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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."
Actually if you read the article they claim most of these accounts are started using credit fraud. Last I looked, you don't make money when you are a victim of fraud.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
In EVE you can buy In-Game cards to extend your subscription, if you have enough ISK, which the farmers most definitely have.
There is a legitimate in-game system for buying and selling ISK, it is a part of the market and doesn't break it. Farming is not a part of that system.