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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.
Makes me actually want to go and play the game. I mean, when you have a company that obviously does care, to a certain degree, you should go and help them out a bit. Only problem is, the game has a complexity level that has me reeling.
They should find and fix exploits in the real economy.
Earth-online.
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.
EVE has a single universe, and a notable penalty for failure. Those two things mean that 'something like this' can have far reaching consequences across the universe and gamedynamics. It's not really like someone item duping on a PvE server, where ... well, actually that guy over there cheating doesn't have much impact on your game. The magnitude of this exploit is such that alliances can rise and fall with the amount of cash in question - and when an alliance falls, there's another player on the receiving end of the sackbeating.
... well, takes a lot of fun out of the game.
... year or more ... internal affairs is scrupulous about it, because the vast majority of CCP employees are as much EVE addicts as the player base.
To use an analogy, no one really cares if you've got god mode on in single player Doom. Maybe you find that more amusing, but no one really cares. Face off on someone in a deathmatch though, the fact that they're invulnerable and you're not
And yes, they're quite careful about the devs thing, because of that scandal. If they _hadn't_ mentioned it, then the question would have been asked. From what I've seen over the last
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.
Smart developers do not have an adversarial attitude towards the people that pay their salaries.
Who pays their salary more? The odd 150 cheaters or the 150k non cheaters expecting the cheats to be banned? They'd lose more customers if people got the idea than cheating wasn't kept in check than they lost with that round of bans.
There was a bug in the way items were produced, making free items.
The economy reacted accordingly by decreasing the market cost for these items.
Items that need these free items were also accordingly cheaper.
When discovered, the costs of the free items and the items requiring them shot up due to market speculation and decreased supply.
The economy in general will have some bumps, but will eventually recover.
The perpetrators have been shot.
If anyone is wondering what POS is short for, it's "Player Owned Station".
Personally I think the article reads a lot better if you instead use "Piece Of Shit":
CCP Games explains the scenario from the ground up, detailing the POS game mechanics for those unfamiliar with the industrial side of the game, and pointing out how the POS exploit worked.
The proper order in which to evaluate a POS is essentially breadth-first traversal....
POS Reactors are complex beasts, but not quite so bad as POS Control Towers.
and so on.