I am still not fully convinced whether or not this is true until I hear an official announcement about it, but this had been posted on german eve forums. Looks like some people found out an exploit to make reactions at a POS to go on infinitely and this has been going on since 2004:

Original link for those of you who can read German:

http://www.eve-online.de/forum/showthread.php?t=18048

And the guy's ban mail:

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/1365/bildvn7.jpg

And here is the English version of the story:

"But now to the story:

The time is November 2004.
The EvE Universe is excited about the Starbase patch.
The new System Sov. is introduced.
The face of Eve has changed.
How right they are.

Two weeks after Patch day we built our first POS.
We wanted a piece of the moon mining pie and also wanted to figure out how it word as none of us knew exactly.
After our first try we were aggravated that we could get it working and decided to try again the next day to finish our project.
The next day to our amazment we found that the silos in our unfinished POS chain were full. After a short time we found out the reason for this phenomenon.
The POS system was BUGGED.
Of course a petition was sent to CCP to make them aware of this situation and the answer was sobering.

“Your petition has been received” CLOSE

But the phenomenon was still there.
After a week we decided what to do.
We built a POS network that included over a dozen POS’s in lowsec and checked the market prices. After a short look we decided on Ferrogel and Fermionic Condensates.

The Story today.

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.
So much about us.

What the other 3 large alliances did with this knowledge is unknown to me.
But I can tell you that we’ve sat with coverts in front of POS chains and watched it happen.

Titans are expensive !

In closing.

Some I’m sure will say “well are you proud of yourself?” or “You cheater-exploiter”
I only have one thing to say to that.
.
This issue allowed me to play Eve how and when I liked.
It didn’t matter what item or what happened in Eve. I spent ISK with out thinking about the price.
I haven’t paid a cent for any of my Eve accounts for 4 years now.
And have had many amusing moments reading posts in EVE-O.

I don’t know you and to be honest Eve and most of you I could care less about.
But my thanks go out to you all, you were wonderful statistics on this virtual stage.

Regards,

The Writer"

CCP been closing threads about this issue so far today and they have taken the news down about it.

I am quite surprised personally but hoping to see a response from CCP first before coming to conclusions. If this is true though, this can be a huge blow to EvE economics.

LAWLS, eve online has always sucked in my opinion, doesnt hurt.
From what I read, you  reported the bug, they should of fixed it, they didnt fix it, its their problem, they didnt announce the bug either. So ya eve got owned.

Wait for Startrek Online it might be better ^^.

here we go, this is even bigger then t20 exident

wonder who profited from it, somehow I doubt that CCP will tell us, or do anything to people who made stupid ammount of money from it

thats how BoB can have so cheap t2 ships ;)

I dont think CCP would have cared if you'd have bought your GTC out of game, the fact that CCP lost so much actual income is probably the biggest factor here.

wow just wow

now lets bash eve for a time hehehe

Originally posted by grimboj

I dont think CCP would have cared if you'd have bought your GTC out of game, the fact that CCP lost so much actual income is probably the biggest factor here.

Same amount of money either way...just someone else buying the time with cash.

I like how leading figures from BoB, AAA and Goons have already posted in that thread. Entire powerblocks have most likely profitted from this since 0.0 sov wars began. Wish I was one of the few that recieved some of this isk. I still rat from time to time :P

The other interesting aspect is how this will affect the market place. Already large quantities of minerals are being bought up and I've heard rumors that people are currently stock piling T2 for when prices skyrocket. This could have a massive affect on the entire game.

yep, im in the process of investing my capital into tech2 goods, even if there is no price hike, ill turn a profit.

I haven't heard anything official, just a vague announcement and a whole bunch of drama queens screaming like it's the End of the World.

In my view, it's either..

a) A new exploit, probably introduced with QR, that was closed before it had much impact, or

b) An old exploit, which means the market's been heavily influenced by illegitimate moon minerals for some time, which means closing this loophole is actually *bad* for most of the playerbase as it will lead to higher T2 prices.

