Award-winning developer of EVE Online attending GDC to showcase “EVE Online: Apocrypha” and actively recruit for further growth Reykjavik.

ICELAND – March 23, 2009 – CCP, one of the world’s leading independent game developers and creator of EVE Online, has announced a strong corporate outlook ahead of this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), (San Francisco, CA, March 23-27, 2009). The company was recently honored for its innovative approach to development; is announcing aggressive recruitment plans; and earlier this month released the latest EVE Online expansion: Apocrypha, available online as well as in retail stores via a distribution partnership with Atari.

CCP has received two key business awards over the last month, The Icelandic Innovation and Knowledge Award from the Association of Businessmen and Economists in Iceland and the 2009 Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies Award from the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). Both awards highlight CCP’s strength and innovation in technical development.

CCP was founded around innovation and the pursuit of excellence,” said CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson, “and those core values have continued to be at the heart of everything we do, even as we’ve expanded our global reach in the last few years. We feel great pride and humility to have been recognized with these prestigious awards and feel more determined than ever to keep attracting brilliant people and building the best battletested technology to create the most compelling virtual worlds imaginable.”

On the heels of these two awards, and with March 10th’s retail box release of EVE Online: Apocrypha, CCP has announced a heavy presence at this year’s GDC. Several CCP representatives will give presentations, and CCP is also hosting booth #210 in the GDC Career Pavilion as part of its recruitment drive.

GDC speaking slots include:
- Eyjo Gudmundsson, Lead Economist, and Petur Oskarsson, Researcher: “The Council of Stellar Management: EVE Online Bridges Worlds for a Society”
- Halldor Fannar, CTO: “From Evolution to Revolution: Upgrading the Graphics Engine of EVE Online”
- Ryan Scott Dancey, CMO: “Network Marketing: Leveraging Social Networks to Grow an MMO”

During the expo, CCP will be accepting resumes from aspiring and talented developers as it commences a series of recruitment waves in which the company aims to fill about 60 positions over the course of 2009. The company will also show highlights of the new features and capabilities associated with their latest expansion, EVE Online: Apocrypha, including an eased learning curve for newcomers, unstable wormholes for exploration and modular ships that pilots may tailor-build to suit their own specifications and needs.

“We are excited to be growing our developer team, and it’s nice to see the team winning awards from our industry peers,” said Mike Tinney, president of CCP North America. “By hiring top talent, and tackling hard problems 2008 became a strong year for CCP. Now coming into 2009 we’re looking for more insanely talented and like-minded people to join our team. We will continue to enrich the EVE player experience and continuously develop and improve our upcoming projects as well.”

Extras Include Exclusive New Ship, 60 Days of Free Game Time, Instant War Access and More.

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND and LYON, FRANCE – 24 February, 2009 – Atari and CCP, one of the world’s leading independent game developers, today confirmed details regarding the contents of the retail box version of EVE Online, coming to retailers in North America beginning March 10th, 2009 and in Europe and Asia Pacific regions beginning March 12th. The retail version of CCP’s award winning PC massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) will ship with a number of high value extras offering newcomers a rewarding first voyage into the incredible universe of EVE Online. The Peak Concurrent User (PCU) record for EVE Online’s 260,000 subscriber single-shard game world has been broken three times in 2009, recently surpassing the 50k mark with 51,675 players online simultaneously, proving EVE’s long-lasting depth of gameplay and the importance of the players themselves in its success.

The EVE Online box will include all nine previously released expansions plus the forthcoming tenth expansion entitled EVE Online: Apocrypha which introduces numerous new features including unstable wormholes to explore and modular ships that pilots may tailor-build to suit their own specifications and needs. All subsequent expansions will be free of charge to all subscribers, continuing CCP’s commitment to offer free updates and expansions to its subscribers at regular intervals.

Breaking with tradition, the collection of extras will also include 60 days of free game time, a departure from the standard 30 days offered for most MMOGs, allowing players to sign up and get started without paying any subscription fees for the first 60 days of a new account. Alternatively, the included game time may be used to extend an existing subscription or be split into two 30-day codes known as “Pilot License Extensions” (PLEX) that can be sold to other players through the in-game market for in-game currency.

