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New dev blog: Team Security RMT Update - 3 Weeks in Numbers (YAY)

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Visreae
Iskitution Philanderies Associated
#121 - 2012-04-26 18:52:16 UTC
I have evidence of a huge RMT operation. Worth a considerable amount of plex/$ that was part of a large internet advertising campaign. The campaign was successful and the originators made out like bandits close to $30k in proceeds in one day. This lead to an obvious bump in some ship costs, especially those with prices tied closely to the cost of plex. The day this occurred you could see the avg price for plex going up as well as cost of ships, a huge, nay, obvious indicator of inflation. What is most disturbing as this originated within CCP itself. What steps are being done to make sure CCP sanctioned RMT, circumventing their own rules and ethos, doesn't impact our economy? Because all your efforts towards stopping RMT'ers seems to be guided at clearing the field of competition for ccp, and thats not just shady or monopolistic its hypocritical and mob like....
Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
#122 - 2012-04-26 18:55:45 UTC
Visreae wrote:
I have evidence of a huge RMT operation. Worth a considerable amount of plex/$ that was part of a large internet advertising campaign. The campaign was successful and the originators made out like bandits close to $30k in proceeds in one day. This lead to an obvious bump in some ship costs, especially those with prices tied closely to the cost of plex. The day this occurred you could see the avg price for plex going up as well as cost of ships, a huge, nay, obvious indicator of inflation. What is most disturbing as this originated within CCP itself. What steps are being done to make sure CCP sanctioned RMT, circumventing their own rules and ethos, doesn't impact our economy? Because all your efforts towards stopping RMT'ers seems to be guided at clearing the field of competition for ccp, and thats not just shady or monopolistic its hypocritical and mob like....


LMAO

How Dare a game company try to sell more subscriptions and virtual items for $ !

Global agenda and Club Penquin must be right up there with the Gambino family!

.
Toawa
EVE Mercantile Exchange
#123 - 2012-04-26 19:00:40 UTC
Sorry, but I have an irresistible compulsion to be pedantic here.

RMT ISK sales are not "illegal." They do not meet any countries' legal definition of a crime (AFAIK). They are against the EULA, but breaking the EULA is not illegal (despite certain protestations by certain US federal courts and politicians whenever it happens suits their PR interests). The EULA has language specifically dealing with EULA violations, specifying cancellation of the account.

A more correct term would be "unauthorized."

I feel that I have to point this out precisely because of the aforementioned US federal courts and politicians (especially politicians!) who go out of their way to cast everything they don't happen to like as being a crime; the fact that you don't like something does not make it criminal.

(Of course, fraudulently breaking into an account may, depending upon the circumstances, meet the legal definition of a crime, but that's not what this devblog was about.)
Visreae
Iskitution Philanderies Associated
#124 - 2012-04-26 19:01:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Visreae
Diomedes Calypso wrote:
Visreae wrote:
I have evidence of a huge RMT operation. Worth a considerable amount of plex/$ that was part of a large internet advertising campaign. The campaign was successful and the originators made out like bandits close to $30k in proceeds in one day. This lead to an obvious bump in some ship costs, especially those with prices tied closely to the cost of plex. The day this occurred you could see the avg price for plex going up as well as cost of ships, a huge, nay, obvious indicator of inflation. What is most disturbing as this originated within CCP itself. What steps are being done to make sure CCP sanctioned RMT, circumventing their own rules and ethos, doesn't impact our economy? Because all your efforts towards stopping RMT'ers seems to be guided at clearing the field of competition for ccp, and thats not just shady or monopolistic its hypocritical and mob like....


LMAO

How Dare a game company try to sell more subscriptions and virtual items for $ !

Global agenda and Club Penquin must be right up there with the Gambino family!


