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EVE Devs Dissect, Explain Massive Economic Exploit
In December we discussed news that a major exploit in EVE Online had just been widely discovered after being abused by a few players for up to four years, creating thousands of real-life dollars worth of unearned in-game currency. Representatives from CCP Games assured players that the matter would be investigated and dealt with; a familiar line in such situations for other multiplayer games, and often the final official word on the matter. Yesterday, CCP completed their investigation and posted an incredibly detailed account of how the exploit worked, what they did to fix it, how it affected the game's economy, and what happened to the players who abused it. Their report ranges from descriptions of the involved algorithms to graphs of the related economic markets to theatrically swooping through the game universe nuking the malfunctioning structures. It's quite comprehensible to non-EVE-players, and Massively has summarized the report nicely. It's an excellent example of transparency and openness in dealing with a situation most companies would be anxious to sweep under the rug.
The problem is that they don't care. There are so many bugs in the game that have been complained about for years and not fixed that it's no wonder that such an obvious exploit managed to survive for four years. Frankly, CCP makes SOE seem competent.
They should find and fix exploits in the real economy.
Earth-online.
Really? You'd say allowing people to willfully exploit until a bug can be fixed is a good thing for a game? To incentivise your playerbase to keep 'decent' exploits hidden for as long as possible, to maximise their gains?
No, I don't think so. EVE GMs don't ban you for 'finding' an exploit. They're banning people for blatantly abusing said exploit. Sure, exploits 'shouldn't exist' but they do, and they always will.
Internet Spaceships are SERIOUS BUSINESS for a lot of the people in EVE, who tend to be much more in to the game than players of other MMOs. If the Devs didn't come down hard on this, the forums would be in open revolt.
Note how, at the end of the article, they are careful to inform us that no Devs were involved in carrying out the exploit. The last time a big story like this broke, it was to do with a Dev cheating, and the players were in uproar.
Eve is all about breaking the 4th wall. Hell, CCP employ a real, Phd-equipped economist to analyse their game, and provide market analysis every few months. The spy scene in Eve is quite famous too - most of that is carried out through mechanics outside of the game. Eve is not WoW, the userbase demand a completely different treatment of bugs such as this, that could potentially effect the balance of in-game politics.
If only you would apply an alternative branch of this advice to your attempts at online communication. Congratulations you managed to flame someone. For the record, you could of gotten the same satisfaction thinking the thought and then you wouldn't have announce that you're a social pariah.
OK, this just makes me want to play it more.
If I learned to play Dwarf Fortress I can learn to play EVE.
Let's say you rent a safety-deposit box, and use it normally for a few months. Then you cancel it and... through some weird oversight they forget to take back the key and access.
So the day after, you take a look in the safety-deposit box, and find it stacked full of money. You go to report that the situation.
However, the guy you're talking to is one of the spanish janitors they got working there, and he doesn't really understand what you're talking about. He's not a banker, he's just there to clean the floor.
So what do you do? You take the money, and return the next day. Oh my, there's even MORE money in there. And you kinda realize the bank is using that box for storage, so you're not really stealing it from other people using the bank. And as long as you don't go strolling out of the bank with bundles of money sticking out of your pockets, they'll have a hard time catching you.
I guess you could be stupid enough to think the magic money is clean. And the close friends you told about the safety-deposit boxes, they're also all that stupid.
The exploit was pretty much the equivalent of the above.
- These characters were randomly selected.