Tunnel Vision

Last week on the Super Secret Podpack skype channel I got into a large discussion with Xander Pheona and Jeg Elsker of Crossing Zebras podcast about how much CCP was to blame for allowing the SOMERBlink / Shattered Crystal Plex selling partnership to evolve into what is effectively Real Money Trading (aka RMT), and then subsequently in late August run a community spotlight on the site which can be taken as tacit approval of the practice.

Xander and Jeg are argued that CCP should have done thorough background checks on the sites they promote and that there was a massive failure on their part to not see the process as being RMT and thus unhealthy for the game, and therefore heads should roll for this oversight.

In hindsight, vision is 20/20.

It is not fair to treat a large company as a single entity where the knowledge of one person should be automatically known to all other parts. Its also a little unfair to expect line employees tasked with fairly straight forward tasks such as "check this organization for signs of RMT" and expect them to have the flash of insight to realize that this promotion gimmick is actually a new and innovative form of RMT while simply checking for the traditional known forms of RMT. In other words, I'm not going to go and hang CCP Jimmy the Auditor from the nearest tree because he didn't raise flags that the Purchase Plex for SOMER Credit was a questionable practice. Nor would I take CCP Bobby the Security Guy out behind the barn to be put down for not detecting it either. People, especially employees in a large company, can get tunnel vision to the known and not see the forest for the trees when confronted unexpectedly with the unknown.

Tunnel Vision

That all being said, I'm glad to see CCP is addressing the issue for all ETC retailers and closing this loophole. Now that CCP Jimmy and CCP Bobby have been educated to this form of RMT and its put into their specific areas of tunnel vision, they are no longer excused from missing it when it arises.