I was referring the graphics card scam they ran a few weeks ago. They charged 20 plex for a gcard worth ~16. And attempted to justify it. I almost puked. If they exchange real life goods and services for game items and vice versa then everyone else should be able to as well. There are other concerns at stake beyond our economy, customers identitys and bank accounts(and so future customer-hood) so this does need to be sniffed out and purged, but not to be replaced by CCP'Scam.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#125 - 2012-04-26 19:19:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Ranger 1
Visreae wrote:
Diomedes Calypso wrote:
Visreae wrote:
I have evidence of a huge RMT operation. Worth a considerable amount of plex/$ that was part of a large internet advertising campaign. The campaign was successful and the originators made out like bandits close to $30k in proceeds in one day. This lead to an obvious bump in some ship costs, especially those with prices tied closely to the cost of plex. The day this occurred you could see the avg price for plex going up as well as cost of ships, a huge, nay, obvious indicator of inflation. What is most disturbing as this originated within CCP itself. What steps are being done to make sure CCP sanctioned RMT, circumventing their own rules and ethos, doesn't impact our economy? Because all your efforts towards stopping RMT'ers seems to be guided at clearing the field of competition for ccp, and thats not just shady or monopolistic its hypocritical and mob like....


LMAO

How Dare a game company try to sell more subscriptions and virtual items for $ !

Global agenda and Club Penquin must be right up there with the Gambino family!


I was referring the graphics card scam they ran a few weeks ago. They charged 20 plex for a gcard worth ~16. And attempted to justify it. I almost puked. If they exchange real life goods and services for game items and vice versa then everyone else should be able to as well. There are other concerns at stake beyond our economy, customers identitys and bank accounts(and so future customer-hood) so this does need to be sniffed out and purged, but not to be replaced by CCP'Scam.



Game items and currency are the property of CCP. Why should anyone else be able to exchange them for goods and services without CCP's express permission?

From your point of view, I should feel quite free to come over and take your car and then go trade it for a ski boat.

Now if you tell me that it is perfectly fine to do so, and sign the car over to me, then we have what CCP is doing.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
#126 - 2012-04-26 19:21:45 UTC
Visreae wrote:

I was referring the graphics card scam they ran a few weeks ago. They charged 20 plex for a gcard worth ~16. And attempted to justify it. I almost puked. If they exchange real life goods and services for game items and vice versa then everyone else should be able to as well. There are other concerns at stake beyond our economy, customers identitys and bank accounts(and so future customer-hood) are at stake so this does need to be sniffed out and purged, but not to be replaced by CCP'Scam.


I understand the distinction you're making then.


Taking issue with your premise would take a detailed debate on the $ value of a plex held by a player and the cost (if any) for CCP to give free game time to players who would only play with free game time. Below is a cliff note version.

In the forum post I reffered to a few posts ago, I had mentioned that IF it had CCP's blessing I'd sell a few hundred plex for $3 a piece. Whether or not the plex are worth 17$ to you, the market would determine the value. As it is against the terms of the Eula to sell the plex they would conceiveably be worth even less than $2 to me.

IF I were to have bought the video card for plex, the "rip-off" would not be nearly in the realm you are suggesting. I'm not sure the cost of the Card at best buy, not a steep discount site.. but if the deal included shipping and handling and the card frequently sold for $40 retail there wouldn't be any "rip off" at all for people in my situation.

No-one was forced into the transaction so it could have been and EXcellent value for those with tight RL budgets (perhaps disabled, out of work, or with children who they're rather buy an additional pair of shoes on than spend extra on thier personal hobby) and hundreds of billions of isk /assets that they enjoyed piling up as carebears or traders etc (im a trader...I enjoy making isk.. i largely played the game with the sanbox goal of making isk being equal to the sandbox goal of collecting killmails.)

Just because some people are willing to buy plex for ~ $17 via legitimate channels doesn't mean that the value of real money converted to a game asset has the same reverse transaction value.

Maybe I'd grant you something in between my perpective and your perpective as I won't deny that I they both have a rational basis, yet certainly its not black or white... other than if people were informed of the RLvalue being $16 yet they still chose to use 20 plex for it, that you can't argue that those people don't have the right to determine whether or not it is a good value to them.

.
Just Alter
Futures Abstractions
#127 - 2012-04-26 19:22:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Just Alter
Visreae wrote:
Diomedes Calypso wrote:
Visreae wrote:
I have evidence of a huge RMT operation. Worth a considerable amount of plex/$ that was part of a large internet advertising campaign. The campaign was successful and the originators made out like bandits close to $30k in proceeds in one day. This lead to an obvious bump in some ship costs, especially those with prices tied closely to the cost of plex. The day this occurred you could see the avg price for plex going up as well as cost of ships, a huge, nay, obvious indicator of inflation. What is most disturbing as this originated within CCP itself. What steps are being done to make sure CCP sanctioned RMT, circumventing their own rules and ethos, doesn't impact our economy? Because all your efforts towards stopping RMT'ers seems to be guided at clearing the field of competition for ccp, and thats not just shady or monopolistic its hypocritical and mob like....


