This year alone, tens of thousands of dollars were raised during a PLEX for Good drive. A titan was sacrificed for a leukemia charity. Members of the then-CFC came together to support a comrade through his cancer treatment. The EVE community is capable of casting off in-game differences and coming together for wonderful causes. Writing this (extremely brief) retrospective, I feel proud to play some small part in this community.
But there’s a lighter side to the charitable nature of capsuleers, too. Cornak Firefist of Brave Newbies has started a crowdfunding campaign to buy pizza for CCP’s Iceland office.
The campaign to purchase pizza as a gesture of goodwill towards CCP can be traced to a reddit comment, and ultimately, an EVE forum post by CCP Ytterbium. In the post, Ytterbium expressed frustration with the unconstructive feedback dominating social media and other feedback channels. He mentioned that CCP is doing its best to communicate with the playerbase, and does so for the players benefit, not CCP’s.
“We were not trying to mislead you on purpose, we were trying to make you happy. […] We deserve some minimum amount of respect, and this kind of posts serves little practical purpose.”
It appears the community agrees.
At the time of writing, over $780 US has been raised after just 16 hours, with an impressive $195 coming from a single donation by Rock Brackenshield, and an additional $100 from TMC’s own Danikov.
Cornak intends to purchase the pizzas from Castello, an Icelandic pizzeria recommended by CCP Foxfour. At approximately $15 per pizza (1650 ISK — Icelandic Króna, not Interstellar Kredit — being the price quoted on the gofundme page, which is the price of a cheese and garlic pizza) after fees, approximately 52 pizzas have been raised in the early stages of this campaign.
According to LinkedIn, nearly a thousand staff are employed by CCP — or at least, are CCP employees with their LinkedIn profiles set up properly. A report from 2009 indicates around six hundred staff. Regardless, not all of CCP’s employees are at the Icelandic branch. Between that fact and the steady rate funding is climbing, CCP staff shouldn’t need to worry about only receiving a fraction of a slice when the order goes out next Thurday.
UPDATE: In the last 8 hrs, additional funding has brought the total to $1337. Elite PvPizza? At this rate, let’s hope Cornak & Co. have thought to warn the pizzeria in advance, and possibly are in talks w/other local pizzerias to ensure the quantity of food involved. 90+ pies is a massive order already, and without prior notice, would put a strain on the ability of any 10 pizzerias to deliver without disrupting their normal operations.
TMC contacted Cornak Firefist for an interview, which you can read on the next page.
TMC: So, the gofundme said it was an impulse. Is it an idea you’d entertained before and you just decided to go through with it? Was there anyone in particular you felt needed pizza, or just a sign of general appreciation?
Cornak Firefist: Never really had an idea about it before. I was reading one of the reddit threads Wednesday night, I think the Ytterbium one, and someone suggested sending him pizza, I think as a joke. It was 3 am, which means I’m prone to making really rash decisions, so I went with it and started asking in Tweetfleet how to send a pizza. It snowballed, and suddenly bam, I’ve put together a gofundme. No one in particular, they’ve just been doing some amazing work.
TMC: Ah. Was that the one when someone left some rather negative comments and he got a bit righteous about it?
Cornak: Yeah, that one. I’m pretty sure.
TMC: yeah, it got linked on reddit 🙂
Cornak: Yeah, that’d be the one I was reading.
TMC: Awesome. So, how much were you expecting to raise in the first place?
Cornak: Less than $60. I thought I was crazy for asking that much, but 3-4 pizzas was the suggestion.
Raphendyr Nardieu was the guy who suggested putting up the gofundme, so I set the sights pretty low and went for it.
TMC: So obviously it’s really taken off now. Are you going to see if you can feed all of CCP Iceland?
Cornak: I’ll certainly go for it. CCP has 600 people total according to a finance report from 6 years ago, so it’d be about $2,250 to give every one of those people two slices.
TMC: A lofty goal, but sounds like something worth aiming for given the momentum you seem to have caught. Do you have a favourite kind of pizza?
Cornak: Pepperoni. No competition.
TMC: Good choice! So, this is by far not the only case of philanthropic efforts by the EVE community — PLEX for Good being one of the bigger ones, but also the titan that blew up for charity, lots of smaller drives for players with cancer, etc. Why do you think that’s so prevalent in a community that is outwards renowned for scamming, cutthroat politics and record-setting destruction of virtual property?
Cornak: I’d say because it’s a game, any healthy person is going to separate it from reality. I mean, anytime you’re putting this much time into something, you’re going to develop an amicable relationship with people, and I think that stuff reflects this.
That said, it was 3 am and I may have been drunk.
The people who have been donating are probably better examples of incredible altruism, especially the guy who donated $195 out of nowhere, Rock Brackenshield.
TMC: Hokay. That’s all the specific questions I have. Any other comments you have for CCP or the EVE community?
Cornak: Alcoholism is bad.
The CCPizza crowdfunding campaign will conclude next Thursday. So far, $780 has been raised, and donator comments have largely ignored offering pizza box drawing suggestions in favour of kind words for the EVE Online development team.