Graphs are Stillman's department

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.

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 playerGÇÖs 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

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?

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.)

I like the idea of an GÇÿEBCGÇÖ. 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 SheriffGÇÖs 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 thereGÇÖs 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.

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

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.

stuff

Jita spam should be easy to clear up,

Just add an internal timer, messages outside this timer are free,
inside the timer would give a cspa isk cost warning and charge
as well as starting a second timer, this second timer is used to
double the isk cost/message.

Continual spam...spam...spam...
Would (per spammer) become:
Spam... Priced Spam, Double Priced Spam, Expensive Spam,
Extortionate Spam, Minimal Spam.

Always worth a try, and CSPA charges are in game supposedly
for spam prevention, so lets use it in spam heavy systems like
Jita.

P.S.
CCP Sreegs, Just so you are aware, I'm still waiting for a reply
from my earlier post, evemail and email.

Neither of your evemails requested a response. You gave me information. We may or may not use it. I appreciate it and read it but there was nothing in them that seemed to require a response of any kind.

I make this mistake sometimes when I recieve a compliment in an email or a FYI something.

A one line "thanks for the support" or "I'lll read it, thanks" brings a good finality while still showing that you appreciated their time they took to share something. Of course we don't have time to enter conversations with hundreds of people each day but a one line "thanks" probably is possible. Making it really really short.. like two or three words does convey you're too busy to do justice to any further conversation while a the same time not ignoring them.

Taking a good long while to properly investigate is fine and we'd be okay with that, if not for the whole lack of any contact at all. A month without so much as a "We're looking at it and will keep you updated."

Thanks for your forum post, I'll read it later.

Apparently it had something to do with RMT before I bought it and the character transfer wasn't taken into account when bans were handed out :(

Many thanks for the receipt acknowledgement CCP Sreegs.

Sorry that I have an AS Condition, if you were offended in any way sir.

Hi. I'm the person mentioned by Kazanir et al. earlier in the thread. Obviously I'm now unbanned but I can't say the process was in any way a good experience. Tickets were ignored or closed without comment, e-mails to security@ went unanswered - after 2 weeks of trying and failing to get anyone to reply I gave up. It's very difficult to get unbanned when your protestations of innocence disappear into a black hole.

Luckily, my CEO and another director spent a bunch of their time pestering people at CCP via various sources, eventually getting a reply to the effect of "If he is innocent, please explain Dodgy Character's actions". Dodgy Character (not his name) being a freighter/industry guy I legitimately bought and transferred to one of my accounts. Apparently it had something to do with RMT before I bought it and the character transfer wasn't taken into account when bans were handed out :(

I'm all for getting rid of bots and RMTers but there really needs to be a system in place to deal with ban appeals in a reasonable timeframe, especially with the way skill training works. My lost game time got reimbursed but I'm still out a month of training on multiple accounts.