LMAO

How Dare a game company try to sell more subscriptions and virtual items for $ !

Global agenda and Club Penquin must be right up there with the Gambino family!


I was referring the graphics card scam they ran a few weeks ago. They charged 20 plex for a gcard worth ~16. And attempted to justify it. I almost puked. If they exchange real life goods and services for game items and vice versa then everyone else should be able to as well. There are other concerns at stake beyond our economy, customers identitys and bank accounts(and so future customer-hood) so this does need to be sniffed out and purged, but not to be replaced by CCP'Scam.



"If they exchange real life goods and services for game items and vice versa then everyone else should be able to as well. "

Now this has to be the most stupid sentence i ever read in my whole life.

I strongly suggest you consider biomassing your char and getting accepted in some clinic for retards.

I'm actually mad because of the unique stupidity of that sentence.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#128 - 2012-04-26 19:23:06 UTC
Toawa wrote:
Sorry, but I have an irresistible compulsion to be pedantic here.

RMT ISK sales are not "illegal." They do not meet any countries' legal definition of a crime (AFAIK). They are against the EULA, but breaking the EULA is not illegal (despite certain protestations by certain US federal courts and politicians whenever it happens suits their PR interests). The EULA has language specifically dealing with EULA violations, specifying cancellation of the account.

A more correct term would be "unauthorized."

I feel that I have to point this out precisely because of the aforementioned US federal courts and politicians (especially politicians!) who go out of their way to cast everything they don't happen to like as being a crime; the fact that you don't like something does not make it criminal.

(Of course, fraudulently breaking into an account may, depending upon the circumstances, meet the legal definition of a crime, but that's not what this devblog was about.)



Selling something that doesn't belong to you against the agreements you've agreed to an the will of hte rightful owner seems pretty illegal to me but you're free to use whatever words make you the most happy. :)

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#129 - 2012-04-26 19:23:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Ranger 1
Quote:
detailed debate on the $ value of a plex held by a player


The $ value of a plex held by a player is zero.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Just Alter
Futures Abstractions
#130 - 2012-04-26 19:25:05 UTC
Danny Centauri wrote:
Hey there,

Some actual research that could help you guys out. First these EVE ISK companies are relying upon two methods to attack the EVE community and get customers.

Firstly let’s deal with PPC advertising on Google, I will only deal with Google as that will cover the vast majority of the issue (some similar work may be required with Bing to cover the problem in the US). Right now PPC is a massive problem as it’s an instant trip to the top of the SERPs with the majority of Google users not realising that people pay for these rankings and that it is no indication that Google actually trust these sites just purely based upon the fact that they paid to be there.

As EVE online ISK and other EVE assets are copyrighted then get in touch with Google and make a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request to Google complaining about the copyrighted materials appearing on these ISK selling websites. This will then either force the site into removing these assets or if they don’t then Google will delist them not only from the regular SERPs but also from PPC.

Secondly onto regular results in the SERPs and how these can be tackled. Well to put it simply these companies are scammy as hell and their whole online strategy is based around spammy link building something which is actually against Googles guidelines, so straight away report them:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1

Then start your own site targeted towards the keyword table below, based around the effects of RMT on the EVE community and the risks of getting caught. You simply have to create better content than them and then plea to the EVE community to all write a blog post about RMT and buying ISK and link it to your site. If you ask people to use the anchor text for the exact keyword then great, if not don’t worry too much as Google have recently reduced the value of anchor text on links.

Site traffic for iskspot.com:
Query Percent of Search Traffic
buy isk 37.10%
eve online isk 21.49%
eve isk 13.41%
iskspot support 2.19%
buy eve isk 2.12%
iskspot safe 1.98%
damage dealing eve 1.29%
eve high-tech weapons 1.12%
eve security status 0.90%
eve weapons upgrades 5 0.78%

They have 2,820 back links of which 295 come from 255 websites with the anchor text ‘eve ISK’ and 254 come from 225 websites with the anchor text ‘buy isk’. This is something we can easily beat as a community especially with high PR links from the main EVE sites.

