PlayNoEvil has all the links of what looks to be a really, really massive dupe:
The expanse of this so far is probably lost on most people so I would like to make a few facts clear. In the past 4 jears we are talking about ISK in value of 2.500.000.000.000 ISK to 3.000.000.000.000 ISK. That’s 2500 – 3000 billion. Everyone that owns a T2 item can bet that it was build in part from resources due to this phenomenon. At this point I would like to thank CCP for making it possible to buy GTC’s with ISK.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow. That’s a big exploit.
If I were CCP, I’d set up some ongoing automated ‘evaluations’ of their own data.
From the way it’s described, it sounds like a huge massive amount of materials just ‘appears’ in the game.
Seems to me that even if they had a simple chart that showed amount of wealth in the universe, they would quickly see that every night it would jump up.
If they then drilled down into that, they would have discovered that the source of some of that wealth is this bug.
Oh, I’m also very surprised it was kept secret for so long
This was no secret. Anyone reading here that didn’t know about this exploit?
Robert: Your idea on wealth growth is predicated on a zero sum system which Eve is not. Killing NPC generates cash. The “wealth” will always go up.
But yeah they should have seen it. Advanced reaction output exceeded what was possible from raw materials mined. What’s the point of their fancy pants PHD econ guy? All he seems to do is compile stats after the fact. That’s mere trivia.
Wow. I play(ed) eve, and one of the big selling points to the game was such a dynamic market, with real world(ish) economics.
I guess it just got a bit more ‘real world’.
Time for an eve recession?
Oh, and for those people who don’t play and don’t really understand.
Almost all good items in the game are player made in starbases. These items require components (think tires, windows, seats) that are in tern made from raw materials (think iron, glass, aluminum). Some of the resources needed to make the components are very rare and very very expensive.
The exploit basicly makes it so that the starbases that make the components don’t need any resources at all. Windshields out of thin air! No costs to aquire raw materials! These guys apparently supplied a large amount of components into the economy, so the aftershocks of this are going to be very large. T2 items are about to get VERY expensive, which has an effect on the end game, which is pvping for control of systems.
This is big, very very big.
I’m amazed it was kept quiet for so long.
And it looks like CCP is targetting a handful of subs, and a couple of Corporations ‘to make the example’.
When, of course, all the major power blocs and players were using the exploit, including, no doubt, CCP employees.
Sadly, the game will go on because there’s nothing else like EvE Online out there. Or, perhaps, because there’s nothing like EvE Online out there.
I play EVE and have off an on for 5 years.
Im unhappy but not surprised.
But it was a secret to most players even we who try to know everything. It stayed a secret for a combination of reasons.
1 The only was to find the exploit was to be a long term organized super rich type guy.
2 It was literally free resources.
The type of player who could discover the exploit was the type most likely to keep it a secret.
Seriously insane.
select p.totalisk from player p, corporation c
where c.corpid = p.corpid
having sum….
Oh, for crying out loud, there must be a query. Sobering to consider how much of that economy must be running without sanity checks.
As an EVE player who recognized the kool-aid years ago, I’m not really surprised. Massive wealth always seemed to be laborless after a certain point.
@harl
“What’s the point of their fancy pants PHD econ guy? All he seems to do is compile stats after the fact. That’s mere trivia.”
That’s Economics.
EvE is the only game where you read about griefing and exploits and scams and it just makes you want to play it even more.
In 2004, ISK was selling for $300 per billion
In 2008 it is $34 per billion
334/2 = 167
$167×3000 = $501,000
So, reckoning by average street price, as the DEA would, one corporation exploiting the bug earned about half a million dollars worth of ISK.
That was ONE corp. CCP says there were SEVEN different corporations set up to exploit this bug.
So just to review
1. The exploit was introduced in 2004
2. It was petitioned and promptly ignored
3. PROFIT
4. 5 days before this exploit was discovered by CCP someone petitioned “Hey, this broken”
5. CCP, 4 years, 2 petitions and $3 trillion later, concludes that 5 days is too long to wait for a petition to be answered and vows to do better.
6. Having vowed to do better they read the petition and, upon investigating, determine that every major player in the game is fully aware of this exploit and is exploiting the heck out of it.
7. CCP, realizing they’d kill their game by banning everyone, issues token bans for those who owned exploitation facilities, knocks down a few starbases, and issues stern warnings to “never do that again, ok?”
That about it?
And that’s why I never bothered with EvE. Too much shady behaviour going on, and somehow it can always be linked to CCP’s behaviour. (Plus the ideology of that game is repulsive, but that’s beside the point. Libertarianism sure did wonders for Iceland, sure did….)
So, 70 accounts banned, that’d be what, 10 players?
Oh no, do go on. What exactly is this repulsive ideology and how is it represented in EVE?
