CCP and the EVE Online team have announced a new feature to be added to the ongoing Buddy Program. When players invite their friends, they will be able to choose whether to gift that new subscriber with thirty days of game time or PLEX.

We are interested in finding out if there is an unmet desire for PLEX instead of game time. We'd also like to see if this gets more players using the Buddy Program, thus increasing the numbers of new players that join already knowing someone in game. This is an experiment. We will be monitoring this change closely, and we are prepared to adjust or abort the program if we find it isn't yielding desirable results.

We've also added a few more features based on feedback from the program and its users.

• The cap on invites has been raised from three (3) per month to ten (10) per month.
• Buddy invitations will remain valid and will no longer expire after a set period of time.

Read more on the EVE Online developer blog.