Finally one last recommendation is to make a youtube video optimised for the keywords buy isk, perhaps go for a title like ‘buy ISK… suffer the consequences’. This will then with a little bit of work appear in the SERPs too as Google love putting Youtube videos at the top of the SERPS effectively giving you double top positions and knocking everyone else actually selling ISK below the fold.

If you steal their traffic you kill their industry. If you require any advice or want any further information please feel free to contact me. I'm sure there are plenty more SEO'ers in the community that could offer you further advice too. Good luck killing RMT.

Regards,
Danny


I think this post deserves more attention.

Btw i'm impressed by how this team is working.

Great job, keep it up. Thanks.
Mirima Thurander
#131 - 2012-04-26 19:48:48 UTC
with out giving out numbers where more of the banned account using plex or paying with moneys?


and on your one post about thinking about using the banned items as rewards, get people to use them in CCP live events so there's a chance they might get blown up or something but there still there.


i mean all that DED/officer loot that's just sitting there if that rmt or botter hand gotten to it first it some other player would of gotten it.

now faction loot that was botted up burn it in a fire.

All automated intel should be removed from the game including Instant local/jumps/kills/cynos for all systems/regions.Eve should report nothing like this to the client/3rd party software.Intel should not be force fed to players. Player skill and iniative should be the sources of intel.
Ugleb
Jotunn Risi
#132 - 2012-04-26 19:49:53 UTC
In the name of spreading the word and ensuring that it keeps on getting spread, why not do a simple monthly update blog on security announcing the monthly numbers of RMT bans/reversals and reminding players of the wonderful thing known as PLEX?

I like to hear about RMT'ers getting banned so would not feel inconvenienced by this. :)

http://uglebsjournal.wordpress.com/

The Jotunn Risi are now recruiting, Brutor ancestry required in order to best represent the Brutor interest.  Join channel JORIS to learn more!
Celebris Nexterra
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#133 - 2012-04-26 20:01:37 UTC
Voidfinger wrote:
Man I love spending 500+ million for a abbadon!


^^Spotted the RMTer
Mongo Edwards
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#134 - 2012-04-26 20:21:41 UTC
Is there any info on what percentage of the assets seized were built by the RMTers for sale? Like how much of the 4.2 trillion came from seized Capitals and Super caps?
Mikk36
Reval Inc.
#135 - 2012-04-26 20:33:40 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Toawa wrote:
Sorry, but I have an irresistible compulsion to be pedantic here.

RMT ISK sales are not "illegal." They do not meet any countries' legal definition of a crime (AFAIK). They are against the EULA, but breaking the EULA is not illegal (despite certain protestations by certain US federal courts and politicians whenever it happens suits their PR interests). The EULA has language specifically dealing with EULA violations, specifying cancellation of the account.

A more correct term would be "unauthorized."

I feel that I have to point this out precisely because of the aforementioned US federal courts and politicians (especially politicians!) who go out of their way to cast everything they don't happen to like as being a crime; the fact that you don't like something does not make it criminal.

(Of course, fraudulently breaking into an account may, depending upon the circumstances, meet the legal definition of a crime, but that's not what this devblog was about.)



Selling something that doesn't belong to you against the agreements you've agreed to an the will of hte rightful owner seems pretty illegal to me but you're free to use whatever words make you the most happy. :)
To my understanding, if it were illegal, you could sue people for RMT'ing or botting the game, but you can't, so all you can do is terminate their accounts and stop providing them the service.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#136 - 2012-04-26 20:44:44 UTC
Mikk36 wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Toawa wrote:
Sorry, but I have an irresistible compulsion to be pedantic here.

RMT ISK sales are not "illegal." They do not meet any countries' legal definition of a crime (AFAIK). They are against the EULA, but breaking the EULA is not illegal (despite certain protestations by certain US federal courts and politicians whenever it happens suits their PR interests). The EULA has language specifically dealing with EULA violations, specifying cancellation of the account.

A more correct term would be "unauthorized."

I feel that I have to point this out precisely because of the aforementioned US federal courts and politicians (especially politicians!) who go out of their way to cast everything they don't happen to like as being a crime; the fact that you don't like something does not make it criminal.

(Of course, fraudulently breaking into an account may, depending upon the circumstances, meet the legal definition of a crime, but that's not what this devblog was about.)



