What ever is causing it, is cyclical. Check the price of plex over several years. This is common.

I'm a very small player in the plex market, keep anywhere from 0->200 at a time so I've kept an eye on it for the last couple of years and the recent surge doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Factors that I think may be driving up Plex prices . . .
1) Crappy expansion = less people want to play or at least want to spend more RL money on Plex (lowers supply)
2) Everyone who built battleships pre-patch is making 40-60 million ISK per ship. Like the Faction Warefare push from last year but on a smaller scale. (increases demand)
3) Deflation in other areas (minerals post ship building rush, meta item). (increases demand as people move to a "safer" investment).


Factors that I think should be driving down plex prices
1) End of summer. People are returning to Eve (in the past I have noticed that this increased supply)
2) No CCP special offers (fanfest/tournament/video cards) for PLEX that increase demand.

What else is going on?
I have very little knowledge of how null sec politics affects plex prices. I would not expect null sec alliance/players to finance their wars with PLEX, but if they do they peace time will decrease supply.

Any other large trends going on that have been effecting the prices?

thanks,
Curious George

What ever is causing it, is cyclical. Check the price of plex over several years. This is common.

This pretty much. You can pretty much always buy PLEX before/during Summer and then sell in Winter for a profit.

Could also mean less people want to PLEX their accounts therefore reducing demand as much as decreased offers.

I've been buying all my personal use PLEX once a year during the price slump for as long as I've been using PLEX.

I doubt the discount from buying a year's supply (about 200 PLEX) in advance compensates for the opportunity cost of locking away the isk, but I try not to fuss too much about that kind of thing.

My recollection is that every year there is a period where I look at my PLEX pile and the current price of PLEX and tell myself that I did the right thing, again.

One does not simply quit EVE.
You PLEX until you run out of isk while not actually playing.
For some of us, this can last indefinitely.

I don't say it is the best investment but it is a pretty safe one. And yeah you probably still should not put all eggs into that basket as well.

But my logic, or lack thereof, in making this once a year bulk purchase isn't as relevant to this thread as my confidence that the price of PLEX has regular and fairly predictable ups and downs.

There's no need to wonder about why and how, only price talks.

(Yes I have omitted a detail, as I am going to make money on that).

May I point out flawed Logic?

1) Crappy expansion = less people want to play or at least want to spend more RL money on Plex (lowers supply)


Could also mean less people want to PLEX their accounts therefore reducing demand as much as decreased offers.

I feel there's another factor of note - mineral prices are falling, and so are the prices of things built primarily from minerals. This means people with an understanding of the market are selling off mineral-based assets, and looking for alternative places in invest their ISKies.

The next big war should partially reverse this aspect of the trend, although the reduced buying of PLEX from CCP is probably the bigger factor.

TL:DR - we need a new 0.0 war to stimulate the economy.

How did you import tnat into a forex platform?

It's all explained in there.

Why do we have to have the war? We're tired and still recovering. I think you (highsec collectively, really) should get together, have everyone declare war on everyone else, and spend several hundred billion isk blowing each other up. If you do it right you can just do an assist chain so you don't even have to really spend anything on the war itself. And this would, in fact, do more to "stimulate the economy" than another nullsec war would, as we spend our isk on lots of non-mineral things, and you'd disrupt all the miners in highsec.


Or you could just admit your idea is sort of dumb and bad and that even really big null wars are farts in a windstorm when it comes to effect on the market as a whole. The entire expenditure on everything - not just mineral based objects, everything - by all sides in the Fountain war was perhaps a couple trillion isk. The mineral market alone moves (if I counted right) ~380 billion isk worth of minerals per day, in Jita alone. Tritanium alone is nearly a 100b isk/day market.

@ Mynnna - Am i reading this right : Goons are not responsible for every economic change?? The hell??

There's no need to wonder about why and how, only price talks.

(Yes I have omitted a detail, as I am going to make money on that).

>I also want to know if the price was up to over 600m ISK back at the end of 2012 last year?

Yes but it was a bit unusual and the result of a couple of things, massive isk faucet from faction warfare cash-outs put alot of new isk into circulation (really just transferred it from some people to the FW guys but had the effect of new isk as stated by CCP at the time) together with some outages on CCP plex redemption plus active speculation.

