EVE General Discussion

I spent 12 years as a Barman in venues where there were poker machines and betting available on horses. I have seen families destroyed more than once. This has been followed by some 22 years, and counting, in commercial media where I have covered numerous stories of how problem gambling has devastated families, destroyed businesses and in some cases, dragged down entire communities.

I have no sympathy for casinos. I feel online betting agencies are a scourge on society as they profit from misery. At least before the internet, you had to get off your couch and leave the house to place a bet.

Today, you can lose your house with a couple of imprudent swipes on a mobile phone screen.

Very few online gambling agencies contribute anything back into the sports or events they offer odds on, I suppose in this regard the EVE casinos were a little better than many.

In any event, IRL gambling is usually heavily regulated by governments, for a variety of reasons. If CCP allowed it to continue, they could very easily find themselves dragged before the courts and asked to explain themselves. One simple rule of business is to try and avoid courts wherever possible.

CCP has made a straightforward business decision to simply remove that possibility. If you *hate* what they have done, I daresay you're in the minority.

The thing is, ISK that sits in your wallet is out of the game, temporarily. So we have a huge ISK faucet in the bounties on NPC rats and in the mission rewards, and what tends to happen is, it moves around (helping the economy) until it collects in someone's wallet in the hundreds of billions / trillions.

Realistically, if you had trillions you wouldn't spend them all, or fast, so they just sit there as you lose interest in the game. But the possibility exists that you could re-activate one day and blow all your trillions on some new feature that CCP adds to the game, thereby preventing everyone else from enjoying that feature. The ISK in your wallet is out of the game, but only temporarily so.

Best thing that CCP can do for the game at that point is to ban you, thereby taking the ISK out of the game permanently. It helps that when people have so much ISK, the temptation to RMT is really high, and this gives CCP a reason to ban.

So I'm arguing that IWI helped the game by helping to make ISK circulate, until it accumulated in a few (easy to ban) wallets.

Look at the ISK Sinks and Faucets chart from the last economic report. Look at the Bounty Prizes faucet, and look at the total difference between Faucets and Sinks. CCP needs to ban, each month, approx. 30 trillion ISK to keep the game prices the way they are now. In this economic report, they only banned 18T, indicated by the Active ISK Delta number.


And now for speculation:

I think that, without gambling, ISK concentration dynamic will have to fall back to just scams, theft, market trading, and PLEX conversions, and in theory they're not as effective as gambling at concentrating the ISK. CCP will have to ban a lot more accounts (that are poorer) to achieve their 30T ISK delta. Possibly that's what the EULA change of the reduction from 6 months to 3 months for "if your account is inactive we can delete it" is all about.

Or, more reasonably, they can reduce the ISK faucets; however, the faucets are 74T, and to reduce them by 30T is a 40% reduction. Considering that Alphas CAN do (lower level) missions, possibly the faucets are going to be higher than 74T, so I'm strongly expecting a major nerf to rat bounties, mission payouts, and incursion rewards.

Shrug.

I'm allowed to, every now and then, esp. in the General Discussion forum.

That's so ridiculous. That shows that you know nothing about the game and its history. IWI isn't the first big ISK stakeholder banned in Eve's history... your buttmadness is ready for thread close

In addition, I'm pretty confident that you will feel the impact of such quantity of ISK removal from IWI ban in the economy. It will get mixed up with market changes due to November patches and changes, but it will contribute to movements in the market. Even for those who did not have their ISK confiscated, there will be plenty of multi trillionaires who look to use the ISK in game now that they can't gamble with them for lulz. Betwen my wallet and IWI wallet, the accumulated transaction value is around 200t since May. Of course, I do not have 200t in cash to pour into market, but for sure my ISK will rotate in EVE market now instead of rotating in a gambling site. I'm just a tiny little fish compared to EVE's old rich, and accumulated transaction value is not the same thing as ISK ready in wallet, but you get enough number of fish like me spinning that ISK on market instead of on slots, and consider the amount removed from the game, it will have impact.

That's funny Chopper. ;) Mephiz said he's seen gambling destroy people's lives IRL, no comments on that. I'm basicaly saying the same thing, yes I have seen it too. Suddenly I'm a drama queen. Lol.

Interesting point Solunius, although I did not make any claim on how 'large' impact it will have, I only said it will have impact. The extent of its impact will be impossible to judge, as this incident is coinciding with other major game changes, so however the market turns out to be people will cite different reasons for it (as opposed to if we did not have any changes coming for a few months but notice difference in economy after the ISK removal).

Yes, because of this bloody irrelevant nonsense.

After reading thru some of the comments here, I think it's best Toobo to lay this topic to rest. What was done is done, and there is no point in continuing to ramble on with it.

I stand with CCP in their decision to remove the blight from their IP, and as such I'm glad they did.

Your saying that this is a regression in general, I do not believe that for once. All of your statements and comments points toward a person such as you who thinks you have to have life handed to you on a silver platter lined with gold and that your claims are as such unfounded.

As far as I know, after the next expansion goes live in November, I see a New Eden that will be far more than you'll ever know in every aspect of the game. I'm not going to be sorry for you since you won't look past your own selfishness. If all you want to do is gamble, then I have no sympathy for you in this regard.

I have yet to seen anyone such as you that trolled as much as you have over a change that was needed to be made in order to keep from falling afoul of the law.

I Have Spoken.

Meph is talking about his view of gambling as backed by experience in hospitality and media.
You mention living in a community "mostly on the wrong side of the law" which is just silly.
No i'm not British, you seem unable to see beyond yourself.