Selling something that doesn't belong to you against the agreements you've agreed to an the will of hte rightful owner seems pretty illegal to me but you're free to use whatever words make you the most happy. :)
To my understanding, if it were illegal, you could sue people for RMT'ing or botting the game, but you can't, so all you can do is terminate their accounts and stop providing them the service.


No one cares about the semantics.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#137 - 2012-04-26 20:44:59 UTC
Mikk36 wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Toawa wrote:
Sorry, but I have an irresistible compulsion to be pedantic here.

RMT ISK sales are not "illegal." They do not meet any countries' legal definition of a crime (AFAIK). They are against the EULA, but breaking the EULA is not illegal (despite certain protestations by certain US federal courts and politicians whenever it happens suits their PR interests). The EULA has language specifically dealing with EULA violations, specifying cancellation of the account.

A more correct term would be "unauthorized."

I feel that I have to point this out precisely because of the aforementioned US federal courts and politicians (especially politicians!) who go out of their way to cast everything they don't happen to like as being a crime; the fact that you don't like something does not make it criminal.

(Of course, fraudulently breaking into an account may, depending upon the circumstances, meet the legal definition of a crime, but that's not what this devblog was about.)



Selling something that doesn't belong to you against the agreements you've agreed to an the will of hte rightful owner seems pretty illegal to me but you're free to use whatever words make you the most happy. :)
To my understanding, if it were illegal, you could sue people for RMT'ing or botting the game, but you can't, so all you can do is terminate their accounts and stop providing them the service.


Your ability to sue people and legality are two distinct and different things. You can sue someone for anything.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Voidfinger
Malevelon Haven
#138 - 2012-04-26 21:02:24 UTC
Celebris Nexterra wrote:
Voidfinger wrote:
Man I love spending 500+ million for a abbadon!


^^Spotted the RMTer


lol nope, my money goes to CCP every month. plus if you could looks at my isk balance you would laugh so no, no rmt'ing here. Just cried having to spend 3/4 of my balance I had on a battle ship that I could get for 70-100 million a month ago.

I'm all for squashing rmt'ing just wish it didn't flip ship prices so badly, then again I'm all for quashing the competition to leave the field open for yourself with no restrictions. Happens on the streets a lot, competition comes along and drive by ... problem solved. prices go back up :)
Gao Charen-Teng
Allied Brotherhood Of Space Scoundrels
#139 - 2012-04-26 21:03:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Gao Charen-Teng
I agree that RMT is bad for the game and should be stamped out where it can be found. It seems like Team Security is working on the problem, and that they will continue doing so. I applaud both.

That said, I don't think 6 trillion seized is very much. It's a lot of zeros, but a small bit of the economy. I've never seen a number for the total asset value in the game, but some sources do talk about raw ISK at least. Taken together, it sounds like trillions of isk are net-created every day, and the total isk in existence is at least hundreds of trillions and growing sharply. But even this should be a small fraction of the total asset value in the game. If you're counting everything from trit to titans, 6T sounds far, far less impressive.

This means one of two things. Either:
A) There's not that much RMT after all.
OR
B) This round of security is pretty ineffective except possibly as a warning to potential RMTer, or just good PR.


Personally my guess is it's A. There are a handful of miscreants that we can be happy about punching in the face, but it's not really a big factor in gameplay. I know RMT happens. But I've seen far, far less of it in Eve than other games. Probably that's due to the brilliant CCP-sanctioned PLEX and character markets. And that's a good thing. Team Security dug around in their databases, did some super-secret espionage, or whatever they did, and found that "huh, the game's design already solved this problem, for the most part".
Toawa
EVE Mercantile Exchange
#140 - 2012-04-26 21:17:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Toawa
CCP Sreegs wrote:

Selling something that doesn't belong to you against the agreements you've agreed to an the will of hte rightful owner seems pretty illegal to me but you're free to use whatever words make you the most happy. :)


That would be morally wrong, but not necessarily illegal. (Hell, governments do it all the time. They just usually pass laws that say it's not illegal when they do it.)

If something is illegal, it necessarily implies a claim on the government's monopoly of force to correct a situation. RMT (taken on its own, not including issues of where the ISK comes from), assuming the transaction is completed as advertised (IE, the RMTer doesn't take the RL money and run), does not invoke a claim on the government's monopoly of force to correct it. Therefore, it is not illegal.