A few months ago, I was scouting for new systems for my corporation to base out of. Great Wildlands was proposed as our new home region. We could mine ice, live quietly, and go PVP when the mood took us. Upon going through the system of 92-B0X, I happened upon Sarra Somers. In the following conversations I had with him as I settled into the region, he kept trying to offer my corporation blue standings with the alliance that he led, Yokai, but I would decline, as, at the time, I rarely saw other Yokai around and didn’t want to miss the chance of potentially catching Sarra’s Astero when he went exploring with it.
Time went on, and more Yokai characters would be regularly seen in 92-B0X local, docked in their citadel and occasionally going on fleets throughout the region. One time, while messing about in a stealth bomber, I managed to catch Sarra’s Astero coming out of a wormhole but my torpedoes were useless against the small signature radius of the other ship. I refitted my ratting Vexor Navy Issue for PVP and would occasionally challenge Yokai members for duels. All the while, Sarra would start weird conversations making me doubt his sanity.
Eventually, this culminated in our some of our structures being attacked. One particular skirmish against the Yokai, in which we coordinated with The Bastard Cartel and Manifesto., saw the loss of both Sarra’s Phoenix and his elusive, surprisingly shiny, Astero. My VNI somehow survived the fighting, but in structure and out of drones. [battle report here].
Eventually, I left the Wildlands to go with my corporation as we joined Manifesto. in Wicked Creek. As a result, our fighting with Yokai came to an end. I was, however, made aware of a splinter group from Yokai who had become sick of Sarra’s antics. This brought to light poor conduct towards his alliance, amongst other things.
I did not think these events were of particular relevance, nor did I realize the gravity of what Sarra was doing, until recently. A post containing a screenshotted mail sent out to Yokai members hit the number 1 spot on /r/eve. This was later followed up by a well-written article on INN detailing some of the more recent events surrounding Yokai conduct.
The mail in question was from a Yokai FC who had written its tone and information at the behest of Sarra. The standout part of the mail was the request that all members who could not fly a stealth bomber, so that they could defend a citadel the next day, spend $100 on skill injectors so that they could fly one proficiently. This prompted justified outrage from those who were made aware of it. Members of Yokai were implored to leave their alliance and find new homes. The response was so strong that it even prompted a statement from Community Manager CCP Falcon.
Needless to say, the aforementioned citadel was destroyed.
After speaking with several people close to the situation, I have put their information on Sarra’s exploitation of newbros and the scamming of members below. Any further information that I am able to get a hold of will also be put added.
One of the first people I spoke to was Olafr the Ogre, of the corporation Crimson Privateers, made up of former Yokai members. As such, they have an insider’s perspective on Sarra’s actions. They have spent much of their time exacting their justified vengeance upon the Yokai. In this mail, Olafr lists the mistreatment/scamming that Sarra was carrying out, against his own members:
From: Olafr The Ogre
Sent: 2017.07.07 17:51
To: <redacted>,Corporation Contracts
Buying items at 60% of Jita price from corp members. Mainly Ore, Ice and mission loot. He would then refine this and sell the minerals back to corp members at 120% of Jita price. Evidence supplied.
It is reasonable to expect a mark down when selling to the corp in null as this removes the need to travel to jita and find a buyer, as the corp takes on this burden but a 40% mark down is exploitative of inexperienced players. Considering the profit Sarra would make of this after refining the ore, the 20% mark up to sell it back is pure profiteering.
Accepting donations from corp members (specific example:10 Caracal hulls donated by myself) and selling them back to new corp members at 120% of Jita price. When confronted by a senior member (who was requesting one of the donated hulls) Sarra denied any knowledge of the donation and that another senior member must have accepted the contract. A quick look in contracts confirmed that Sarra had indeed accepted the contract. Evidence supplied.
The hulls were donated to help new players contribute in null without needing to expend any personal wealth or bring anything with them from high sec. Sarra exploited this and worse, denied his actions when confronted.