Ah, I knew I wouldn’t get away with it, even by posting a week after the initial entry. Well, it’s this general idea that it’s seemingly okay to indulge in protection rackets and fraud in a virtual environment. In a post-Enron world and even more so at the beginning of an economic downturn created by little more than Wall Street greed, this is particularly unpalatable to me. The icing on the cake was that massive infiltration of a rival guild which was reported a few years back and which arguably made EvE enter the mainstream media, if only briefly.
There was, for instance, a case I have heard of involving one scammer who pulled one stunt after another, turning it into a specialty, and who continued to do so unopposed by the developers because it was perceived as part of the game. Just as to confirm what CCP seems to think is permissible in its game, one person was banned in one said scamming incident — a victim being cheated of one large amount of money, for making real-life death threats against the scammer (who, as far as I know, never got punished by CCP for his actions).
But even without death threats, I don’t care if it’s virtual money, if I get cheated by someone, I’m expecting GM’s to take care of the matter — even if that’s just to say they can’t do anything about it — instead of dismissing it as part of their intended gameplay. The ultimate lessons of EvE are that there are no rules, that rules are futile because they are meant to be broken, and that those who don’t break them are weak. Tell me something is noble but futile, don’t tell me something is futile because the first thing you are going to do is work towards its destruction.
Surely we’ve seen “play to crush” gameplay before, and every game raises its own ethical concerns. I remember that conversation surrounding Richard Bartle’s discussion of one WoW mission that has players using torture on prisoners. (I could add that there is more material in there that is ethically or morally questionable. Hell, I feel queasy when I have to attack mobs which don’t attack me first, even though it’s just a bunch of pixels — I’m weird like that.) But EvE goes beyond that, beginning with CCP’s name — Crowd Control Productions. Either this is very tongue-in-cheek, or it’s in itself an ideological statement — as in delusion of the masses, presumably to be content with what they have and never seek more.
Furthermore, because EvE is set in a sci-fi environment, it might give the impression, intentionally or not, that this is the natural evolution of the world, not as a repulsive dystopia that happened because the powers that be did nothing to stop it, but as something both *good* and inevitable, or more accurately, good because inevitable (strangely enough, I’m also thinking of Tom Friedman on globalization here).
In comparison, a fantasy setting is clearly set in the past from our perspective, as the world is nearly always some sort of medieval period set in an alternate reality, and there’s always the idea of progress kicking in — that we’ve progressed past this point. In other words, where the player can say: “Those days were brutal, but we’ve *evolved* beyond that”. (It’s the only way in which I explain the fascination for war games, even those set in historical events as recent as WWII. And why, may I ask, especially WWII? Beyond the technical progress, could it be because it’s an ideal war as far as the contrast between good and evil is concerned? In other words: World War II, the Noble War. Why are there no games set in WWI — or Vietnam?) I’m not naive enough to believe in constant progress. Regression may happen, it might even be inevitable, but I don’t want cheerleaders pointing the way.
(If I may add, that’s why I was particularly blown away by that old one-person RPG “Arcanum”, because it brought a fantasy world smack into an industrial revolution, much closer to our time period, and peppering the world with serious hints that this was, in many respects, no progress at all but at best stagnation and at worst a subtle regression to which the inhabitants of the world were oblivious for lack of a perspective but which the player himself immediately noticed.)
And this is where the ambiguity of EvE kicks in. By making no stand against such activities as cartels, infiltration, or fraud in its game, could CCP be making a political or economic statement as to the desirability of such activities?
In a nutshell, this is why I find EvE ideologically repulsive. Besides this, the other reason why I won’t play it is because it’s a five-year-old game. Not because of graphic reasons, but because the balance of power within the game seems to have cemented to such a point that I see no reason to start playing. (At least they got one thing right: a vast universe with plenty of space between belligerents.) I was tempted to try it out, but I passed, and will continue to pass as long as I see no possibility of toppling the major guilds there.
Hmm.. Vetarnias. I think it’s fair to say that not only do you have some deeply unconventional views on videogames in general but you are also harbouring some deeply misconceived ideas on EvE in particular.
Suggesting that a capitalist “fend for yourself” society in a game will lead to it in real life is on about the same level as saying that playing Counterstrike will make you shoot up a school.
Personally I’ve always felt that regulation of player morality cheapens interactions, since it means that the person dealing fairly with you didn’t really have a choice to do otherwise.
@PurpleChair
No that’s statistics.
@Vetarnias: HOLY WALL OF TEXT, BATMAN!
Seriously, would distilling that massive comment into the space of a couple paragraphs have hurt?
@Vetarnias
You missed the point of EVE, blackmailing, theft and so on has been in the game as a career opportunity from the start.
If you don’t like it or are unable to protect yourself and your corp against it, go and play something else. The game is clearly not for you.