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

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-stay-out dept.

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."

44 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. About time by stoat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard over this. The playerbase has been pushing for it for years.

    1. Re:About time by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard over this. The playerbase has been pushing for it for years.

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

      Knowingly cutting that kind of revenue requires more than balls, my friend. That requires the confidence that doing this is going to bring at least that 2% back. That it does not scare away more that are exploiting that haven't been caught. These guys took a chance for ideals of the players. There should be nothing but kudos from the community and an understanding that they have your best interests in mind despite scandals in the past.

      I applaud their efforts and found the analysis of "unholy rage" more extensive than anything I've ever seen an MMO release. It almost makes me want to pick up the game and see what it's about. The only thing holding me back is that I have heard it's quite monotonous at first.

      --
      My work here is dung.
    2. Re:About time by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "2% of their profits" isn't something you could possibly know. They are claiming that cutting the players reduced their system load by 20%, so the loss of 2% of their revenues might have been offset by lower per user costs and increased their profits, even if they never make it up new users.

      It's likely that you were just being sloppy, but what does that matter?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    3. Re:About time by sopssa · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      Knowingly cutting that kind of revenue requires more than balls, my friend. That requires the confidence that doing this is going to bring at least that 2% back. That it does not scare away more that are exploiting that haven't been caught. These guys took a chance for ideals of the players. There should be nothing but kudos from the community and an understanding that they have your best interests in mind despite scandals in the past.

      Getting rid of the 2% that ruins the game for everyone else does a lot better for the game than trying to keep them in just because they offer extra 2% profit. Maybe someone has left the game because of that and now wants to go back to try it again. Maybe more players will join (they did get article to slashdot again, and probably to lots of other sites). As you see from the analysis, you also see that this 2% used a lot more cpu etc resources than normal players and affected stability of systems aswell, so they save extra there.

      I've been wondering long time if I should try EVE and last time I read that you could quite nicely do mining on background while doing work and other stuff on internet. Now that they got rid of these people, maybe it would be even nicer experience for me.

    4. Re:About time by stoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So cutting 2% of their income vs freeing up 30% of server resources equates to a loss of profit now huh? I wonder what happens when all those farmers just make new accounts.

      I guess you weren't around when they were spending tons of money on new hardware/pissing off the playerbase removing bookmarks/anchored containers to reduce database load.

    5. Re:About time by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And now they will save money when they dont need to buy so many new servers to cater to people who used 30% more resources.

      Also its not immediate 2% loss. Maybe the gold farmers bought new accounts (they do it for money anyway). Those bans also were only temporary first. After it expired and account returned to same activies, it was only banned completely then.

    6. Re:About time by c_forq · · Score: 4, Informative

      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
    7. Re:About time by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Profits and revenues are different things. They certainly lost revenues, but neither one of us knows how they use their revenues, and how that translates into profits; maybe their hardware costs are 1% of their revenues, and overtime dealing with complaints about RMT users was 3% of revenues (that's probably silly, but it's possible).

      The sloppy is in pretending that revenues and profits are the same thing. As far as being an ungrateful gamer, I'm not either, I'm simply encouraging you to think about what you are saying before you say it.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    8. Re:About time by ShecoDu · · Score: 5, Informative

      In EVE you can buy In-Game cards to extend your subscription, if you have enough ISK, which the farmers most definitely have.

    9. Re:About time by Chrono11901 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They also agreed to the same set of rules as everyone else... Such as no boting/exploiting.

      If you don't agree with the rules, don't play. If you break the rules, don't bitch when you have to face the consequences.

    10. Re:About time by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The only thing holding me back is that I have heard it's quite monotonous at first.

      Find friends in-game ASAP. Eve does not get any less monotonous as you progress -- you just eventually find friends, and it becomes worth it.

      If you want to play Eve as PvE, you're essentially playing "how big can my wallet get." It's mindless boredom, and was why I quit when all my RL friends did. I picked it up only when they did, and if I didn't have friends in-game I wouldn't play.