Players redeeming the code to activate a new account will also receive these special in-game items:
o INSTANT WAR ACCESS: This certificate allows rapid access to organized combat (through increased standings), helping new players get into the action quickly.
o EXCLUSIVE CAREER GUIDE: Accessed via the website to allow for dynamic updates, the guide includes insider tips and tricks.
o VIP PASS: Use this card to invite a friend to try the game for 21 days. When that friend becomes an EVE Online subscriber, you will get an additional 30 days of free game time
o EXCLUSIVE IN-GAME SHIP: An exclusive new ship, the Interbus Shuttle, will allow players to fly in style with an increased capacity cargo hold to ferry those extra crucial items at high speeds

More information about CCP is available at the company’s website.

From a CCP news release:

 Greetings from CCP.

We could not imagine a more exciting time for EVE Online. Truly.
Here’s a quick breakdown of things going on.

EVE Online: Apocrypha

More and more details from our upcoming March 10th expansion are coming out every day in DevBlogs and news stories. You can join our RSS feed for DevBlogs here: myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp

Main features outlined already are: Wormholes and exploration, a new NPC race and revamped NPC AI, a reimagining of the New Player Experience, and the addition of a skill queue. Further details will be available soon on eveonline.com/

Furthermore, with the release of Apocrypha, we’ll be available in retail outlets all over the known universe through a distribution deal with Atari.

When was the last time you reviewed EVE? Before the Quantum Rise expansion? After 10 free expansions and 6 years of continuous growth the game has changed quite a lot.

EVE Online Alliance Tournament VI comes to a finale this weekend LIVE on TV.

Watch the top 32 alliances fight it out to see who will be crowned the PVP Champions of EVE! Tune in here: www.eveonline/evetv to catch the must-view matches on Saturday that will include the #1 ranked alliance R.U.R. fighting at 1500 GMT, defending champions Ev0ke at 1900 and a rematch of last weekend’s nail biter between Against ALL Authorities and HUN Reloaded at 1940. Along with the matches, we will have Developers on the couch with some sneak peeks on the upcoming expansion “EVE Online: Apocrypha”!

The action continues all weekend with live broadcasts starting at 1450 GMT each day, continuing until 2100 on Saturday and 2200 on Sunday. Previous matches are available on our YouTube channel — www.youtube.com/CCPGames — along with a whole lot of other exciting things. It’s a popular event and vaulted us into the top 15 directors on YouTube for several days.

The Second CSM Meeting

The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is a player-elected representative body responsible for bringing player issues to the developers and then reporting back on the discussions to the player base. Several issues have been pushed through production including the inclusion of a skill queue in the upcoming expansion. The CSM meets in Iceland once per six month term and the meetings are arbitrated by a professional moderator. The results of their last meeting can be found here: myeve.eve-online.com/council/transcripts/2009/CSM_CCP_Meetings_15-17_01_2009.pdf

CCP CSM Project Lead Petur Oskarsson and the CSM members themselves are available for interview upon request.

Other things of interest:

There have been two major in-game, completely player driven events in EVE recently.

The dissolution of one of EVE’s longest standing and largest player alliances, Band of Brothers (BoB), without a shot fired. This IS metagaming intrigue and has proven quite popular in the media’s eyes.
-While we refrain from commenting on player events–preferring the living history of our single-shard world to stay with the players–I am happy to put you in touch with the parties in question. They have given us the permission to do so.

An in-game assassination DURING last weekend’s Alliance Tournament elimination rounds.
-The spirit of competition still has an undercurrent of political intrigue via a high profile vendetta

We’ll be at GDC San Francisco to show off Apocrypha. March 23-27th. gdconf.com/. It’s never too early to set up an interview. Just send requests to nedcoker@ccpgames.com. Halldor Fannar, our CTO, will be presenting “From Evolution to Revolution: Upgrading the Graphics Engine of EVE Online.” Our CMO, Ryan Scott Dancey, will speak on “Network Marketing: Leveraging Social Networks to Grow an MMO”. We’ll have a variety of other CCPers there ripe for the interviewing and will be in the West Hall (Career Pavillion) at booth #230.

We’ve recently broken our PCU (Peak Concurrent User) record with 48,065 people in the same persistent game world at the same time. We’re quite proud.

