Didn't see a thread about this, so apologies if it's a dupe.

Came across this article linked from Slashdot today:

arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/eve-online-unleashes-unholy-rage-on-in-game-currency-traders.ars

Looks like CCP has banned about 6000 accounts for RMT and such. Rather then repeat anymore of what hte article already says, I'll leave you to it. :)

Thanks for the link, good story, and glad to see CCP taking an active stand against the RMT folks.

That's pretty cool...looks like one company won the battle against currency sellers.

I'd would have like to have been in that board meeting.

Throwing away $90k a month can't be the easiest thing to do.

Since you can pay for GTC's with ISK, doubtful they lost any real income.

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Originally posted by Mazin
I'd would have like to have been in that board meeting.
Throwing away $90k a month can't be the easiest thing to do.

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Thing is, it'll cost them money.
Every account paid for with money from credit card fraud hurts ccp. The real owner of the card will take action, ccp has to pay back money, it's a huge mess.
They have to hurt isk sellers to cut down cost and gain reputation. It's a psychological war, rmt organizations have to fear getting hit by banhammers so much that they can't operate.

ccp always wins. Gtc and plex are generated by ccp. So they are taking the money first . :P

Originally posted by Kyleran

Since you can pay for GTC's with ISK, doubtful they lost any real income.

 

Thing is, at some point, someone paid for that GTC in order to sell it in game. So, essentially, they do lose the income, but I would think the prevailing theory is that tha income will be replaced by legit customers, increased GTC/PLEX sales via their outlet, and/or money saved reduced resource requirements (since the article pointed at resource savings realized by these bans).

Personally, I don't think the decision was too hard for them as they would grab headlines by making a dramatic purge of these type of accounts. It was a smart move and I hope it pays dividends for them.

That, and it's just nice to have something besides Dust to speculate about ;)

Originally posted by Mazin

I'd would have like to have been in that board meeting.

Throwing away $90k a month can't be the easiest thing to do.

On the other hand, these guys were gobbling up a huge amount of resources. The TQ hardware is very expensive, and if it means that they can hold off upgrading it then that's worth a lot. And the sheer price of the electricity involved becomes significant with a cluster the size of TQ.

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by Mazin

I'd would have like to have been in that board meeting.

Throwing away $90k a month can't be the easiest thing to do.

 

On the other hand, these guys were gobbling up a huge amount of resources. The TQ hardware is very expensive, and if it means that they can hold off upgrading it then that's worth a lot. And the sheer price of the electricity involved becomes significant with a cluster the size of TQ.

i think the dev blog stated that it was a 30% drop in the cpu usage of TQ, pretty significant saving and the effect is already noticable. People can actually find asteroids to mine again and the plex market seams a lot more reasonable.

Oh they'll be back lol.

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Originally posted by Sad_Panda
Oh they'll be back lol.

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Personaly I don't think so.
It is far more difficult to develope a bot than detection tools.

Bots are easy to get rid of since it requires a row of same repetitive task no matter of method.

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by Sad_Panda
Oh they'll be back lol.

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Personaly I don't think so.
It is far more difficult to develope a bot than detection tools.

Bots are easy to get rid of since it requires a row of same repetitive task no matter of method.

No, I think he's right; they will be back. Or at least they'll try. The anti-RMT war will not be won with a single battle. It's an ongoing process or it's a failure. If nothing else there will always be a baseline supply from players deciding to quit the game altogether and RMT their accounts and in-game possessions - why not; they have nothing to lose by trying.

You people actually believe 6k?Myself i would say if traced back to the beginning,75%+ would be banned.This is what Square Enix did they traced every transaction back from the RMT from player to player.It basically means RMT is almost eliminated ,ONLY the very careful can do it.

This of course if CCP keeps games logs of transactions,it could easily be done.I for one don't buy the 6k,i have seen it with my own eyes developers claim a big stance on RMT,yet i watch the MOST obvious RMT waddle back and forth every day like nobody cares.The players that are in the most profitable RMT areas would know best,they are the ones who would see it,RMT is the easiest thing to spot even if you have no clue,because they 99.9% of the time use gibberish names like "aresvwtrhs".

When i have purposely spent my time to call in botters,RMT i have ALWAYS been given a hard time and a runaround,never any response with action,so don't go off believeing everything you hear.Like i said there will be certain players in game that pay attention and will be able to give a better perspective into this .

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Originally posted by Malcanis
No, I think he's right; they will be back. Or at least they'll try. The anti-RMT war will not be won with a single battle. It's an ongoing process or it's a failure. If nothing else there will always be a baseline supply from players deciding to quit the game altogether and RMT their accounts and in-game possessions - why not; they have nothing to lose by trying.

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Single battle is pretty much enough for deciding whole war.

You can develope numerous ways how to automate the activity in EVE but the goal will remain the same. You can have super smart bot for mining but it will still need to mine and turn the ore into ISK.

This is something RMT can't make a workaround about.

You have to understand that macros and botters are not the same as modifying unprotected game client.

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Originally posted by Wizardry
You people actually believe 6k?

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There was indeed huge drop down in concurrent users since begining of summer wo yeah, I do believe it was due RMT bans.

75% of what?
CCP does not ban people for buying from ISK sellers.