Are those real prices or actual prices or just some false data formatted to look good or look as the way they are?

I am mentionning this because that If it is real data that means that the prices more than doubled in 2 to 3 years.

At about 25% increase in sell value and buy value per year, it may be easier to decide when to sell those.

I also want to know if the price was up to over 600m ISK back at the end of 2012 last year?

Why is the red slope going backward up instead of continously forward?

I did not update the trend line in the next months, ...

... anyone can go in last half year charts and see those lines already in place and the market doing exactly what it said it'd do.

In fact the long term trend line is still valid, like half year ago.
The day it'll break then I'll remove it.

It goes from January 2011.

Where are those last half year charts or where can I find them or look at them?
I would like to see that.

Perhaps I can EVE Mail you or discuss this otherwise.

Is it in your
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=49927
Experiment #01: RL finance analysis applied to EvE
thread?

Where's Dr. E and his pile of confiscated PLEX?

Why do we have to have the war? We're tired and still recovering. I think you (highsec collectively, really) should get together, have everyone declare war on everyone else, and spend several hundred billion isk blowing each other up. If you do it right you can just do an assist chain so you don't even have to really spend anything on the war itself. And this would, in fact, do more to "stimulate the economy" than another nullsec war would, as we spend our isk on lots of non-mineral things, and you'd disrupt all the miners in highsec.


Or you could just admit your idea is sort of dumb and bad and that even really big null wars are farts in a windstorm when it comes to effect on the market as a whole. The entire expenditure on everything - not just mineral based objects, everything - by all sides in the Fountain war was perhaps a couple trillion isk. The mineral market alone moves (if I counted right) ~380 billion isk worth of minerals per day, in Jita alone. Tritanium alone is nearly a 100b isk/day market.

It wasn't price alone that caused him to act last time.

PLEX could reach 700m, 800m or even more without there being any need for him to intervene.

I can't seem to find the article/minutes/whatever the info was originally posted in. My Google Fu is totally failing me. Do have a link? If not, what was the other reason?

The Fanfest economy section. The piece you are interested in starts at about 29:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie9V2P5El0E

It wasn't price alone that caused him to act last time.

PLEX could reach 700m, 800m or even more without there being any need for him to intervene.

Take note, this is the CCP target price.

2) No CCP special offers (fanfest/tournament/video cards) for PLEX that increase demand.

6/27/13
The Plex Link is Live!
Read more in the Dev Blog here: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/eve-vegas-2013/

And just like that... back down to 550million. Take note, this is the CCP target price. I think they've actually balanced out rewards per unit of time investment per month to equal a PLEX. No way to prove it, but 550 has been the magic number for more than a year and a half now.

Allow me to submit my counterargument: Plex are already back to 575, the depressive effects of a sale never last more than a week or two, and multiple sales in rapid succession are successively less effective at lowering the price.

In short: You're wrong.

I'd call the Amazon PLEX sale a form of intervention nevertheless :P

Amazon PLEX sale: 3 and 6 packs 25% off on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/PLEX-EVE-Online-Game-Connect/dp/B00A2CI9L8/ref=pd_sim_vg_1

While PLEX obviously cost CCP nothing to produce, they represent lost subscription revenue in the future.

Aren't those sold from CCP Games themselves as suggest the Amazon user name and therefore legal?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_videogames?_encoding=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=CCP%20Games&node=468642

The offers are now 6 for $99.99 or 3 for $49.99
This price seem to have gone up from the 25% off offer at $74 something for 6 which was the best deal offer I had.

Or you could just admit your idea is sort of dumb and bad and that even really big null wars are farts in a windstorm when it comes to effect on the market as a whole. The entire expenditure on everything - not just mineral based objects, everything - by all sides in the Fountain war was perhaps a couple trillion isk. The mineral market alone moves (if I counted right) ~380 billion isk worth of minerals per day, in Jita alone. Tritanium alone is nearly a 100b isk/day market.