I like my cheap T2.  I don't care where it comes from.  So I'm hoping that option A is what's closer to the actual truth.

I'm sure we'll see announcement early next week, at the latest, though.

After careful consideration of the situation, I'm calling troll on this one.

Won't know for sure 'till there's an official announcement, though.

linky

[quote="CCP Wrangler"]We have discovered an exploit involving starbases that made it possible for some players to gain an unfair advantage over others. We have taken measures to address this by removing the starbases used in the exploit. Additionally, assets gained from its use have been seized and bans levied against the players involved. We will continue to monitor the game for issues such as this one. We encourage players to create a petition if become aware of any activities which may permit others to gain an unfair advantage in the game.[/quote]

So far I have defended CCP. But 4 ********* years?!!!! And exploit size of this.

... I have bad feeling about this.

ofc ccp know about that was a way to "fix the market"
and this is actually good for new players that cant pimp ships whit full t2 and 0.0 alliance will have to recruit more players hehehe

Originally posted by nurgles

linky

[quote="CCP Wrangler"]We have discovered an exploit involving starbases that made it possible for some players to gain an unfair advantage over others. We have taken measures to address this by removing the starbases used in the exploit. Additionally, assets gained from its use have been seized and bans levied against the players involved. We will continue to monitor the game for issues such as this one. We encourage players to create a petition if become aware of any activities which may permit others to gain an unfair advantage in the game.[/quote]

 

sooo, if you share accounts for a titan pilot among different people, or say spawn t2 bpos, or post someone's actual work phone number and name on the official eve-o boards.... if you did these things, you would be banned from the game?  cuz i know someone throwing bbqs that has enjoyed the benefits of all three of those things and is still playing.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=945010    link to the talks on their forums.

Amazing how often this company has a major  problem.    CCP has to be the most incompetent developer out there.  4 years?   How the hell do they not notice this like three and a half years ago.   People still support this company to boot is what gets me. 

 Edit: oops wrong link.  Should be sorted now, My bad.

Originally posted by JayBirdz

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=945010    link to the talks on their forums.

Amazing how often this company has a major  problem.    CCP has to be the most incompetent developer out there.  4 years?   How the hell do they not notice this like three and a half years ago.   People still support this company to boot is what gets me. 

 

 Edit: oops wrong link.  Should be sorted now, My bad.

i think you're close to being on the mark here... i don't believe they're incompetent DEVELOPERS.  i believe they're incompetent PLAYERS...

supposedly, they all love and play eve.  yet, everytime there's some major "issue" such as t2 bpos being spawned, titan account sharing being ignored, system max players being artificially lowered so as to provide that same group (bob) an unfair advantage, this latest exposed money making scheme --  honestly, i believe that the devs DO play, and that they suck ass at their own game; therefore, they create loophole after loophole to try to make themselves lots of easy isks; but, then their non-ccp friends leak out information and screw up this latest plan.

or to quote from eve-o forums:

Originally by: Gnulpie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally by: hundurinn
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thats what I'm saying. CCP needs to confirm or deny the rumor that it has been going on for 4 years, the longer they wait the worse the effect will be. The only thing they have said so far is that there was an exploit but it has been fixed nothing more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That is true. But they best investigate it completely first.

Otherwise they have to come up every few days with new facts maybe contradicting their old findings and so on.

Give them a little more time, I suppose they were themselves quite suprised and now need to root out the cheaters.

As some people already said, this might not that easy as it seems to be. There will most probably lots of alts involved and a good deal of money laundring. Of course no one wants that they ban innocents also! At least I would be more than ****ed off if they would ban my char only because my buy order in jita got filled from one of these guys.

So it needs time to give accurate details.

In the meanwhile I can only repeat myself:
The numbers in Jita indicate that this cheating is going on in a big matter since only a few weeks. Before that the prices of ferrogel etc. were tightly coupled (or correlated as people say) to the dys/prom prices. But since a few weeks the prices were decoupled and ferrogel dropped and dropped, together with hypersynaptic fibers.

