In December, an anonymous forumite confessed to an ingenious gaming crime. In the spacefaring MMO "EVE Online," they claimed, they had found a process by which they could make highly sought-after goods out of thin air -- and with fellow gamers, exploited that process to make the equivalent of $145,000 in real money over four years.
Then, there was no proof that the exploit actually existed, or that any of the estimated 2.5 trillion ISK siphoned off the EVE economy was subsequently traded for U.S. dollars. But today, in a 5,500 word report, developer CCP has documented their entire investigation into the very real exploit.
Among other findings, CCP estimates that dupers made a minimum of 6 trillion ISK in profit, the equivalent of $350,000 -- and they confirm that the in-game corporation with the largest operation was indeed selling ISK for real world cash.
You can find a detailed explanation of the exploit process, graphs and charts detailing the impact on the in-game economy, the punishment meted out to dupers, and the procedure by which CCP hopes such a thing will never happen again at the official EVE Online website.
(via Massively)
February 11th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Excellent follow-up, Sean. Unfortunately, the POS issue coupled with the stuff GoonSwarm uncovered in the collapse of Band of Brothers has shown me that CCP is both incompetent for missing the POS bug notices and economic changes, and corrupt for providing NPC standing modifications and free ships to BoB. On to another game.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:46 am
What, you don't trust their Internal Affairs department? Any company forced to create an body to regulate corrupt employees *has to be* trustworthy...
Just kidding. It did surprise me a mite that CCP had such a department, though.