Since the announcement by EVE Online developer CCP, with the details of the conversion of the PLEX tokens and Aurum, there has been great excitement in the universe.
To understand: PLEX tokens are items that are bought for real money. And can be exchanged for game time or resold for ISK (= ingame currency). One of these PLEX tokens can currently be bought from CCP for 19,99$ and corresponds to 1 month of playtime for EVE Online.
As a result, a balance has developed between the value of real money and in-game money over the years. Any intervention on the part of the developer could therefore have far-reaching consequences for all players. Even for the players who limit themselves completely to in-game trading, there would be consequences.
Aurum is so far a second premium currency that can be bought directly from CCP. For Aurum, players can purchase cosmetic skins for spaceships and avatars.
CCP's plans to unify the currency
The developers' plan was to simplify the entire system in order to only have one currency for game time and skins in the future. For this purpose, each PLEX token is converted into 500 units. Due to the smaller denominations, the right to exist for Aurum is no longer applicable and these are to be abolished. In itself an acceptable plan if it weren't for the conditions for exchanging Aurum. Amounts over 1000 Aurum are converted into the corresponding PLEX value, while amounts under 1000 Aurum are to be deleted. The only way to prevent this would be to buy 900 Aurum for 4,95$ until you have over 1000. Then you could have the amount converted.
If you consider that CCP gave away 300 Aurum to each player for Christmas, it looks a little bit like sprinkling salt on the wound. Those 300 Aurum were picked up by many players and would now fall below the limit. As the saying goes, "Repeat is stolen". Nobody wants to go that far, but it is certainly not the very fine way.
The voices on Reddit compare this procedure with the uproar that would arise if a bank had simply deleted all amounts under 10 DM when converting from German marks to euros.
Usually CCP is known as a developer to be very responsive to customer requests and it is to be hoped that CCP will listen to feedback from the EVE Online Community in this case as well.
One Forum thread for suggestions from players has already been created.