      OTOH... if you want to go for PvP, (which you CAN do on day 1) then there's no better game than Eve.

    11. Re:About time by fooslacker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depending on data center costs and decommissioning cycles and billing cycles it is probably that this isn't an immediate 2% hit but for the sake of argument let's assume it is. That said I'm guessing they've done the business case to realize that a 20% reduction in infrastructure costs will pay back their 2% drop in profits within X number of months and that X is short enough time frame to affect yearly operational costs in a positive way for several years to come. Additionally it affects taxes and assets and all sorts of things. I don't know how they justified it but I'm pretty sure there was a positive business case before they did something like this.

      Data center costs are brutal for companies with significant infrastructure. Most people don't realize how expensive servers are to run day in and ay out. In a top tier data center it sometimes costs as much or more to run a server for a year than it did to originally buy it, and we're not talking dells from best buy we're talking about $20K+ machines ranging on up to ridiculous numbers for some SunOracle boxes. Once you add in things like the land lease, the power, the telecoms, redundancy, depreciation on the facility, labor, etc. it becomes a rather significant cost. If they don't decide to decommission the freed up capacity right away to get the savings it gives them options for deferred spending or for various corporate trade in programs which allow corps to treat servers like cars and get a good bit off of the next gen, generally cheaper due to efficiency gains versions of hardware. Additionally these days most companies outsource the data center work and are locked into various contracts for given periods of time so the only recourse they have to be more efficient on the infrastructure front is to use less until the next contract cycle comes up.

      Again, I have no idea what their numbers look like but it's not crazy to think that a 20% reduction in infrastructure usage could have a very good business case with a very short payback time.

    12. Re:About time by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      However, people selling ISK is a different story.

      Not if it's against the same rules.

    13. Re:About time by AndrewNeo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    14. Re:About time by Artifakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So maybe people should have specified GROSS profits? Yes, net profitability may go up if this cuts Eve's operating costs, and quarterly gross profit may go back up for separate reasons (i.e. this attracts new players or causes dissatisfied former players to return, or both.). Still, this move directly impacts immediate gross profit, and that's something we can reliably know (those of us who have studied small scale economics).
            Since you didn't make the distinction in your comments either, I'm unclear what you think 'eldavojon' was being sloppy about. Maybe he or someone else should specify what they think will happen to reported quarterly gross and net profits, research whether Eve's parent company is publicly traded, and so on, and if it is, talk stock price effects, and so on, but that doesn't sound like what you mean, offhand, so I must confess I'm puzzled.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    15. Re:About time by KibibyteBrain · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is begging the question. The whole point of the distinction between profit and revenue is that the profit margin can change as a function of revenue. Say you make $5k a month in revenue by working a job in NYC, but it costs you $k a month to live there. You are offered a new job in Kentucky that pays only $4k per month, but would cost only $1k per month to maintain the same standard of living. Yikes, thats a 20% drop in revenue. But wait, now you are clearing $3k per month and not only $2k, or a profit Increase of 50%! /3rd grade Now back to business. One of the main technical challenges of EVE is the fact they only have one virtual world, and they devote a ton of engineering and server resources to somehow make that happen. So its very likely the monetary cost of %load varies exponentially with the %load. But the cost per user is linear. So killing user who use disproportionate load will ALWAYS be profitable with these cost functions as long as the total number of users remains above the critical value where the exponential (offset by fixed costs) intersects the line.

    16. Re:About time by Toonol · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your argument has devolved to "They lost 2% of SOMETHING".

      They lost about two percent of their revenue. Maybe this means they lost 100% of their profit; maybe they just increased their profit by 100%. You have no way of knowing what this did, because you don't know the amount of fixed expenses, nor the expense of these particular accounts.

      However, for an mmorpg running a bank of servers, a 30% reduction in processing is a HUGE reduction in expenses. Whether the savings was immediately taken the next day by selling servers or not is meaningless. Even if they never reduced the number of servers, they just added a huge amount of future expandability, for a relatively negligible price.

