published on February 10, 2025 in devlog
Michi explains how to gift PRO license time to another player with the upcoming GIFT command.
Michi (molp)
One of the more common support requests we get is if there is any way to gift another player a PRO license. Sometimes a player wants to surprise a friend with a PRO license, in other cases, a player wants to trade with a corporation member that can’t afford a PRO license. Up to now, we couldn't really help out.
While it is technically possible to add some PRO time to an account and create a billing link for the one offering the gift, we refrained from doing so. The process is entirely manual, involves editing the database directly, because there is no tooling and of course is prone to errors.
In one of the recent team meetings, the topic came up again, and we discussed what options we had. The first idea was to add a "this is a gift" check box when buying a PRO license. If checked, the PRO time would not be added to the account, but rather a key would be added to the customer's inventory. The idea was that this key could be given to any player, and they could redeem it, similar to the friends keys that come with some of the supporter packages.
Unfortunately, this idea would introduce a lot of friction, as the player would have to create the key, share it, the other person would need to enter it etc. It sounds complicated, and it would require quite a bit of communication.
Instead, after some more thinking, we decided to integrate the PRO license time gifting directly into the game. There is a new command (GIFT) that shows all the received and sent gifts. A short form allows specifying a player and how many days to gift. Filling out the form and confirm your choice is all that is necessary to gift someone some PRO time. The receiver will then receive a notification about the gift. The PRO time will be added to their account immediately.
The advantages of this solution are: Everything happens in the game. No need to go to the account page and handle keys. No need to manually copy and paste a key. It also works for Steam players that haven’t completed their account yet.
The default fallback license for gifts is the FREE license. We don’t change the rule that a proper payment in one's own account is required to fall back to the BASIC license. If a player has been BASIC before receiving a gift, they will be BASIC again, once the gifted PRO time runs out.
The GIFT command looks like this:
Gifts will be publicly visible in the USR command:
I’m still waiting for Martin to provide the corresponding endpoint in the account registry, but once that is implemented, we'll release the feature.
As always, we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!