STO Boycott

What is STO Boycott?

STO Boycott is a call on Star Trek Online players to not pay money to Cryptic nor participate in their Dilithium Exchange or C-store for Star Trek Online.

This call is being made due to the recent decisions Cryptic Studios has made in Star Trek Online, most notably the Cardassian Lock Box and the Winter Package (Red Holiday Gift). These items are seen by many as a scam where an iconic (and arguably over powered) ship is made available through extreme odds which are not officially disclosed by Cryptic and design to scam hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars from players seeking to acquire the ship.

The hope is if enough players restrain from participating in Cryptic's Revenue generating system (C-Store/Dilithium Exchange) that Cryptic will stop this non-sense and offer fair ways to access these ships as well as to persuade them not to sell "I Win" items. I also hope this will send a clear message to Cryptic Studios that Star Trek should be about "exploring strange new worlds" with new story content and missions, not a micro-transaction system that focuses on having the best ship and weapons.

What do I need to do?

Simply do not participate at all in C-Store purchases (and preferably stay away from the dilithium exchange) or at least, do not buy any lock box keys or similar grab bag related items. You can also help spread the word by using the #STOboycott hashtag on Twitter!

FAQ

Why stay away from the Dilithium Exchange? Isn't it a free in-game means to get this stuff?

The Dilithium Exchange is an illusion of getting C-Store items in-game without any real world money being involved. While it is true if you do not buy, with real money, a single C-Store point, the reality is you have generated revenue for Cryptic. All the C-Store points on the Dilithium Exchange were generated with real world money. Some of it is a stipends which require a player to pay Cryptic money for a subscription while others are purchased directly by a player. So while you may not have used real money, someone else did!

Also, most would agree that an 'in-game' method involves no real world money cost aside from buying the game or maintaining a subscription. Since C-Store points had to be purchased with additional money, this makes the C-Store an out-of-game resource, regardless if you obtained them through the exchange.

Why are you doing this?

Cryptic feels what they are currently doing is ethical because they are making money. I wish for Cryptic to realize that there are ethical business practices and unethical ones by showing them the power of our wallet. A business who runs ethically still makes money and most often in the long run gain the most while those choosing to do unethical practices will only win in the short run before burning out.

Here is a small list of some of Cryptic's unethical practices:

• Mislead customers on the term 'exclusive' and selling those items through other means when it was reasonable to assume the item could only be acquired through the exclusive offer.
• Asking for dedicated loyal customers to participate in a Referral Program with the promise of an 'exclusive' ship (which was even stated by a Dev at the time to be only obtainable by participating in the program) only to have it sold via the C-Store
• Claiming the C-Store will be for cosmetic and non-game ehnahcing items when the game start and eventually moved it to a "Pay-to-Win" store.
• Leaving the paying customers with a year long content drought and using said paying customers to beta test their new "Free-to-Play Version"
• Purposely withholding content such as the DS9 Featured Episode which was near completion (STOked Ep 100 reveals DS9 FE Work, Cryptic reveals schedule date for FE 4) and focusing on Free-To-Play despite still having paying customers.
• Constant bugs that have been in the game not being fixed for a long time, if at all. (Shield Exploit)
• Removing certain Vet Awards and replacing them with less valuable items. (500 Emblem award removed)
• Removing the VA Ship Token due to the potential exploit with silver players only to allow a more harmful exploit in the Gold (Subscription) to Silver (Free) conversion.
  Essentially, they were concerned that you would pay a one month subscription just before you reached VA to get your free VA ship token. But now, you can purchase a one month subscription and gain almost all Gold benefits and keep them when you convert back to silver such as extra slots.
• Devaluing (Taxing) our in game currency when converting us to Free to Play (even those of us keeping our subscription). Many players do not realize this but when they converted all our emblems, badges, marks and merits into the dilithium system, they removed 30 to 70 percent of your wealth. For example, 1 emblem was worth 480 dilithium, but an existing player when converted would only get 336 or less dilithium. The more assets you had, the more was taken away.
  Missions that used to award 1 emblem rewarded 480 dilithium after the conversion. Only those who existed before the dilithium system were taxed. I personally lost 68.23% (1,091,333.68 dilithium) to their conversion and there were others that lost more than me! (Cryptic Explains Conversion)
• For compensation to any 'lost' value from above, they gave red box receipts to those who lost a decent amount which were redeemable for 1 red box from the winter event, which was of course a lottery ticket. For me, I was giving 15 boxes and I got duplicates of everything I already owned. Another way to think of it is you buy $5.00 of stuff from a store and hand a 20 dollar bill to the cashier who in return gives you $15 worth of lottery tickets in exchange.
• Providing almost no value to be a Gold (or Lifetime) subscriber as Silver gets almost everything Gold gets as well as ways (see above) to cheat the system.
• If you do participate in the current Lock Box and get the Cardassian Galor against all odds, the game will broadcast your character name and handle (character@you) to everyone currently in the game informing them of your lucky break.