EVE General Discussion

Recently PLEX prices went up by 20%. Some ppl were buying it for quite a while. Now we know the reason behind that.

Today we learned that PLEX prices will rise even more, since ppl will buy PLEX to get AUR above 1000. Then, after the changes are implemented the price will drastically drop.

CSM knew about it. Their friends who got the info were buying PLEX for few weeks now, so now they can make dank ISK selling all those overpriced PLEX now or when the prices will be even higher.

Can we get rid of CSM? Their only role is to leak info for big entities/their friends. Casual players don't care and don't even vote for CSM. Players in big alliances are forced to vote for specific candidates. Overall CSM is giving advantage to 1% of player base, at the expense of reminding 99%.

If we can't get rid of CSM we should at least demand for the current CSM crew (who leaked that info) to be banned from being CSM ever again.


tl;dr CSM is corrupted and should be removed/punished.


Edit - adding links/graphs to the first post.

PLEX changes - "On launch day for this feature we will convert all existing Aurum balances above 1000 Aurum to the new PLEX."
PLEX market 60 days
PLEX market 15 days

So you're saying it just happens to be a huge coincidnce?
I don't even need my tinfoil on that tight to see that someone leaked and players reaped.

If my CSM term were up in 2 weeks, I wasn't planning on running again and maybe even quitting EVE...
Just saying - it's not much of a stretch.

PLEX changes

PLEX market 60 days

PLEX market 15 days

You need to be really blind to not see what just happened.

PLEXGate. Just scrap the CSM already. So much for CSM XI being an improvement over CSM X...

And make null-sec pay for it. If they refuse, tax their high-sec exports.

Or keep them but don't give them any info about future changes?

Couple of qualitative problems with this theory.

First, the flatline on PLEX prices goes back to well before the summit which is likely where the CSM would have heard about anything like this, so it's questionable if the flatline on PLEX could be easily related to this.

Second, this change is likely to introduce a lot of new PLEX onto the market in the form of spare AUR. Like, I've personally got about a PLEX's worth of AUR that I've never spent before that I got entirely for free, and a lot of others will have something similar. This influx of new PLEX will likely drop the price, not raise it, so it doesn't make sense for the price to be going up like this in response to a leak, if anything people would be selling their PLEX in anticipation of a drop in value.

Third, and running somewhat contrary to the last point. This change is months out so even with advanced info any kind of action is going to be hugely risky.

And lastly three days ago was patch day, and PLEX prices always go nutty after a patch, especially one as economically 'interesting' as this last one that saw changes to both Rorqual Mining and Carrier Ratting. That's a far more likely cause for anything like this than "OMG CSM leaks!!!"

If you're right I hope CCP bans those involved, but I don't think you're right.

sits back to watch the entertainment

The questions are 1) If CCP would actually admit to it, 2) what kind of punishment should be passed out.

1) CCP has reason to keep it under wraps, as discrediting the CSM would be bad publicity. As far as I can tell, it sounds like most of the devs don't particularly like the CSM anyway and every CSM basically has to start over every year. This might just neuter the CSM, especially since all the influence they might have is pretty unofficial anyway.

2) a 20% price jump in this kind of price-vs-volume item wouldn't be easy for just 1 person to manipulate. They would have to involve an alliance financing it. So who gets punished? If the CSM member didn't care anyway and was just trolling before quitting the game, there isn't really any way to punish them. So, how far down the hill does the sh*t roll?

On the other hand, if it was a CCPer, would we even hear about it? They might be able to hide their involvement better, and there might be even MORE incentive to keep it under wraps. Unless there's some public confession by the perpetrator (assuming it was an employee), we'll probably never even hear about it.

The big thing that concerns me about this conspiracy is the trade volume. Even though the price jump was big, the volume stayed pretty normal, though I'm not good enough with these kinds of graphs to know if that would still be within the expected behavior in the case of a leak.

The CSM leaked... and players freaked.

Nope. Grand Theft CCP™.


Coincidentally surprising, yes. The conspiracy theorist in me won't be appeased that easily, though.