip in the marketplace for server hosts:
"

Host Cut

Hosts of worlds that are public and have at least 10 users with 2 hours recent playtime are eligible for a cut of the marketplace revenue"

There it is, as plain as black as white. Either developers lied to us, or they messed up and are now trying to gaslight us.

[Jenbles]

They misrepresented and lied as much as they felt they could get away with to trick people into defending the marketplace addition.

[Afrozzi]

Their new official stance was that they made it very clear all along that there was no plan to share income with the community. After being presented with the tool-tip above, they said "technically its true since revenue is income and the [marketplace] currency is Eco credits." Typical gaslighting behavior.

I get that may fly in their private echo chamber, but they would never claim something like that on Steam. It is pretty clear this action was indefensible. Still to this day people are confused, some even defending it by saying "profits" are being shared.

[Dhrekkin]

Every time I consider coming back to play Eco again I check the comments for what's going on and see something that turns me off. I'm not sorry I uninstalled shortly after seeing how 10 wrecked the game and being told by a dev to essentially to go F myself if I don't like it. Thanks for the enlightenment.

[SLG-Dennis]

Sorry for the late response, it took me a while to investigate this and talk to everyone involved.

So, first for the intended state and how it works:
- Eco Credits are a integrated virtual currency in the Eco universe, and all mentions of revenue in the game related to the marketplace refer to that currency, similar to how we try to address the player as "citizen" within the game instead of as "player".
- On every purchase of a marketplace item with Eco Credits on a server, shares according to the info screen based on the purchase amount in Eco Credits are distributed to the respective receivers, also in Eco Credits. There is no sharing on buying Eco Credits with real money, sharing is based on Eco Credits spent and hence directly related to them.
- Shares are currently received by eligible server hosts, streamers and modders. The implementation for settlement shares is a bit more complex and still work in progress, as had been announced when the marketplace released. Charity gets donated the value of its accumulated Eco Credits share in real money.
- Eco Credits can be transferred to other users and / or be used by the receiver to buy any marketplace items, eco invites and hosting time with participating game server providers, which we are aiming to expand over time. As such we do indeed consider Eco Credits to have some inherent value - for example with upcoming settlement shares players can gain access to marketplace content or licenses for their friends without needing to pay for it, which we do consider to be "giving back", that also applies to already existing share mechanics.
- There actually is investigations going into how Eco Credits could be made convertable to real money, but that is a complex matter that is also affected by and dependant on legislation worldwide and hence is a long-term goal. This option, if introduced, may not be available to all players depending on location and applicable law. The intention is to start a test with that for modders that generate a notable amount of credits, as is actually mentioned on the wiki page for Mod Registrations, which also lists the current abilities Eco Credits have: https://wiki.play.eco/en/Registered_Mods. More information on that would be published once it is actually available, as mentioned this isn't a simple nor fast process.

I absolutely understand how the marketplace design can be misunderstood with the communication surrounding it, though it's a typical case of Hanlon's Razor and not intentional misleading. The texts in the game are written by the software developers themselves and neither checked by a communications nor legal team, given we don't have either for such purpose. Naturally, when writing texts, software developers don't put a lot of emphasis on intricacies like if two words are separated in the same sentence and separately explained and potentially don't even recognize that to be important. Additionally everyone working with the system knows the system and it's full design in-depth - as such there is a human bias when reading any self-written texts, as they do make sense to oneself, while they might not for others.

I'm not sure if I've been able to find all statements made by other colleagues after talking with them, but the ones I found were not malicious and did follow the above listed idea of the marketplace in its essence - but some certainly didn't do a good job at representing it. I have noted to them that they did lead to confusion and asked to check back in the future. We don't filter all communication through a single departement or person, as such especially in a less formal environment like our discord where we encourage our staff to actively interact with players it is easy to create unintended misunderstandings or not knowing what someone else said that may already have newer information. That is solely upon us and a consequence of our preferred more open communication approach. We will try to improve that while retaining that approach.

I also created tasks to reword the texts in the game to be more clear in accordance to the confusing points and expectations voiced here. I hope that answers your questions and makes the design sufficiently clear now. Beyond that, I can only apologize for any confusion caused - it was certainly not intended.

[Afrozzi]

In the original post, they are all quotes from Steam. They are from the official release notes and Steam comments from SLG-Dennis. Given all communication on Steam has been from the CEO and SLG-Dennis, I have no idea what colleagues this could be referring to....

Many people have been defending the system as revenue/profit sharing ever since the announcement about sharing proceeds. Follow up comments on Steam only encouraged their belief.

The in-game tooltip was found after this post was created and was the only outside communication. However, it has now been confirmed what I said. SLG's official stance on this being revenue sharing: "technically its true since the [in-game virtual currency] is Eco credits."

Now, the whole thing is being pinned on some helpless programmer. Using this to discount all previous communication on Steam is another form of gaslighting. The communication here is not from a programmer.

There is still no response to claim of "sharing proceeds" from the official announcements. If someone told you "I will share proceeds of my lemonade stand with you", and they ended up paying you in lemonade, you would think they were a trickster.

Edit: Clarified it was in release announcement

[Semirotta]

I truly hope this "virtual currency" of yours stays like this and wont proceed to attempt going into some kind of crypto currency of its own and what not. Imagine being into that kind of stuff, what an idiot one must be.