But your statement infers that every plex in game is used by people who would have otherwise paid cash.----

During the first (publicly admitted, for you conspiracy fans out there) intervention Dr. E unloaded a number of confiscated PLEX on the market. (I think he gave the number in the fanfest video, but I can't be bothered to listen to it again right now.) This drove the pice down which helped out all us parasite station traders who sucked them up like hors d'oeuvres, burped politely and then said what's for dinner. Meanwhile his PLEX dumping was competing against CCP's actual paying customers and probably hurting CCP's bottom line in the process.

What if this time, someone said "Let's do it differently." Instead of selling those confiscated PLEX for worthless isk, let's sell them for real money. Run a limited promotion through Amazon where they get one free confiscated PLEX for every three PLEX they buy. Of course the actual process is just an accounting adjustment, but you get the idea.
,

I think the number of confiscated PLEX sold was 2k, in fact, I'm pretty sure it was 2k. Dr. Egg was quick to add that they hadn't even began to touch their confiscated PLEX pile with that number. Prolly trying to put off insanely rich multi trillionaires from thinking of manipulating CCP into intervening and riding the waves for profit.


But I don't see CCP reselling PLEXes which have already been paid for once with real cash.

Yeah, if I were CCP, I wouldn't either.

If I were CCP I would have sold out, cashed out and left EVE a burning pile of rubble in nothing the great game that it is today, all for my personal benefits.

I don't see CCP reselling PLEXes which have already been paid for once with real cash.

CCP is sitting on a pile of confiscated PLEX. They are not obligated to do anything with them. They could sell them for isk, they could trash them, or they could just let them sit there.

On the other hand, CCP is in the business of selling new PLEX for cash. They can pretty much set whatever price they want and the only guys that ever complain are the traders sitting on piles of their own PLEX that get hurt when CCP "intervenes." (Wise up pals. The price goes up, CCP intervenes. Get over it.)

So one intervention they sell PLEX for isk, in the other they sell PLEX for cash. What's the big deal? You yourself called it an intervention. The only thing I'm really proposing with my cockimamie idea is the deep discounts on PLEX that were offered for such a short time and through an unusual and unadvertised channel were intended as an intervention by CCP. And if it is seen by CCP as successful in that regard, you may see more of them in the future in one form or another.

Whether one quarter of those PLEX that were sold last week through Amazon were "previously owned" I don't think we will ever know, and perhaps only Dr. E and some accountants at CCP really care. Much ado about nothing really. My only take away is the idea that CCP has found another way to intervene in the PLEX market. I have always poopooed the idea that routine PLEX sales are intended as interventions. Marketing departments conduct frequent sales in part to determine price points and to make sure they are pricing their products appropriately. I see what happened last week as anything but routine. Whether it was initiated by Amazon or CCP or CCP took Amazon's idea and ran with it I don't know, but I have my suspicions.

[...]Adjusting those with a sale is identical to creating them.

Any guesses as to what this second spike these last few days was caused by?

"pushing on a string"

Any guesses as to what this second spike these last few days was caused by?

[...]As that's the case, this isn't a spike, merely the expected and rapid return to normal.

The idea that CCP is sitting on a pile of confiscated PLEX doesn't make any kind of sense once you actually think about it. [snip] It's much more likely what CCP meant was they bought PLEX with confiscated isk to sell at a later date.

Dr. E (in the fanfest video linke by Bobby) says specifically that they aren't aiming for a specific price. However, he doesn't really explain how that jibes with the concept of intervening in the PLEX market. If they're bringing the price down, they may not be aiming for a number, but they're aiming for something. I'd love to know what that something is.

did we reach a consensus as to what the initial price hike trend was all about (and how long might it last) ?

I have written a consistent PLEX market analysis. It indeed shows a years long uptrend.
Reading the article you'll also see "someone" had drawn that trend on May 2012 already.

Any guesses as to what this second spike these last few days was caused by?

Third char training that is being introduced in a few days will most likely give another push to prices.

I see: "The next days will be great days to secure a profit for a large portion of the stock. The remaining part may be left in the market to try and GÇ£let the profits runGÇ¥."

Why would you suggest selling now if you expect the market to break out towards 700 next year?