    17. Re:About time by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The whole point is that we don't know anything about the cost of revenues for the accounts that were banned, so we can't talk meaningfully about any sort of profits, we can only speculate. We can assume that the costs are similar to the costs for other accounts, but that gets sloppy quite quickly.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    18. Re:About time by LiquidRaptor · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, just about any server now days has power management turned on by default, (and in the case of HP's c class blades almost impossible to turn off). If they reduce the load by 30%, assuming that they were running near peak capacity I could easily see them cutting their power bill by 25%, if not more due to cooling expenses.

    19. Re:About time by FlyingBishop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I haven't played either game, but it seems evident to me that EVE has a much more complex economy than Asheron's Call, and that gold trading screws with the economy considerably. There are no individual servers, any user's actions affects every other user. Market instability is a real issue for playability.

      And in any case, the drain on the servers caused by bots requires significant infrastructure increases.

    20. Re:About time by iamangry · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Right, cause its ok to hack and disrupt everyone else's positive experience of the game. You're one of those 13 year old kids that thinks its "really cool" to get "super h4x" and then take them onto ranked/public/hack free servers, aren't you? The rules are there for a reason, and CCP is not required to give them service any more than any other game, especially since the actual copy of the game is totally free.

      Cause hackers... suck so hard that not only can they not get laid, they can't even play video games well either! Piles of n00bey epic failure.

  2. loss of money? by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure their user agreement spells out that they can ban you for any reason at any time and owe you nothing. But that was before they started selling imaginary property outside the game. THis legitimizes the ingame value of the stuff they just "took" from you without compensation. I bet there are a few in that 6000 that will sue. Might set an interesting precedent if it's not all settled out of court.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:loss of money? by raftpeople · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If they've broken the terms of a contract, it is the correct method of resolution.

  3. Re:Thank you Captain Obvious! by ivucica · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Banning 2% players to decrease CPU usage by 30% is not obvious.

  4. Re:Thank you Captain Obvious! by ivucica · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unless you are a CCP developer, it is not obvious for you as a reader of Slashdot summary.

  5. How ironic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ads by Google:

    EVE ISK 500000M in Storck
    $0.02/M in all EVE ISK service , Share the Warefare, 5mins Delivery
    www.THSale.com/Fast-EVE-ISK

    Slashdot promoting exploiting..

  6. This may net them a near-immediate profit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    EVE themselves allow players to buy gold with real money. You can buy 60-day GTCs (game time codes) which allow you to purchase 2 months of game time. EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency. So if you want, you can buy as many GTCs as you like, sell them via EVE, and buy yourself the ship of your dreams.

    With a large percentage of the gold farmers killed off, anybody wanting to buy gold will have to do it through EVE. The net result is that many more GTCs are sold, generating lots of extra revenue for EVE

    1. Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 2, Informative

      EVE themselves allow players to buy gold with real money. You can buy 60-day GTCs (game time codes) which allow you to purchase 2 months of game time. EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency. So if you want, you can buy as many GTCs as you like, sell them via EVE, and buy yourself the ship of your dreams.

      With a large percentage of the gold farmers killed off, anybody wanting to buy gold will have to do it through EVE. The net result is that many more GTCs are sold, generating lots of extra revenue for EVE

      Who knows, maybe if I explain this a couple hundred times more, people will finally figure it out...

      CCP does not make a penny more when people get their isk through Gametimecards. The only thing that happens is that instead of 2 players each paying for their own subscriptions, one of them pays for both of them in exchange for ingame currency. The end result for CCP is exactly the same, in that they receive money for 2 player subscriptions.

      --

      People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
    2. Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit by jeff4747 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency.

      Actually, it doesn't.

      A GTC can be used to create an in-game item (one or more PLEXes) which is good for 30 days game time when used by a player in game. PLEXes can be sold to other players for ISK using the normal in-game market.