These "4 years" are utter nonsense. 4 years ago there was no real market for ferrogel and the likes, only few people did do that. No much money was in it then.

Also: one char got permabanned and all his shiny isk wiped out. Then he posts anonomously on a 3rd party forum and throws in numbers which are not believable as explained above. Yet everyone believes that guy and yells at CCP. Shame on the playerbase, really.

More civil manners wouldn't hurt to have. Also think a bit more about the circumstances and if that what people claim to have happend could be true and do match the numbers and realities on TQ. Only then post.

Wild accusations without any base than rumours from banned cheaters are not really something which anyone can be proud of.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

except that there's not a lot of trust going around to a company that doesn't have a stellar reputation to begin with.

and wasn't it a "banned cheater" that exposed something about wrongly spawned t2 bpos, titan account sharing, and a number of other items? yet, that 'banned cheater' turned out to be in the right...
 

so eve is the only game with exploits in it? what more can they do? they found the exploit, fixed it, removed some cash and started banning people.

I find it simply amazing the lengths ppl will go to prove or disprove something that affects absolutely nothing in their lives.

You remind me of those dumbass reporters on TMZ, digging up useless celebrity quirks, trying to make them look bad. "OMG Oprah was seen eating a french fry!!! Stop the presses ppl, we have a major story on our hands!!!"  LOL

Do you play EvE? If so, how does this affect you? Your gameplay? If you say economy, I guess the fact that EvE is still there and has been the last 4 yrs of this 'bug'  means it can't have THAT much of an impact on anything, does it?!

If you don't play...then it's just sad that you feel justified in wasting you time bringing up something that matters little to anyone, anywhere.

Originally posted by whisperwynd

I find it simply amazing the lengths ppl will go to prove or disprove something that affects absolutely nothing in their lives.

You remind me of those dumbass reporters on TMZ, digging up useless celebrity quirks, trying to make them look bad. "OMG Oprah was seen eating a french fry!!! Stop the presses ppl, we have a major story on our hands!!!"  LOL

Do you play EvE? If so, how does this affect you? Your gameplay? If you say economy, I guess the fact that EvE is still there and has been the last 4 yrs of this 'bug'  means it can't have THAT much of an impact on anything, does it?!

If you don't play...then it's just sad that you feel justified in wasting you time bringing up something that matters little to anyone, anywhere.

Yes, I do play EvE.

I am the type one might qualify as "non-scamming, non-exploiting but poor". I enjoy pvp and take pride in my ship's fittings by being as good as possible within the limit of t2 items. I earn my isk through honest ways in EvE.

Of course, such an accusation (and halfly-acknowledged by CCP) makes me a little upset because of the fact that some people in this game which I was maybe pvping against (thus, competing against) were simply using an exploit to fit their ships with faction modules, or use the isk to have multiple accounts, or this way never ever worried about making isk. Even one of the titans that doomsdayed my ship (I got DDed several times) might have been funded thru this exploit. You can't really tell me not to get upset over an unfair advantage (or, exploit) in a game where almost everything you do is in a way pvp.

As to the effect of this, this will make lives of players like me even harder. Simply because, these people were producing t2 materials with this exploit. Without this exploit, and thruough the market manipulation by the nutjobs in Jita over this scandal, this will surely effect t2 market and thus will make it more expensive for me to fit my ships. This is just a start of chain reaction as people in EvE where death penalty is so rash will engage in pvp less because high costs discourage combat.

Originally posted by Beltamkor

 

Yes, I do play EvE.

I am the type one might qualify as "non-scamming, non-exploiting but poor". I enjoy pvp and take pride in my ship's fittings by being as good as possible within the limit of t2 items. I earn my isk through honest ways in EvE.

