Here I am

The first link states they (LotteryInspection) haven't checked the mechanics of the game, and that they do not have the rights to get to see those.

Then what good is LotteryInspection as a body of oversight? Apparently MA refusing to show them the mechanics ends the discussion. That makes the whole body a toothless tiger, and them pointing out that the police can get this insight following a criminal charge is just a cop-out.

The second link claims things have to do with skill. There's countless examples of noobs hitting massive HOFs. You and I could be similarly skilled, crafting the same component on a crafting machine at the same time. I lose, you hit an ATH. How is that not chance?

 

There might be some misconceptions regarding "skills". We are not talking about skills in terms of in-game features of an avatar which in the end is not much more than a number in a calculation. And even that argument would be invalid in the case of EU because in fact you don't need to "skill" you can just buy the skills. But we are talking about real world skills such as eye-hand coordination, endurance and such. The question is whether the outcome is mainly skills-based or chance-based. And most activities in EU are clearly games of chance. The high striker fun fair game is skills-based, Counterstrike is skills-based, DOTA is skills-based, Roulette isn't, Entropia Universe isn't.

EU as a phenomenon is gambling, whether it's gambling according to Swedish laws I cannot say, but I would be surprised if it wasn't and in that case the Swedish laws would be wrong. And if Swedish authorities reponsible for determining whether something is gambling or not cannot come to a clear conclusion in the case of EU for whatever reason then these authorities are indeed useless. MA themselves regularly claim "more than a billion microtransactions taking place in Entropia Universe every month", most of which might be gambling, and that "Entropia Universe boasts a yearly Gross Domestic Product of more than $400 million – equivalent to the nation of Tonga", most of which might be a result of gambling. So it's an operation that should be interesting enough for a proper investigation.

Of course MindArk is aware of all of this. You can find a hint in the share offer prospectus from October 2005, in the chapter "risk analysis":


- http://cdn.entropiaplanets.com/w/images/6/65/Prospectus_regarding_share_issue.pdf

All that said, I want Entropia Universe to succeed, even though I haven't much hope left. I even want Mindark to succeed because the livelihood of families depends on it and most Mindark employees are probably nice people, just like us ;) So I don't really support efforts to hurt Mindark. But at the same time I want people responsible for all the crap over all the years to be held accountable for all the crap. Since 2002 they deliver an absolutely shitty game that's only still around because they probably accidentally implemented gambling and high spending gamblers are substituting the lack of 1000s of gamers spending their ordinary 15 bucks / months for a nice MMO gaming experience. Pretty much every project besides EU gambling has been a fail, in EU like the planet partner program, outside EU like the NASA game, Compet, DeepToken, etc., and then the lack of communication, the contempt for the "community", the favouritism, the discrimination of planet partners, ...

I don't even want gambling removed from EU, but it should be labeled accordingly and there should be systems in place to prevent individuals from ruining their lives. Gambling as a feature in EU shouldn't prevent Mindark from delivering a great game beyond gambling, to the contrary it should actually deliver a boost due to gamblers spending more than the average MMO gamer. The problem probably is that the intention never was to deliver a great game and they actually don't give a fuck not only about the people playing the game but also about the product itself. I could overlook many bugs, slow development and wrong decisions regarding gameplay if all of this was committed by some communicative, likeable, a little quirky dudes in Sweden who happened to have the resources to create their own vision of a great game and sometimes listened to the community, I just cannot condone... Mindark.