      As a result, there's a lot of EvE players who "pay" for the game using in-game currency.

      So, CCP still gets paid, established players can play "for free", and people who just can't wait to buy a new shiny get their instant gratification.

  7. gaming the system? by isd.bz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find it kind of funny (ironic, Alanis?) that using software to 'game the system' and create money out of thin air is dealt with swiftly and with 'surgical precision', and when Goldman Sachs does the same thing with the stock markets, they are dealt with by being provided protection from the SEC and FBI.

    1. Re:gaming the system? by ari_j · · Score: 4, Funny

      Alanis* says it's ironic that people fear using the word to refer to actual irony. In this case, you're good. It fits the definition stated by Merriam-Webster as 'incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.'

      * - Not really, but I am being ironic by using an appeal to authority when the authority in question is the canonical example of a counter-authority. This footnote dropped for the benefit of the moderators who didn't get that. By insulting them to their faces, I am doing them a favor because they now won't have to waste valuable time considering whether what I said is wrong or just unfunny, and can go straight for Flamebait.

    2. Re:gaming the system? by Ironchew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Less government certainly exacerbates the problem. The answer would depend on your political view. More of the status-quo government with deep private financial connections and an oppressive world military? Or a reformed government with more direct citizen action and more severe representative accountability to their constituents? The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say, since the public almost always gets saddled with the losses of financial irresponsibility.

      Nobody likes the current corporatist system, except the few who benefit.

    3. Re:gaming the system? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Please, this is a huge misunderstanding of what makes markets work. You can't create money out of thin air by trading on stock markets. After all, it takes two *consenting* parties to make a trade. You can create money by taking on risks that other people aren't willing to-- that is, you get paid for bearing risk. This comes in many forms.

      It could be holding on to a bankrupt company's stock, which might be worth $0 when the bankruptcy is over, but it might be worth $1. The expected value might be $.50, but most people would sell at $.30 because they don't want the risk or don't want to deal with bankruptcy court. This is one way distressed investors make money.

      You can make money by buying stocks that went down yesterday and selling stocks that went up. There is a small amount of mean-reversion in the stock market, so the expected value of this strategy is positve. However few investors will adopt this strategy because it's very risky-- after all, what if the stock is just about to go bust or if it's starting to rally? This can also be done at smaller time scales. This is one way quant hedge funds and high-frequency traders make money.

      You can make money by making markets. That is, you always are willing to sell some stock, and you always are willing to buy some stock. There's a spread between your prices, so you make money on average. However, this is a very risky strategy because you may end up selling a lot of stock at low prices, and buying a lot at high prices, before you are able to make up the difference with money earned from the spread. This is one way brokers and high-frequency traders make money.

      You can make money by selling derivatives and hedging them. Mathematical finance shows how to replicate on option on stock by constantly buying and selling the underlying stock. Because few people are willing and able to execute the hedging strategy, you can sell derivatives for a significant premium over the cost to hedge them. This is one way more sophisticated brokers and quant hedge funds make money.

      As I've hopefully made clear, there are lots of ways to make money without ripping anybody off. These are all win-win situations for the market players: One side makes money on average for taking risks (or providing a service) that the other is willing to pay for.

      Goldman Sachs does not make money out of thin air. They make money because people are paying them for their services, primarily market-making and derivatives. (Although Goldman has many other non-stock-market services, too, such as investment banking and asset management.)

      (Most of this could be said for the video game issue, too. The currency markets are about one party paying another for a service. But it's different, because games are supposed to be FUN.)

  8. Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A) your comparison between real life execution and losing your account in a video game made me throw up a little bit.

    B) You want to add an interesting new "fugitive" mechanic to the game, which requires players to abuse the game to experience? And you think this will *reduce* game abuse? You have a lot to learn about MMOs, my friend.

  9. Is this the US Economy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't tell me most account ids were variants of 'Goldman Sachs'

  10. Re:I just came back from lunch by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Funny

    Go back to twitter.

