MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood reports on a lecture at this year's Game Developers Conference given by EVE Online's Lead Economist Dr. Eyjo on how CCP fights RMT in EVE Online.

The Game Developers Conference always gives reporters like those of us at MMORPG.com the opportunity to meet up with a large number of developers at the same time to conduct interviews and take part in demonstrations. So much so that we occasionally lose scope on the fact that this show is actually about developers getting together to share their successes and failures with one another all in the hopes of making the games industry that much stronger.

It is with that in mind that we sat in on a lecture given by EVE Online’s Lead Economist, affectionately known as Dr. Eyjo. While we’re most used to hearing the good doctor (PhD, not MD) talk directly about the game’s economy, today he was talking about Real Money Traders and the various strategies that CCP has been using to combat them.

Read GDC 2010: Fighting RMT.

I found it very interesting that such a small part of the population could cause such a large strain on the servers CPU.  Glad to see the real money traders being banned, as doing so apparently makes the game perform better for legitimate players.

It's a Microsoft SQL database.

There are no miracles in space.

CCP has a good grasp of the effects of RMT and I do believe their policies have reduced the trade and driven it more underground.

Add in the players campaign to suicide gank miners on a regular basis and life has to be difficult for the botting farmer.

The result, EVE's economy remains largely in control of the player base and not at the mercy of the farmers.

Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.

Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.

I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers.  Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.

Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.

many other dev have to learn from ccp

Originally posted by cosy

many other dev have to learn from ccp

+1

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.

Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.

I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers.  Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.

Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.

Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.

Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.

I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers.  Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.

Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.

 

Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.

No more than any other game.

"CCP has seen their CPU dropped 30% for the 2% of the population  that was banned"

The grammar is a bit hard to follow, but is he saying that 2% of the population was causing 30% of the CPU usage?

Originally posted by Longswd

"CCP has seen their CPU dropped 30% for the 2% of the population  that was banned"

The grammar is a bit hard to follow, but is he saying that 2% of the population was causing 30% of the CPU usage?

 

 

not sure myself, but if that 2 percent was running bots 23/7 then that perhaps would account for the 'distorted' useage figures, i mean, i consider myself to be a fairly active player, but i doubt i play more than 15 hours a week at the very most... quite often considerably less... i dont know how much time the average player spends online, but even if its 30 hours a week, thats still only about 1/6th of the amount of time a single bot does, or if their like me only about 1/12th so eliminating these farmers from the game, would i suppose have a greater impact than that of an 'average' player. Still, have to hand it to CCP, they really do their best to look after their players - real ones at least

---

Originally posted by birdycephon
 
Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.

---

They have always claimed it to be an ongoing struggle.

I trust the other developers present at the conference LEARNED SOMETHING from this talk (looks at Blizzard).

CCP's answer to the problems of isk farming affecting the game's economy was....(drum roll) take it over themselves via Plex, thereby getting their own players to farm the isk that gets swapped for the GTCs bought from CCP.

I can't even think of a word to describe that kind of strategy from a company towards their own players. Machiavellian might be close enough for horseshoes, though.

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.

Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.

I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers.  Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.

Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.

 

Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.

Proof or it didn't happen.

Yeah, the claim is made constantly, but little in the way of proof.  Not saying they are all gone, and their primary focus is on people who resell ISK outside of the GTC system, which I think they have made great strides against.

Originally posted by wootin

CCP's answer to the problems of isk farming affecting the game's economy was....(drum roll) take it over themselves via Plex, thereby getting their own players to farm the isk that gets swapped for the GTCs bought from CCP.

I can't even think of a word to describe that kind of strategy from a company towards their own players. Machiavellian might be close enough for horseshoes, though.

 

 

 

effective comes to mind : 0

Originally posted by Longswd

"CCP has seen their CPU dropped 30% for the 2% of the population  that was banned"

The grammar is a bit hard to follow, but is he saying that 2% of the population was causing 30% of the CPU usage?

 

 

Pretty much, most of the subscribers are alt accounts used as macro miners to support the few pvpers or the isk sellers. CCP saying they're fighting RMT is pretty much another crock from them. CCP have turned EVE into one giant RMT business for them, encouraging multiple accounts and botting.

I have friends playing EVE now that have multiple accounts running macro miners which they use to pay for plex and buy items in game and make real life cash. They use the same company to buy the macro programs and that company updates them for free after each patch. CCP knows the company and has a copy of the macro programs but if they stopped them their CPU usage would drop by alot more so they don't. They pretend to be doing something whilst encouraging macro mining, they say they banned 30k accounts 2 years ago? They said none of their developers had been helping corps or alliances cheat until they were caught red handed and it was exposed they'd swept it under the rug 8 months earlier! So really their word ain't worth squat.

