EVE Bans Exploiters; Dropping 2% of Users Cuts Average CPU Usage 30%

Earthquake Retrofit writes "Ars has a story about EVE Online banning thousands of accounts for real-world trading of in-game money for profit. From the article: 'Those who buy and sell ISK, the game's currency, are not only exploiting the game, but unbalancing play. That's why the company decided to go drastic: a program they called "Unholy Rage." For weeks they studied the behavior and effects these real-money traders had on the game, and then they struck. During scheduled maintenance, over 6,000 accounts were banned. [Einar Hreiðarsson, EVE's lead GM,] assures us that the methods were sound, and the bannings went off with surgical precision. ... While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2 percent of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30 percent.' Looks like they got the right 6,000.' Further information and more graphs are available from the EVE dev blog."

Comments

Re:About time

[kv9]

I don't play the game, but these guys just forfeited 2% of their profits. And you're saying "about time"?

they mostly did it for the greater space good, but if you wanna be a jew about it I'm sure GTC/PLEX sales will offset that lost revenue (not profit) pretty soon. the farmers were not only raping server resources, but were also competitors.

Re:Translation: The devs got rid of their competit

[Rakshasa Taisab]

CCP does not sell ISK... You must be confused, did you take your medication this morning?