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The concern that seems to be raised is..
We're worried that certain styles of game play that heavily involve meta gaming could be misconstrued as RMT activity and result in false positive bans. We wan't some explanation or assurance of how the security policies in place will avoid this.

To rephrase the answer (yet again) from Sreegs that has been repeated several times...
Ultimately, it is not possible to ensure that false positives from situations like this will not occur. This is due to much of the meta gaming revolving around these game play styles does not exist within the game mechanics and is therefor out of the control of CCP. It is also due to the fact that sharing details about how the policy might avoid these situations would compromise the process.
It has been stated that they do not believe they have caught any true false positives yet, but that there have been some bans reversed in certain situations where some other lesser infraction (illegal account transfer) may have cause a link to occur.
An assurance that situation X or profession Y will be protected cannot be given because in doing this "underwriting" they would be declaring a potential loophole or safe haven for RMT activity.
Because of the sensitive nature of the policy the only realistic assurance that can be give, has been given...
"If situations like these occur they will be dealt with on a case by case basis, considering the merits of the individual situation"

This is exactly why botters and ISK sellers should be flagged in game. At the very least, CEO's need to know this stuff as it can cause a lot of damage to the corp/alliance and players who associate with them. It is a very fine line indeed...but my opinion is simple. You break the rules, you forfeit your rights. This thread is not for that discussion though.

Good job Sreegs. You are not my favorite Dev unfortunately. Punkturis rules you all!

Just kidding! You guys are all awesome! Keep up the fantastic work!

!tuo teg

To CCP Sreegs and the security team:

Great work - and I reallly do hope that the CCP beancounters appreciate it (Hint: if not, write an interoffice memo - stating how much RL money you guys are saving the company - and make sure it gets cc'ed to all the right folks).

And, more kudos for your amazing patience in responding to some rather unbelievably whiny posts in this thread.

To the whiners:

RMT = real life theft.

Get it through your skulls - this isn't metagaming. It is a RL crime. Knowingly buying or assisting in the trafficking of stolen goods is also a RL crime - and you can be prosecuted (yeah, even in China). Claiming that you unknowingly bought or assisted in the trafficking of stolen goods still means that all such goods and profits from such goods may be seized without any reimbursement or consideration. So, in short, yes, you are always personally culpable to some degree, whether your involvement was accidental or premeditated - and irregardless of the degrees of separation between you and the original thief (ask the major museums about this).

Botting = cheating.

Read the EULA. Then, read it again. If you cheat, you will be banned - temporary or permanent - up to CCP. If you benefit, directly or indirectly, from cheating, then the in-game assets acquired via cheating may be seized, without reimbursement. So, if your entire alliance gets spanked 'cause its titans and POSes were improperly paid for via botting - blame the players who were knowingly involved in cheating, not CCP.

Loans = not part of the game.

And, as such, operate within a dangerous grey area - as do any other out-of-game agreement to exchange ISK or goods. If you inadvertedly do business with a suspected RMTer or botter, then you may end up getting picked up, too. Works the same way in RL (loan money to a suspected con man and see what happens to you when he gets picked up). It is not CCP's responsibility to support , monitor or police every out-of-game activity which players choose to engage in. They, however, do indeed have a right to step in when such activity, such as loans to RMTers, are involved in taking away RL money which rightfully belongs to CCP, as the owners of Eve Online (no, the game does not actually belong to the players).

False positives = might happen.

No net is perfect - even the flawless US justice system fails, on occasion, and, once in a while, the innocent get persecuted. But, speculating on the infinite number of "what might happen if..." scenarios is not how you run a security system, or a justice system, for that matter. You set up rules & regulations, criteria for detecting and penalizing violations, and proceed accordingly, adjusting parameters along the way, as real - not theoretical - situations occur.

For protesting false accusations, the US courts have an appeal system and CCP has a petition system. Also, not perfect. But, if a country with 330M citizens and god-knows-how-many lawyers can't come up with a perfect system, then why would you expect more from CCP?

RMT is not real life theft, nor is it "Illegal".
Legally Liable and Illegal are two completly differnt things.

If RMT was illegal then CCP wouldnt take part (In selling time codes for ISK).
If RMT was illegal then we would see sites selling gold/isk/virtual items shut down.
If RMT was overly harmful and ccp could track down the users then they could seek finacial damages. A few games in the past have been destroyed by botting but other than Blizzard I am not sure any other company has taken legal action.

Ahm, that is exactly how you run a justice system. The debate and draft process of laws includes a significant amount of 'what if' speculation because they (when not grand standing) generally want to try to hash out these problems before a law goes into effect.

The perceived problem with CCP's system is the same one you get in real systems, or at least a variation of it. They have the 'prosecutor' problem.. rewards based off positive rates without a corresponding cost for failing to weed out the false positives. This was esp apparent during Unholy Rage where big sexy numbers were the single most important result. CCP is behaving like elected officials, which is not all bad, BUT live systems have a combination of elected/political officials and 'professionals' that have a reward system that is different. There are also possible penalties for malicious prosecution along with transparency where people are allowed to refute the evidence against them.

At least in the past, while there was a petition system, you were not allowed to see any of the evidence against you, and CCP had no political motive for re-enabling people, esp if doing so impacted one of the 'big sexy numbers' (so people who were multiboxing were just as good of targets, politically, as botters).

And true, this is a hard problem, one that no government has solved in human history. This does not mean we can not call CCP to task for issues regarding it since we should generally strive to do better, not say 'well, no one is perfect, so we should just be happy'.

This thread contains some of the stupidest people I've seen in EVE. That's a record, guys. Well done. *golfclap* Sreegs won't give you a straight answer BECAUSE THERE IS NONE.

You loan money to a dude. Dude steals your money and never pays back. Tough luck.

You loan money to a dude. Dude has bought RL money, or sells your money for RL money. He gets banzored. You're out of your money. Same thing. Tough luck.

Now, you've "loaned" this guy money for years and he's sold it for real life cash and gets caught doing it. Guess what? Sreegs isn't stupid.

Here's a question.

What keeps botters from starting a new account when there old account is banned? Is their credit card information tagged as a banded card? Is their ISP recognized and then the ISP banned?

If not its just one more reason that all botters should be perma-banded after the 2nd insult as they will likely just be back anyway...

Situation:

I'm in my own corporation.

A (RL-)friend is in his own corporation.

I want to invest 2,000,000,000 ISK into his business.

It can be proven that these ISK are legit, either earned by me ingame or gained trough selling PLEX bought from CCP.

How do I transfer the money w/o being flagged by Team Security?

Transfer money?
Contract money?
Make a trial account, buy and redeem PLEX with that character, sell PLEX, join the corporation, transfer the money to the corp wallet, delete the character (really?)?

What about an option to buy shares?


Please forgive me if this question has been asked before - I didn't want to delve into 27 pages. Be angry, but please provide me with a link, thank you.