One reason among others for increasing PLEX prices is tolerated RMT. More people are buying ISK directly from players using the lottery trick instead of only buying PLEX/GTC => PLEX supply in-game decreases => PLEX price in-game increases.

To 618,003,000.00 ISK Buy Orders price x 10 in Jita IV 4 Navy Plant 0 minutes ago.

Any link(s) to CCP's take down on those tricks or ongoing reports directly sent and addressed to them (personally or corporately)?

CCP doesn't recognise giving someone an out of game reward that can be easily turned into in game currency in exchange for an out of game service as RMT, even though it qualifies by any idiots definition. Blink is therefore allowed to RMT with impunity, so long as they only exchange $ for blink credit (and then blink credit for isk).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A2CI8LE/ref=dsvrt_review_asin_detail

This for real? 3 PLEX for 5 dollah??? If it is I can imagine this having a rather profound effect on PLEX pricing....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A2CI8LE/ref=dsvrt_review_asin_detail

This for real? 3 PLEX for 5 dollah??? If it is I can imagine this having a rather profound effect on PLEX pricing....

Hey everyone.

It appears that Amazon, who operate as a third party re-seller for some of our products, put the wrong price on a package of PLEX and then quickly pulled the offer once the error was discovered.

A few thousand extra PLEX are in circulation as a result which is not enough to cause any significant or lasting impact on the in-game markets.

For reference, if anyone finds their accounts disabled due to this, then please file a support ticket to have the issue cleared up.

We are not banning people's accounts due to this, and any action taken against an account because of this issue has been triggered automatically due to our billing system being notified of a charge-back by the third party retailer.

If you find your EVE account locked down due to this, please file a support ticket under the billing category and the GM Team will be happy to help.

Let's just say that this is probably going to be worked out between Amazon and CCP at some high level. My guess is that CCP will probably end up eating most of it. So maybe Dr. E is going to have to dip into his stash again? Call it an accidental intervention? No harm done really.

It get's better: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3795441#post3795441

So let's say Amazon is out something like $50,000, which is enough to get someone fired. Amazon has terms in their standard "agreement" that says that they can reverse sales if there was an incorrect price listed. There is also a mechanism in place for resellers to notify CCP if PLEX were purchased fraudulently so CCP can freeze the account. Amazon clearly wants its money back and CCP would probably like to avoid the bad publicity involved in seizing in-game assets or banning accounts for something that was clearly the fault of its reseller.

Let's just say that this is probably going to be worked out between Amazon and CCP at some high level. My guess is that CCP will probably end up eating most of it. So maybe Dr. E is going to have to dip into his stash again? Call it an accidental intervention? No harm done really.

You think CCP will take a loss because someone at Amazon messed up?

Whether they call it a loss or forgone income or a promotion, CCP will more likely get close to $5 per sale instead of the $45 they expected. We already have an acknowledgement from CCP that Amazon was issuing chargebacks. Doesn't seem like Amazon wants to write it off.

CCP is sitting on a pile of confiscated PLEX. They are not obligated to do anything with them. They could sell them for isk, they could trash them, or they could just let them sit there.

On the other hand, CCP is in the business of selling new PLEX for cash. They can pretty much set whatever price they want and the only guys that ever complain are the traders sitting on piles of their own PLEX that get hurt when CCP "intervenes." (Wise up pals. The price goes up, CCP intervenes. Get over it.)

So one intervention they sell PLEX for isk, in the other they sell PLEX for cash. What's the big deal? You yourself called it an intervention. The only thing I'm really proposing with my cockimamie idea is the deep discounts on PLEX that were offered for such a short time and through an unusual and unadvertised channel were intended as an intervention by CCP. And if it is seen by CCP as successful in that regard, you may see more of them in the future in one form or another.

Whether one quarter of those PLEX that were sold last week through Amazon were "previously owned" I don't think we will ever know, and perhaps only Dr. E and some accountants at CCP really care. Much ado about nothing really. My only take away is the idea that CCP has found another way to intervene in the PLEX market. I have always poopooed the idea that routine PLEX sales are intended as interventions. Marketing departments conduct frequent sales in part to determine price points and to make sure they are pricing their products appropriately. I see what happened last week as anything but routine. Whether it was initiated by Amazon or CCP or CCP took Amazon's idea and ran with it I don't know, but I have my suspicions.