Demanding donations from corp members towards stockpiling a 90 day fuel reserve for the citadel (ice ore and pi materials). Members who would not/could not donate were threatened with losing access to HIS citadel. It later emerged he hadn’t even paid for the citadel himself.
A fledgling corp requires captial to get started, so player donations in this regard are reasonable, but it is unfair to demand this of new players. Sarra should have been the principle source of funding for HIS corp, but rarely made contributions to mining operations or PI extraction himself (his planets were commited to refining the materials donated from other players). His threat to remove docking rights was also very unfair, considering many of the players had taken the time to move to null at his insistance on the basis of having a safe place to live.
Continuing to demand donations even after the 90 day fuel reserve had been aquired. Sarra clearly wanted to milk this cash cow for as long as he could, trying to have the corp fund a fortizar citadel. He accepted one off donations of 500 million isk from senior members, which to my knowledge hasn’t been paid back since those members left the corp.
Renting out worthless (scandium) moons to corp members under the pretence they would make 300million profit per month after fuel costs. Members also had to front the isk to pay for the small POS which Sarra kindly supplied at his usual 20% mark up. What made this worse, is that Sarra failed to tell them that once the POS were anchored they would become his corp assets, and that they would be able to continue using the POS to harvest the moons for a minimum of 12 months AFTER the winter expansion.
This became apparent after i raised contracts for 30 days fuel supply at JITA PRICE and Sarra had told me to remove them because the corp members could not make a profit at those prices. He told me i would need to sell the fuel at a mark down on Jita while trying to convince me the fuel wasn’t worth as much as i said it was despite my 3 years experience of the fuel block market. This prompted me to look into moon goo profitabilty.
Trying to sell a Raitaru to corp members at a 30% Jita Mark up and again failing to inform members that the Raitaru becomes his property the moment it is anchored.
Regards
Olafr
Greygal, the leader of Affirmative. alliance and of Redemption Roams NPSI group put together a statistical analysis of Yokai membership:
Over 60% of former members are in NPC & are Alpha clone status.
Very likely Inactive: 170 – 31.95%
Definitely Inactive: 158 – 29.70%
Biomassed: 26 – 4.89% Yes, nearly 5% of all characters who ever joined Freedom Express have biomassed. I don’t know how that compares to the server as a whole, but I do know that in general when I see (relatively) high percentages of biomassed characters, it’s an awoxing/griefing corp.
About 98% of all characters who have ever been in and/or are currently in Freedom Express/Yokai appear to be inactive/no longer playing.
Of characters that join then subsequently leave, on average, they stayed in Freedom Express only 53.49 days. This is VERY unusually low for a so-called new player corporation/alliance, especially one that does not appear to purge inactives (or at least does not do so in large numbers and/or regularly). While I’ve not done deep research into this, it is my experience that the average length of time a new player stays in their first corp is around 250-275 days.
Cole Winfield, also of Affirmative., initially began a large portion of the investigation that has led to the current awareness of Sarra’s actions. He issued this statement. Here is an excerpt:
As I am writing this, chat logs of Sarra, and Yokai Command, reveal that he is trying to pass the articles, comments and concern from the community, off as propaganda from enemies; even altogether “fake” in the face of overwhelming evidence. This is not the case.
Ask yourself: Have you seen any other cases of so-called propaganda like this with other entities? I think not.
The Eve community is genuinely concerned for the newbros being exploited and pushed out of the game by this incompetent CEO. The aforementioned statistics show that the vast majority of Yokai members go on to quit the game. Do not add to that number.
If any former members of Yokai need assistance in evacuating themselves and their assets from 92-B0X, feel free to shoot me a message on Discord and I will open up access to our Great Wildlands Astrahus. My contact details are below.
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Curt Adrano is the CEO of Waking Dreams in Manifesto., and an editor at EveNews24.
Contact him at Curt#8110 on Discord.
