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

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Gevlin
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#141 - 2012-04-26 21:19:27 UTC
Awesome work Team Security!
The isk removed from the game must have been Gargantuan if the total stuff removed was was that large.
As much As I would love to see the additional isk removed by selling the seized stuff, this is a miss use of time “counting beans” and could run against the “free market” that Eve has, as CCP starts playing with things out side of Economists hands. This just opens a whole new barrel of fish and CCP has other sinks they plan to implement.

It is nice seeing new eden have its organs fixed (inferno and Crucible implementing fixes) and parasites removed (Banning of RMT, Botters)

Thank you CCP for making Eve Healthy again, able to run the long term marathon of the MMO market.

Someday I will have the time to play. For now it is mining afk in High sec. In Cheap ships
Danny Centauri
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#142 - 2012-04-26 21:35:05 UTC
Just Alter wrote:
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.


Thanks was hoping for a response on this one, I know its a tad more than the average couple of sentences for a response. SEO could really help out CCP on the whole I wouldn't even blink if you said you was spending in the region of €10k per month with Google on PPC.

Seen it with many companies burning money on PPC that would be better spent for long term gains on SEO, simply because SEO is almost unknown by traditional marketeers especially when everyone is so busy jumping up and down about social media yet struggling to measure their results from their social spend. /rant over

EVE Manufacturing Guide - Simple guides to manufacturing in EVE for both beginners and more experienced players.
Haifisch Zahne
Hraka Manufacture GmbH
#143 - 2012-04-26 21:35:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Haifisch Zahne
REMOVED TO PROTEST CCP's Community Censorship Protocol ("CCCP").
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#144 - 2012-04-26 21:45:59 UTC
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Graphs! Where are the graphs!


Graphs are Stillman's department

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Quade Warren
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#145 - 2012-04-26 21:55:21 UTC
Burn them all.

On a side note, you could make these actions a part of the "eve lore" so you can insert it wherever proper.

"Money launderers were imprisoned today by a CONCORD task force that was specifically created to attack this new threat to governments in New Eden. An estimated 4.2 trillion isk was confiscated and has been used as evidence in upcoming criminal trials."

With a special footnote in italics: RMTers beware...
Toawa
EVE Mercantile Exchange
#146 - 2012-04-26 21:58:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Toawa
Danny Centauri wrote:

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.


This would be an abuse of the DMCA. ISK as a word cannot be copyrighted, because you can't copyright a word. You'd have a hard time making any copyright claim to "ISK" or "EVE Online ISK" under copyright law. Now, if they're taking images from CCP's sites, that's another matter.

And copyright law doesn't even begin to cover actions taken within the game to transfer ISK from one party to another.

That being said, I'd imagine there are avenues open under Trademark law.

(Far, far too many people confuse Copyright law, Trademark law, and Patent law. The more we can do to end that confusion, the better.)

(Standard IANAL disclaimer.)
Danny Centauri
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#147 - 2012-04-26 22:06:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Danny Centauri
Toawa wrote:
Danny Centauri wrote:

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.


This would be an abuse of the DMCA. ISK as a word cannot be copyrighted, because you can't copyright a word. You'd have a hard time making any copyright claim to "ISK" or "EVE Online ISK" under copyright law. Now, if they're taking images from CCP's sites, that's another matter.

That being said, I'd imagine there are avenues open under Trademark law.

(Far, far too many people confuse Copyright law, Trademark law, and Patent law. The more we can do to end that confusion, the better.)

(Standard IANAL disclaimer.)


Hey this guy talks sense. A lot of the sites I looked at during my research stole pictures, the ones that didn't looked even more scammy. Simply putting in a DMCA request due to images would be a success IMO as most dodgy *insert country here* websites won't even read the mail to their web master account and will end up getting delisted.

Personally I would argue that ISK farmers are using someones else's interlectually property to make money, surely that isn't right especially as they are using CCPs resources in order to make the profit (if we assume anyone logged on TQ is using CCPs resources).

But yeah anyway this guy made fair points the legal avenue is definately one that should be explored. Every RMT char ban is a drop in the price of PLEX - down with RMTers!

EVE Manufacturing Guide - Simple guides to manufacturing in EVE for both beginners and more experienced players.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#148 - 2012-04-26 22:08:54 UTC
Toawa wrote:
Danny Centauri wrote:

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.


This would be an abuse of the DMCA. ISK as a word cannot be copyrighted, because you can't copyright a word. You'd have a hard time making any copyright claim to "ISK" or "EVE Online ISK" under copyright law. Now, if they're taking images from CCP's sites, that's another matter.

And copyright law doesn't even begin to cover actions taken within the game to transfer ISK from one party to another.

That being said, I'd imagine there are avenues open under Trademark law.

(Far, far too many people confuse Copyright law, Trademark law, and Patent law. The more we can do to end that confusion, the better.)

(Standard IANAL disclaimer.)