Whether they call it a loss or forgone income or a promotion, CCP will more likely get close to $5 per sale instead of the $45 they expected. We already have an acknowledgement from CCP that Amazon was issuing chargebacks. Doesn't seem like Amazon wants to write it off.

Yeah that would be the halloween plex sale.

You call that a ******* sale? Here in Euro country it's 16 euro a plex, if you buy a sixpack. That's close to like $20 or something a PLEX?

Somers new offer of 1Billion isk bonus. Will it increase or decrease the price of plexes?

More isk in the system = a rise in the price of plexes.
More Gtc's = more plexes being created (lower price).

CCP is calling it a sale. If it doesn't come out to be much of a sale for euros, well, bummer?

*looks for a way to blame it on the Goons*

People spending RL money (and, therefore, their time) on other games, which, until there is some solid idea of what the winter expansion will offer, is a trend that is not likely to reverse.

CCP needs to release some incredible content "Soon" (TM) to get people's attention, and their sub money.

CCP is calling it a sale. If it doesn't come out to be much of a sale for euros, well, bummer?

I don't think you're using buy orders and sell orders to mean the same things the rest of us are.

CCP should really start paying attention to this... When I started plex was round 350mil.. its almost double now but the payout for missions etc hasn't gone up... no idea how lvl4 mission runners manage to plex their accounts.. if at all,, and its going to get more difficult even for the nul bears.. and the plex sale that is ow on.. round 4% off.. not really a sale is it..

PLEX is apparently 3.9B on the Chinese server. 630M is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of PLEX price possibilites.

What Chinese server?
Never heard of it . Rather suspicious.

PLEX is apparently 3.9B on the Chinese server. 630M is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of PLEX price possibilites.

For real?!

I played with 3 accounts using plex but at those prices i'm playing only 1 account and i wait for better prices to use the 2 others. Until then they are sleeping.

[quote=Alan Darmazaf] Perhaps if enough of us quit over it CCP might do something but otherwise inflation will be rampant in another MMO (cough) SWG (/cough)

There are a lot of us who pay with plex others bought, but CCP doesnt care, they made their money the instant the plex was purchased

and if I dont buy it from the other pilot, someone else will.

Perhaps if enough of us quit over it CCP might do something

but otherwise inflation will be rampant in another MMO

CCP doesnt care, they made their money the instant the plex was purchased

377k

If I read the CCP Consolidated Financial Statement for 2013 correctly, this is actually not true.

You might say it's only a minor difference, but according to section 3.7.2 "in-game curreny" is recognized when it has been consumed. And since PLEX is clearly not covered in section 3.7.1 "subscription fees" or in any of the other sections under 3.7 I'd say it's viewed as being in-game currency. This view seems to be supported by the ammount of deferred revenue. US$ 6.6M seems to be a bit much for just AUR alone.

EDIT:
Btw, this allows to make an educated guess about the total number of PLEX in the game.
If we take into account that PLEX is probably largely sold at reduced prices and assume that the total amount of AUR is not significant I'd assume an average value of 1 PLEX around US$ 17.50. With that we get an estimate of more then 377k PLEX, which are available as a tradeable item in the game in December 2013.

I can't remember having seen an official statement about the ammount of PLEX in-game, but 377k at least seems to be plausible.

See note 23.

Could it be that "subscriptions" means PLEX and GTC, "in-game purchases not yet consumed" means AUR and "sale of goods not yet delivered" are GTC codes already sold but not yet claimed?

Personally I would love to see some sort of mechanic that would discourage PLEX hoarding. For example, there could be a PLEX-unique additional tax that would be 'time dependent'.

It's maybe time for me to try another space game who's out this year. If i have to pay to play i'm gonna pay for a new game and not a 10 years old one !

Also, there's no "redistribution to the poor" and no "popular republic".

Gotta find them in real life, where they show how good they are.

Getting back to PLEX, though, I've just logged in and there is now about a 60 mil buy/sell difference in Amarr - which based on my experience smells of manipulation of some sort as the channel is normally 10-20mil.