 

Of course, such an accusation (and halfly-acknowledged by CCP) makes me a little upset because of the fact that some people in this game which I was maybe pvping against (thus, competing against) were simply using an exploit to fit their ships with faction modules, or use the isk to have multiple accounts, or this way never ever worried about making isk. Even one of the titans that doomsdayed my ship (I got DDed several times) might have been funded thru this exploit. You can't really tell me not to get upset over an unfair advantage (or, exploit) in a game where almost everything you do is in a way pvp.

As to the effect of this, this will make lives of players like me even harder. Simply because, these people were producing t2 materials with this exploit. Without this exploit, and market manipulation by the nutjobs in Jita, this will surely effect t2 market and thus will make it more expensive to fit my ships.

 I acknowledge the fact you find this upsetting, but it's been around all this time. If you've been around all that time and only got upset now, it couldn't have impacted the game all that much.

If the exploit is still there, and you've been there for some time, then maybe you should simply try it for yourself. You can either go EyE for an eye on this thing, or turn the other cheek.  Like everything, life's unfair. You choose your path, and have to deal with the consequences. If you're really that upset, then the only logical thing to do against CCP is to stop giving them your money...but the consequence of that will be to not enjoy the game.

I sympathize with those with real grievances, but those that jump in and condemn without a clue, those I pity.

Yeah... except that paid MMOs (especially pvp ones) are not supposed to have such game-breaking exploits. This is not just unfair, it makes the whole eve pvp pointless if one of the sides is using/has been using this exploit. The amount of ISK that people are mentioning makes the whole 0.0 war aspect of the game pointless as well. The income from moons for holding space becomes superfluous. So yes this is pretty upsetting for most people. People who have been using this exploit might as well have been fighting in Battlegrounds like in other MMOs.

Not only for pvpers but the industrialists have good reason to be pissed as well. They have been getting crappy prices for their ships / components all this time because of this exploit. I am hoping that CCP will be more open about what is really going on though since this is mostly speculation at the moment. The fact that there is such an exploit is confirmed but if it HAS been going on for 4 years it really is unfair to most players.

CCP will do : Nothing

CCP people are not incompetent, They are just doing some "favour" to their MSM friends

Seriously, an exploit that has supposed to have been around that long, and only now does it become a fairness issue?! With no one ever mentioning it before now?!

What about all the whiners from other PvP games that cry  foul about imbalance from the get go? They any worse than the rest?

I really doubt it's been that bad or still there, otherwise ppl would talked about it before, and still talking. If it's such a gamebreaker, then I guess I won't be seeing you ingame. It bothers me none at all.

I am sorry but your logic doesn't make sense to me. And, I gotta ask whether or not you play EvE, because you don't seem to grasp how this might have effected a lot of things in EvE. And, how, without this exploit, things would have been a lot more different in EvE. Just because playerbase only now became aware of this exploit does not negate the fact that "thru this exploit, many EvE players' gaming experience might have been altered in the last 4 years".

It's this anger that you are basically witnessing from EvE players now who learned about this yesterday. And, naturally, their target is CCP for not being competent enough and letting this go on for 4 years, (f.o.u.r.....that's 4!) even though the guy who first discovered this 4 years ago filed a petition and CCP just simply closed it. I can't accuse the guy because the guy was acting like a normal EvE player. EvE motivates people to use everything for their advantage and he simply did after reporting it.

And, no, it is not possible to do this exploit anymore. Apparently CCP became aware of it, banned the guys' accounts, fixed the issue in yesterday's patch and the guy decided to go public with it.

As for my own personal reaction, I am hoping to see a proper transparent report by CCP as to the extent of this exploit along with naming and shaming. (I am involved in 0.0 politics, so I very much would like to know which alliances used this to their advantage) And, hopefully, something drastic by CCP instead of their usual reaction as seen in t20 incident where they basically let it go and hoped that people might forget this screw-up in-time.

ccp just posted on their forums, they because aware of this exploit on the 7th of december 2008. it was fixed two days later. 70 people have been banned so far.

4 years? or 48 hours?