Not to mention that ISK is also the currency code for Iceland's króna...

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

fofofo
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#149 - 2012-04-26 22:12:28 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Graphs! Where are the graphs!


Graphs are Stillman's department


How about tables? How many and how much week one, week two, week three?

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Etil DeLaFuente
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#150 - 2012-04-26 23:09:40 UTC
PIES! we want PIES!
profundus fossura
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#151 - 2012-04-26 23:35:32 UTC
Great work CCP - keep it up. and please keep the blogs on RMT/Botting coming.

Big smile

+1 for pies
Fyrkraag
Perkone
Caldari State
#152 - 2012-04-27 00:17:57 UTC

I've been inactive in New Eden since "monocle gate" of last year, and I have quietly been watching and reading the fixes made to the game in hopes of mustering up interest in coming back and re-activating my alts.

I have to say, this RMT clamp down has been one of those most significant actions CCP has done in rekindling my interests.

I despise people using money to gain an advantage over others, but at least with PLEX, it does go to support the development of the game and someone else somewhere can legitamitely support their account through in-game activities (I prefer to think of them as "another target"), which makes it at least bearable.

RMTrs on the other hand, are pure scum.

Please never relax your stance against RMT.
Rosewalker
Khumaak Flying Circus
#153 - 2012-04-27 01:10:53 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Unfortunately RMT tears are a bit harder to harvest but if you can find a way feel free to share (don't link the site) and I will give you a virtual hug in my head.


Haven't found a seller but did find a buyer...

Dumb Busted Botter wrote:
so with 3 of my miners being down I couldn't afford a PLEX with isk so I bought one for 9 bucks, anyways it was taken from me and I got this nice little notification.

has anyone else been banned lately since fanfest?


Buying in-game items/ISK for real money
From: GM ******
Sent: today
To: ***********,

According to our logs, you have received in-game assets (ISK or other items) from characters which have been verified as having been involved in selling these assets for real money. We can only conclude that you have bought these assets for real money and we are therefore issuing a formal warning in accordance with our policies since this is a breach of the EULA section 7.B. We have also removed the PLEX you obtained from your hangar.

As we have mentioned, buying in-game items from illicit sources such as ISK selling/Real Money Trading websites or auction sites is a serious EULA violation and is damaging to our game world. The ISK or assets you obtained have been acquired by hacking into other player’s accounts, by buying PLEX with stolen credit cards or by using modified clients and macros. We hope that you understand, in light of these facts, why we must take action against such activities. We also hope you realise that there is a possibility of your computer being at risk of being hacked by the ISK sellers and you should take steps to ensure that your computer is free of viruses, trojans, worms or other malicious software.

We would like to point out that if you need to supplement your wallet balance by buying more ISK, then you have the option to buy PLEX from the EVE Online website and then sell them on the market, since this is the only way that you may buy ISK legitimately. We also sincerely hope that this will the the only time that we will have to issue a warning of this nature and should point out that any other similar incidents in the future will lead to further action being taken against your account, up to and including a permanent ban.

Regards,
EVE Online Customer Support


Botter #2 wrote:
curious about this... you needed a plex so instead of just buying one from eve itself you paid hmm $6 less and got one from a place that sells isk etc when you know they go after real money traders and this is right after you got 3 14 day bans?


The Nosy Gamer - CCP Random: "hehe, falls under the category: nice try, but no. ;)"
Imigo Montoya
BreadFleet
Triglavian Outlaws and Sobornost Troika
#154 - 2012-04-27 02:11:02 UTC
Loving it. Treat the bogey man to a permanent ban.
Galphii
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#155 - 2012-04-27 02:16:09 UTC
This is an amazing achievement, keep up the solid work guys!

"Wow, that internet argument completely changed my fundamental belief system," said no one, ever.
Ad'Hakim Tahous
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#156 - 2012-04-27 03:10:52 UTC
Go Sreegs! Hit 'em, hit 'em again, and kick 'em while they're down!
Ayame Tao
#157 - 2012-04-27 03:36:52 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.)



RMT operations could very really be classed a crime, most likely Fraud (payment card fraud or plain selling what's not theirs to sell (criminal conversion) or Computer Crime related (unlawful access, hacking)

Difficulty is that online, it is nearly impossible without massive resources and cooperation from disparate governments and enforcement aganecies to track down, reliably identify and prosecute perpetrators.

CCP is pretty much doing the best it can by taking a stand and kicking as many of them in the nuts as hard as they can through the means they have (bans, blacklists, publicity)


(Standard IANALE disclaimer :) )
Mars Theran
Foreign Interloper
#158 - 2012-04-27 03:56:47 UTC
VaMei wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Ines Fy wrote:
Your economics guy was complaining that was too much isk in the economy.
He also says that goods are not isk and removing goods is not a sink for the isk.
So what about the Eve Central Bank make an auction of of this seized goods with starting bids of 50% the market value and this way the ECB can remove even more isk from the economy and we all win in the process?