Managed to flip a couple, but not going to get any deeper as this doesn't feel right to me.

apparently the guys that have cash to spend on a game have decided that they don't want to

Which is entirely understandable. The economic outlook over the last year, both in the real world and in the land of internet spaceships, has been less than encouraging. It should come as no suprise to anyone that less people want to put real life money in to EVE, which means more isk chasing fewer PLEXes.

I"m not 100% sure about the "economy" of the outside world.. . .it could be just a downward drift in "whats a fair price for a game?"

I"m not 100% sure about the "economy" of the outside world.. . .it could be just a downward drift in "whats a fair price for a game?", and more specifically "what's a fair price for game microtransaction benefits (which is basically how people using $ to isk look at the transaction)


There are all sorts of offseting things ... benefit of plex accounts to game goals on the demand side...


.... need for expensive ships to motivate putting extra $ into the game from need of ISK and lack of time who are having fun.


The in game "economy" I think is based on which ships are popular to fly and get blown up , and how many are getting blown up and whether or not there are corp reimbursement programs etc.

If everyone is flying T1 cruisers for roams... or interceptors... there isn't much motivation for a casual player who would use $ instead of farming, to use those $ as much.

10 intercepters blown up a month > 1 plex is going to let you cover 2 months.

10 T3 ships getting blown up a month? (ouch) > you'd need 5 plex a months 10 times the intercepter route.

That sort of thing isn't about player activity necessary but FADs, Fashions Trends it what players are doing at a given time.


The buff of intercepters and previous buff of T1 cruisers meant the portion of the corps flying those for fun made it so their members flying fleet disciplined fits didn't need to use nearly as much $ to play and brought less plex to market ?

So they're falling, in other words. This isn't much of a surprise to anyone who watched EyjoG's economy presentation at fanfest.

Hooray, now that it's posted, maybe everyone will pick up on "speculation is driving the recent increase".


Then the real fun starts.

e: Here's the TL;DR of the section in case you don't want to watch it for some weird reason.

* Plex behaves as an investment good with potential utility, similar to gold in the meat world.
* Subscriptions are the biggest source of PLEX consumption.
* Graph at 17:40. Sales of PLEX have been increasing throughout the lifetime of plex, yet since summer 2013 quantity traded on the market has been dropping. This led to the rapid spike we've observed.
* PLEX Pricing policy is unchanged: CCP does not maintain a target price for PLEX prices.

The important point to note is that he says PLEX sales (by CCP) have been consistently increasing (although he provided no numbers or graphs for obvious reasons.) So the real question is "Why are the PLEX bought by players resulting in fewer relative market trades?"

Assuming every PLEX bought with RL cash is sold for isk on the market at least once, some of those market buyers are not reselling PLEX immediately for a short-term profit but instead hanging on to PLEX for the long run.

I'm not convinced you have enough information to draw any such conclusions. For example, it may simply be that the market in PLEX exceeds the capacity of speculators, so that PLEX sales are mostly to end consumers (people with accounts to feed). There's simply not enough information released by CCP to determine what's happening.

(snip story about US gasoline market)

"Mommy, make the scary lady stop talking."

So they're falling, in other words. This isn't much of a surprise to anyone who watched EyjoG's economy presentation at fanfest.

The other factor is the Dr. E is not giving us the whole story. He says PLEX sales by CCP have been increasing since they were introduced, but we know it has not been a steady increase month to month. I don't think it is a coincidence that the drop in market volume last September and October brought about the 4 for the price of 3 sale on Amazon in late September and the "accidental sale" in late October.

Another possible explanation for low velocity those months is that people who scooped up low priced PLEX held on to it for future sale or their own use. Ordinarily you would expect people buying PLEX for cash to convert it to isk fairly promptly since there is no incentive to buy PLEX at full price just to sit on it (unless they felt the RL price was going up.) Some people might buy two or three PLEX to take advantage of the lower price and only sell them one at a time as the need arose, but I think that use case can be ignored when it comes to velocity.

Anyway, I think this just proves my point that there is more than enough information to speculate on.

you know, just funny:

PLEX in Verge

10 at 836m Jita 4-4