You need proof? If you play the game have a look with your own eyes, most of the large alliances have their own protected macro mining systems in 0.0 and the rest use safer space to do it. Less profitable but it can easily be enough to pay for your game and earn some cash. CCP is like the Federal reserve, they need money they spawn more rocks! It all comes back into their pockets one way or another. People mine it, buy plex (game cards) and then sell them in real life for cash. People want isk so they buy the plex cards in real life for cash and sell it on for ISK or in game items John Smedley is no doubt kicking himself he didn't do this in SWG before he screwed it up!

The entire game is an RMT trading card game now, nothing more with CCP pretending they're fighting it all. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach personally.

Originally posted by wootin

CCP's answer to the problems of isk farming affecting the game's economy was....(drum roll) take it over themselves via Plex, thereby getting their own players to farm the isk that gets swapped for the GTCs bought from CCP.

I can't even think of a word to describe that kind of strategy from a company towards their own players. Machiavellian might be close enough for horseshoes, though.

 

 

 

Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain. Suggestive of or characterized by expediency, deceit, and cunning.

How does this cover CCP?

They have taken the RMT model (selling ingame currency to less 'time agreeable' players, and in return, instead of asking for $$$ for currency they have enabled a model that allows one player to pay $$$ for gametime and sell it for ingame currency, thus allowing players with lots of time to turn their excess ingame currency into free play time, Company is simply gaining a monthly payment that the Time rich player would normally have made and allowing the Time poor player to keep playing without quitting because he cant make money

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.

Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.

I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers.  Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.

Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.

 

Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.

 

Proof or it didn't happen.

Ill give proof but you know google is your friend .Search for " open source ripper  eve " without  qoutes .Eve has every kind of bots you can imagine , ratting bots /mining bots /mission bots/trade bots

Originally posted by Agricola1

 

Pretty much, most of the subscribers are alt accounts used as macro miners to support the few pvpers or the isk sellers. CCP saying they're fighting RMT is pretty much another crock from them. CCP have turned EVE into one giant RMT business for them, encouraging multiple accounts and botting.

I have friends playing EVE now that have multiple accounts running macro miners which they use to pay for plex and buy items in game and make real life cash. They use the same company to buy the macro programs and that company updates them for free after each patch. CCP knows the company and has a copy of the macro programs but if they stopped them their CPU usage would drop by alot more so they don't. They pretend to be doing something whilst encouraging macro mining, they say they banned 30k accounts 2 years ago? They said none of their developers had been helping corps or alliances cheat until they were caught red handed and it was exposed they'd swept it under the rug 8 months earlier! So really their word ain't worth squat.

You need proof? If you play the game have a look with your own eyes, most of the large alliances have their own protected macro mining systems in 0.0 and the rest use safer space to do it. Less profitable but it can easily be enough to pay for your game and earn some cash. CCP is like the Federal reserve, they need money they spawn more rocks! It all comes back into their pockets one way or another. People mine it, buy plex (game cards) and then sell them in real life for cash. People want isk so they buy the plex cards in real life for cash and sell it on for ISK or in game items John Smedley is no doubt kicking himself he didn't do this in SWG before he screwed it up!

The entire game is an RMT trading card game now, nothing more with CCP pretending they're fighting it all. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach personally.

If you're going to get so sick you should think about knowing why. Unholy Rage was less than a year ago and it's effects are well documented. If you play often and long enough, you know bot's are a problem. You also have a fairly good idea how they operate. A few Null sec players will use miner bots, but only the stupid ones. Smart Null sec players will set up a mission running alt. The only players that really use miners are isk sellers. Like I said, you play enough and see why things happen the way they do. Miner and mission macro's work much the same way, but the miner bot's have limitations and are easy to spot, both for other players and CCP. It's simply not possible to mine like everyone else using a bot, and it takes much longer. They really have to run all day after day, doing the same thing over and over to be profitable. According to CCP many isk farmers have even stopped using them in favor of missions.
 

So 30.000 last year (before FFest) and as this interview indicates, you can probably count on it this year too. Seems to me CCP is doing as much as anyone out there. Especially, when you consider GTC's. Yes it is a problem and anyone who plays often enough can spot it, but maybe you should think about taking the tin foil hat off.