EVE General Discussion

Hey all, I humbly apologize for taking so long to reply to this thread.

I assure you we are very aware of your concerns and we fully understand your frustration with how the Concord ship giveaway was handled. Falcon posted an announcement today which gives a background for what happened, what went wrong and how we're improving processes to prevent this kind of problem in the future.

After reading this thread, I believe a lot of the outstanding questions are answered by the above news item but I'm going to expand a little bit on some of the specifics regarding our investigation.



They certainly will become far more accessible than today. As Falcon outlined in his message in this thread, these ships will be accessible both through in-game means and promotions in the near future. The linked news item above goes into specifics on how these ships will be obtainable in-game.



Our investigation into this is still ongoing so I there are things I can't go into right now, I can however make a few clarifications on this point:

• Our primary concern is ensuring anyone engaged in any kind of illegitimate activity (such as Ghost Training) doesn't keep the proceeds of this giveaway.
• We won't be putting a throwaway Alpha account into negative wallet status. In case of the ships already being sold, we will be tracking the ISK and taking action where it actually matters. We are following the money.
• We don't plan to confiscate ships which have been sold, we want to ensure no action is taken vs anyone who simply bought these ships in good faith.

You're absolutely correct that this kind of investigation can be very difficult and time consuming. I can tell from reading all of your comments (not just the quoted one) that you have a pretty good grasp on the level of complexity involved; you managed to describe many of the challenges we face when performing these kinds of investigations in a pretty accurate way.

It however isn't a black and white case of "it can / cannot be done". We are committed to doing everything in our power to set things right without affecting unrelated/innocent players. It very well may be the case that we will never be able to fix 100% of the damage done but that doesn't mean we have to settle for 0%.

To expand on the above, given 100 manhours we might be able to fix 70% of the damage. The next 20% might take another 100 manhours. At some point we might even have to pack up our things and call it a day because the last 5-10% would take a prohibitive amount of time. All of these numbers are of course arbitrary for the sake of this example only, but I hope that makes sense!



I unfortunately cannot promise we'll be able to do so, but I know I speak for both Falcon and I in saying that we'd love to talk about the results when everything has settled. I'll see what we can do in this regard.

We often encourage people to turn themselves in if they've knowingly and intentionally abused an exploit, this is not a new thing. Why do we do this? On one hand it can save us a lot of time. On the other hand it gives the player involved an out.

As far as we see it, there is a difference between a person who comes forward and a person who tries to get away with it and this is also reflected in punitive action taken as a result. We don't want to issue permanent bans if it can be avoided so it's really in both our and the involved players' interest that they take this out.



I hope you all found some of this to be informative. I'll be popping in here again sometime in the next few days in case there are followup questions.

This sounds pretty reasonable. I still have no idea how you are going to track all of that... but if you can, great.

Explain how this would work.

People with a negative ISK balance can't use the market, they would therefore need to manually trade person to person for every extractor used, by the time they clean out all the useful SP they will have paid for the negative balance, or if purchased through the NES they will have paid a small fortune to CCP :P

CCP win either way

I await your update.
One question: Does CCP have the capability to "freeze" transaction on a particular item, or is CCP's only option the nuclear one of removing the item from the game?

You mean the Ghost training that they will also be getting punished for ON TOP of the Concord ships.
Anyone found to have knowingly exploited ghost training (which is pretty obvious if you en mass logged them in again to extract) isn't going to be making profits off that ghost training already.
So the problem you are talking about is irrelevant & non existent.

Yes you are. Because the problem you are talking about is already fixed by the punishment they will have/be received for Ghost training in the first place.
You seem to be under the delusion that anyone who used the ghost training exploit is only getting the Concord ships/isk taken off them, which is not how CCP punish exploits. They take all the isk related in any way to the exploits. So all that stuff from the ghost training itself will be getting removed in some way.

What this means is the worry about people avoiding a negative isk wallet by using extractors and injectors is no different to anyone else currently since they won't have special resources to deal with it, and extractors and injectors carry with them their own penalty already.
So there is no problem, because you fail to understand the situation yourself.

P.S. Stop digging your hole deeper here.

In the past this kind of thing has lead to pemabans.

If you read the GM's response, you'd have noticed the part about how much time it takes to track everything.

And how how accurate we were about all of the difficulties with tracking it.

And how there is a finite amount of time they can spend on this.

Following the money is not a magical process where you push one button, know all and see all.

It's grueling work with spreadsheets that makes most EVE spreadsheets look simple. Everyone knew this was an exploit, and everyone knew this was coming. Having personally tracked the flow of exploited assets in an MMO myself (more than once) I can assure you that most exploiters began with precautions to hide their assets. And they are creative little *****.

Some hope to lose you by process of exhaustion, with trade after trade after trade, through numerous accounts, in numerous directions, using various exchange methods. This is an annoying deterrent at best, but it is very effective at wasting available man-hours.

The smartest ones create reasonable doubt to keep you from distinguishing their assets from other players'. They acquire items from themselves on accounts that have no common identifying feature (VPN IP, separate email address, different physical computer or emulated virtual machine). By doing this, they blur the distinction between legitimate trades and their own assets. Done correctly, the evidence becomes murky enough that even if you are pretty sure about it*, you can't proceed in good conscience, without the possibility of screwing over an innocent player.

Seem extreme? It is, but it's also reality because anyone taking the time to set up 500+ accounts isn't doing it for the ISK. They're in it for the RMT, no doubt about it.

So yes, there is hiding of assets. Back to the matter at hand. I think it is worth the few minutes (for the staff, not the forum peanut gallery) to consider how they will make sure no one dodges their consequences, because it is not only possible, but likely.

* Pretty much every modern MMO scans the non-personal identifying features of your hardware, such as install path, computer user name, network name, and MAC address.

I don't know whether you lack the sophistication to understand all of the information I provided, or are simply determined to argue about it. But the difference is moot, since the question is to the GM - not you.

You're not the first person to be ignorant on the internet, and you won't be the last.