Eve Online: Emergency summit reports

The extraordinary meeting of Eve Online's Council of Stellar Management (CSM), called in the wake of recent player unrest, has concluded with statements being issued by both developer CCP and the council.

"It is CCP's plan that the Noble Exchange (NeX store) will be used for the sale of vanity items only," wrote senior producer Arnar Hrafyn Gylfason.

"There are no plans, and have been no plans, as per previous communication and CSM meetings, to introduce the sale of game breaking items or enhancements in the NeX store.

"The investment of money in Eve should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. The CSM, under NDA, has been presented with CCP's plans for continued evolution of the business model and agrees that nothing they saw breaks this principle. CCP has committed to sharing their plans with the CSM on this front on an ongoing basis."

The developer has also pledged to improve its communications with Eve players, and to explain the pricing strategy of the NeX store and the price tier system. In addition, CCP will now focus on lower-priced items as the store is expanded.

CSM chairman Alexander Gianturco (aka 'The Mittani') offered the council's opinion on the cause of recent player dissent.

"We believe that the situation that has unfolded in the past week has been a perfect storm of CCP communication failures, poor planning and sheer bad luck," he wrote.

"Most of these issues, when dealt with in isolation, were reasonably simple to discuss and resolve, but combined they transformed a series of errors into the most significant crisis the Eve community has yet experienced.

"We hope that this meeting will be the first step in the restoration of trust between CCP and the Eve community, and we will keep the community informed as to CCP's efforts in delivering on the commitments they made to us and to you."

The chairman also sought to re-assure players over the developer's position on non-vanity purchases.

"We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins.

"We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for 'gold ammo', ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared 'game destroying' virtual goods or services.

"We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage."

While accepting that the 'Fearless' newsletter was a deliberately controversial internal publication, not representative of CCP policy or game design, the council had stronger words for the leaked global e-mail sent by Hilmar Pétursson, global CEO of CCP.

"We were appalled by the leaked Hilmar e-mail and the atrocious and out-of-touch message it contained," they wrote.

"We sympathize and agree with those players offended and disgusted by it."

Elsewhere in the statement, both CCP and the council reached agreement on technical issues plaguing the release of the Incarna expansion. The developer will work on increased support for those running multiple clients. In addition, the pre-Incarna hangar will also make a return, although a timeline was not established.

You can read the full reports over at the official website.