  11. Eve players don't own any congressmen... by AmazingRuss · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...so no, they don't get protected and bailed out.

    1. Re:Eve players don't own any congressmen... by btellier · · Score: 2, Funny

      What evidence do you have that Goldman owns or exerts any influence over the US government? This kind of wild, un-sourced speculation is so rampant and accepted on /. that virtually any comment about corporate conspiracy gets at least a +1, Informative.

    2. Re:Eve players don't own any congressmen... by radish · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fact: Goldman were forced to take $10bn in TARP aid, against their wishes. Not a bailout, they didn't need or want the money.
      Fact: Goldman paid back said money at the earliest possible opportunity, plus interest.
      Fact: The taxpayer made a 23% profit on the money invested in Goldman. That's $2.3bn for those keeping count at home.

      Rolling Stone didn't mention that, huh? Maybe you should stop getting your financial news from a washed up "culture" mag.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  12. The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let me state at the outset that I am a big fan of just about everything Eve.

    Disclaimer out of the way, the dirty secret in Eve is that it's real tough to make money as a "glamorous combat pilot." Hi-Sec miner, hi-sec industrialist -- you're swimming in cash. But that's not the glamorous, exciting game one sees in the promos that attracts the curious to play the game. THAT game, the "pew pew" of lasers, the mighty racket of autocannons blazing, the squeal of the drones as they shred your enemies' armor -- exciting as all hell, but costly. The profit margin just ain't there, unless you're really, really good. If you're part of a large null-sec Corp that can replace your ships when they (inevitably) are wiped out when you are jumped by a much larger force, you'll get by, but if you're some lone wolf sociopathic space pirate, you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.

    These are the guys who are the ISK farmers' clients. These guys, who comprise most of the lo-sec game (as opposed to hi-sec and null-sec) are the players affected by the farmer clamp-down. What will be the fall-out when they can't run to their real-world "suppliers" to re-tool? Will these guys leave the game? Join a more established Corp? Switch careers? Grow up? It'll be interesting to watch...

    1. Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers by Fieryphoenix · · Score: 4, Funny

      you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.

      They made a Firefly MMO??? Sign me up!

    2. Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers by Shinobi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As a high-sec miner, you're piss-poor. The real money from mining comes from the alliances who can hold space out in 0.0 and mine the valuable ores there. Holding space requires combat pilots. Supplying combat pilots with ships and ammo requires industrialists to run manufacturing and logistics. But overall, the big money is in market trading, 0.0 mining/moon materials and complexes.

      This last week, I've logged a total of 4 hours in EVE, yet made a 2.8Bn ISK profit, due to market trading. Revenue is up over 10Bn ISK.

  13. Re:Thank you Captain Obvious! by Greyfox · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Those guys run their bots round the clock, while even the most dedicated human might manage 7-10 hours a day. So it's not surprising that they're consuming a lot more resources than everyone else.

    I wonder if this has freed up any chunks of low-sec space. I've heard rumors of vast tracts of isk farmer territory where automated mining operations go on 'round the clock. And if that's how they were making all their isk, creating new accounts won't help much if they've lost the defenses that made maintaining that space viable in the first place.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  14. They did this to prevent something much worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As someone noted in a post above, the people doing this for real world money are typically the ones that bot and cheat. The challenge of the game itself is replaced with the challenge of maximizing your intake by whatever means necessary.

    Some games aren't bothered by this type of behavior too greatly. I remember WoW having a large number of gold sellers, but up until WotLK (at which point I unsubscribed) I don't ever remember inflation, cheating, botting, etc. ruining my experience.

    The main post of my post - is that this is not always the case. RMT (real money trading) ruined Final Fantasy XI. Thousands of people quit when rampant inflation ruined the economy. Thousands of people quit when end game consisted of camping a spawn against people using bots and hacks. It spiraled way out of control, and Square did nothing to combat it.

    FFXI is a good example of why Eve dropped 2% of its customer base - because the unchecked alternative can ruin a game.