One problem I have with this is that we're seeing patterns of activity where the isk is botted up and in this case we're printing isk at a rate which it should not be happening at out of thin air.
At the end of the day though I'm not an economics guy so the assets sit in the banned accounts until or unless someone decides to use them for something.
I'd considered at one point using them as a reward system but I can't get over the fact that a lot of this stuff just simply shouldn’t exist and that can't be good for an economy.

I like the idea of an ‘EBC’. It gives CCP a tool to sink isk from the economy without manipulating taxes & fees. Using confiscated goods (goods only, no isk) to do it would be rather like a Sheriff’s Auction, but the isk would go back to the central bank rather than continuing to circulate.

I understand that you have reservations about returning ill-gotten goods to the economy, but there’s a sizeable amount of isk in circulation that was created through illicit means as well; and Dr. E. seems to be more worried about the isk at this point.



Basically the same thing I thought of when I read that post. Government and police often do auction of assets seized from criminals and those unable to pay their tax debts, and banks do the same with foreclosed homes, etc.. Would be an interesting way of redistributing assets on seized accounts while sinking ISK back to CCP to destroy.

I can't see how they would spend it, so it is effectively destroyed as far as I'm concerned. This also offsets the issue of redistibuting assets that were gathered by botting and such being inappropriate. Wipe the ISK on the accounts, redistribute the assets, sink the ISK from that redistribution and remove it from game.

Obviously there are going to be some assets which may be very common and potentially capable of unsettling the market in a mass redistribution, and there is the possibility that only the truly wealthy of EVE may pick up those redistributed assets. Okay, that one is very likely.

It's not like most of us have the ability to compete in auctions for anything worth anything, and auctioning T1 items in bits would be tedious at best. Stacking everything of common value and either deleting it or auctioning it wholesale would make more sense. 1000 T1 small lasers for example. as a lot item for auction. The problem being that suddenly somebody has a 1000 small T1 lasers to flood the market with at more than they paid and very likely highly competative prices.

Expensive Tech 2 ships, T3s, and Faction, Complex, and Officer stuff would make more sense. Storyline to I suppose, or other rare items that don't fall into any of those categories.

That said, it is both a good idea and a bad idea for the various reasons mentioned and more I can't be bothered to-or couldn't-think of I'm sure.

Also: o/\o <-- It's funny, I always thought that was an owl. Big smile

+ voted most interesting thread (so far) 2012.
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Henry Haphorn
Killer Yankee
#159 - 2012-04-27 04:19:45 UTC
Sundarbolt wrote:
In terms of getting the message out to new and existing players, why not use the ingame billboards and the captain's quarters screen to run numbers/tickers of reclaimed assets/ISK and banned players etc


oh and great work guys


This please.

This would make it more worthwhile for me to actually get out of my goo-filled pod and browse the CQ. The stats that I like to see posted on the CQ TV are...


  • How many bots perma banned
  • How many bots temp. banned
  • Number of bots in each region (may need to open a window for this)
  • ISK removed/reversed
  • ISK in assets removed
  • Number of RMT accounts perma banned


Also, it would be nice to have the stats in the CQ TV updated once a week if possible. Twice a month of you're too busy.

Quote:


The lesson that begins to appear from this is one that starts to put a real dampner on the "common" "wisdom" that it's not profitable for us to crack down on this activity. While 1268 accounts had to be permanently banned they were not what we would qualify as "EVE Players". Buyers tend to be people who make a poor decision and try to save a couple of bucks by doing something illegal, but still want to be engaged in the game. We negative this activity and give them an opportunity to continue enjoying the game and they stay loyal customers, which helps to make New Eden a more enjoyable place for everyone. Instead of people sending cash to some shady dude running a sweat shop out in *insert country name here*, they purchase a PLEX, which can be used by you to fund your game time and the money goes into developing a better spaceship game instead of buying the equivalent of a digital drug dealer a cool new diamond-covered blingy case for his beeper.



So much for the obviously-wrong conspiracy theory that CCP doesn't ban botters/RMTers as it's against their interests. Suck on that, tinfoil hat wearers.

Adapt or Die
Imigo Montoya
BreadFleet
Triglavian Outlaws and Sobornost Troika
#160 - 2012-04-27 04:23:12 UTC
Mars Theran wrote:
stuff


I want to highlight the part of CCP Sreeg's comment that people seem to be missing: "a lot of this stuff just simply shouldn’t exist".

A police auction or similar concept might be nice, but ultimately these things have been bought into the EVE economy (one way or another) by activities that are outside the bounds of the game. Therefore if they simply cease to exist the footprint left on the game by "illegal" activity isn't as big, and problem solved.

If (almost) everything that exists in EVE is created in one way or another by active human players, then the EVE universe will be much more vibrant and interesting. Seized RMT/botting proceeds are counter-productive to this.