CCP’s massive free expansion slated for March Release

 Reykjavik, Iceland: January 8, 2008 – CCP, one of the world’s leading independent game developers, today announced the launch of the tenth free expansion for EVE Online, its popular science fiction massively multi-player online game (MMOG). EVE Online: Apocrypha is the most ambitious EVE expansion in the game’s over five year history and it coincides with the March 10th, 2009 release of EVE Online as a boxed product through a partnership with Atari.

The fabric of space itself will be transformed as vast, unpredictable wormholes open to connect previously unexplored regions of the universe to the stars of New Eden. The seeds of advanced new technology await inside of these cosmic anomalies for those brave enough to explore them. This infusion of technology will enable production of the most dynamic vessels ever–Tech 3 modular ships with an astounding amount of customizability that can fill any role from skirmish muscle to industrial support.

Furthermore, NPC agents in EVE Online: Apocrypha will be authorized to assign Epic Mission Arcs to the pilots of New Eden. These branching, far-reaching mission strings are full of meaningful stories and more intelligent and deadly adversaries.

In addition, we are offering an entirely reworked New Player Experience for those joining (or rejoining) the game–giving them better insight into how to thrive in a truly limitless universe. We’ve already launched EVElopedia (http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Main_Page)–a great repository for information on all things EVE where our players are also building their own living history of the previous five years of Alliance warfare, political intrigue and nostalgic recollection

“Just this past week we broke our concurrent user record with 45,186 people flying unbound in the same game world at the same time–a huge percentage of our quarter of a million current subscribers and a true testament to EVE in our sixth year of operation,” said EVE Online Senior Producer Torfi Frans Olafsson. “Today is an unprecedented time to start playing, as you can get ahead of the curve before Apocrypha releases in stores and our hard work hits the server cluster. It’ll be easier than ever to get ‘lost in the wormhole’ that is EVE with what we have planned for the future of our expanding universe.”

Leading up to the release of EVE Online: Apocrypha and the boxed version of EVE Online in stores, we’ll be revealing more features on www.eveonline.com.

From CCP and EVE Online:

Greetings from CCP.

Every year we are amazed at the experience of Fanfest. For our staff, it is a cathartic chance to meet face-to-face in with fans in celebration of a shared love, EVE Online.

This year proved no different. Hundreds of fans traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland for the 5th Annual Party At the Top of the World.

Here’s a quick rundown of major announcements made at Fanfest 2008.

–In defiance of our traditional Winter/Summer expansion schedule, we announced the acceleration of our production schedule to bring the next major expansion to you on March 10th. A few hints at its contents were made including wormholes, exploration, modular ships, epic mission arcs, a new focus on the new player experience and Tech 3 items.
–We announced a distribution deal with Atari (yes, that Atari!) to bring the next major expansion to retail stores in a boxed form in early March. The CEO of Atari, David Gardner, provided a special address to attendees about the deal. This is big news for a 5 year-strong MMO which has grown to these heights over time using just digital distribution.

We also provided a full, hands-on demo of a “vertical slice” of our Walking in Stations project, where pilots can leave their
spaceships and interact as full-bodied avatars in stations. A few parts of the planned design were revealed, including a fully-playable mini-game and the experience of walking around in the captain’s quarters, the promenade and a bar.

As fans of our fans, EVE developers let go a bit and presaged the future of EVE during major talks like the “World Domination” Keynote as well as intimate conversations with individual players throughout the show.

While Fanfest was a huge success, it wasn’t the only November News.

I’ve already told you all a fair amount about our ninth free expansion, EVE Online: Quantum Rise, which went live on the 11th. Server and hardware changes with StacklessIO and EVE64 have pushed us into unbelievable single-system battles (of over 800 players) and almost completely killed latency issues in all major market hubs.

The Council Of Stellar Management held their second elections and the results are in.  Check out the second iteration of EVE’s democratically-elected player council here: myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=606 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=606 )

Other important assets to explore:

–Videos from Fanfest allow you to live it vicariously through EVE TV’s eyes.  They are housed here: myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=7 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=7%3c/li )
–The Quantum Rise teaser and trailer videos are here: myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=2 ( http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/?type=2%3c/li )
–Finally, for all other EVE Online assets, our Electronic Press Kit houses more screenshots (for Walking in Stations), more videos (including a short informative video about our partnership with Microsoft) and more information than you can possibly imagine.  Ask me for access to this always-up-to-date asset for the press.