EVE General Discussion

Using money obtained through practices which are currently prohibited, a few specific players had enough in-game wealth to seed hundreds of accounts with PLEX for this exploit.

Similar to how alpha players can drop a week long skill at the end of their 24 hour limit, these players could slip a 6 month train at the end of their year-long queue and reap the benefits of 19 months of SP for the cost of 1 PLEX. Since skill choice is irrelevant for extraction, exploiters gained maximum SP 100% of the time.

Implants installed during the subscribed month remained active, and SP gain continued at Omega rates as long as skill training was not interrupted. This allowed the exploiters to milk this cash cow at regular intervals because it was no longer necessary to pause skill training to interact with the queue, consolidating extremely high dividends back into the same few unclean hands.

This led to a boom in PLEX consumption, raising its price steadily as it was diverted from the economy into this EVE version of The Matrix. It didn't take long until ghost farms were consuming PLEX faster than it was being introduced into the game.

In the absence of exploits which depend on PLEX to profit, "what the market will bear" will equal the average monthly disposable income for a normal player. But while these players were exploiting, the more PLEX the exploiters bought, the more they could exploit, creating an infinite loop that removed any upper limit on PLEX prices. The skyrocketing prices drove off many players who had to afford PLEX to play.

If you compare the two graphs you will see that player population follows the inverse of PLEX price. As such these exploiters are single-handedly responsible for the decimation of the PLEX market, and the resulting drop in EVE's population.

These players deserve more than a reprimand, they should be regarded as the filth whose greed would have eventually smothered the game into extinction, and dealt with accordingly.