I acknowledge that your professional life gives you expertise that I lack, but just stating it does not help me understand. And it won't be millions of euros :)

As it stands, I think that I have provided a compelling reason to think that even if not a good choice for CCP economics, a refund isn't obviously a bad choice either. Combine that with the customers who are genuinely harmed by the lack of a refund, and then you have a strong case in favour of refund. Now, you suggest that there is some liability towards customers that CCP would increase by a refund. But I don't see how this follows. Right now CCP has a liability in terms of providing and maintaining these BPO's in our inventory. If they were to refund AUR, they would shift that liability from one system to another. It merely gives players the ability to *change* their digital stock. The system's are in place, so I don't see how this represents an increase in a form of liability. CCP needs to either maintain their AUR wallet and the ability to purchase items, or maintain their already purchased digital items. And they already do both those things, and plan to continue to do so.

But besides all this, there is the question of whether a refund will *cost* them. That's where my previous arguments enter. Does a refund potentially make them more real world $$? That seems to me an open question, and the answer is not obviously "No".

This I had actually realised :) But I didn't think this was Eka's point, because it doesn't make any sense. You give CCP real world money, they give you Aurum in return. Aurum can be converted into whatever goods are available on market at the time. And these are digital goods. So it's not like you have a $3000 credit with a store that has to give you an item that they could have sold to someone else. CCP has an effectively infinite supply of these things...so the costs are merely in terms of server maintenance, electricity costs, and the code necessary to continue the existence of these digital goods -- code that will be in place anyway. If this is to count as a liability in the sense you describe, then it has to be the case that refunding AUR for all these BPO's is going to reduce CCP's revenue in some direct way. It's not going to in the same way a typical store credit would. It's going to in a simple way - the handful of beneficiaries of a refund will potentially not purchase some aurum for $$ that they otherwise would have. And then there's the flip side -- it may actually INCREASE revenue in terms of distributing the damage of a flood of AUR items over many items, instead of a few. That's the case I've been trying to make.



I don't think this is the case. This is what I have been trying to argue. It is at the very least not obvious that this will be a disadvantage to them at all, let alone a massive one. Digital items just don't work in the same way as real world physical goods, though they have similarities. I'm sure you're aware of, for example, the ridiculous way some "income lost to piracy" values are calculated. There are many subtleties that must be considered.

And then there is the obvious disadvantage of not refunding, in terms of some disgruntled customers and lack of trust, which you rightly point out in a part I didn't quote.

This is central to the very point I have been making. The change has already happened -- the AUR price of these items has gone up. As soon as these items are able to be sold for ISK, CCP starts making a loss. It doesn't matter if they refund or not, they make a loss. My central point has been this: it is not obvious that their loss will be greater if they refund now, than if they don't refund and later allow these items to be sold for ISK (which, in the spirit of the kind of game EVE is, they should allow).

I'm not sure that you actually disagree with me so much as you aren't really commenting on the arguments I've made. So I don't know if I disagree with you, either :)