Trebor Daehdoow
Gallente
LEAP Corp
Ursa Stellar Initiative
   |
Posted - 2008.12.11 23:24:00 -
[1]
Well, since CCP has records of every transaction in the game, and (I would hope!) numerous backups of the game state, it should be relatively easy to look through the backups and find all the exploit POS's and total how long they were in operation. Furthermore they should be able to connect those installations to particular characters, corps and alliances.
That gets you the alts - big whupty. Assuming that the miscreants are at all intelligent, they tried to launder the loot through the market, contracts and trading. But almost certainly they (a) didn't go enough levels deep to make it hard to track and (b) lapsed into particular trading patterns. And it turns out there's an fairly easy way to detect the final recipients of the ill-gotten gains; a variant of Google's famous PageRank algorithm -- call it IskRank. The ISK will concentrate in a relatively small number of pockets within relatively short (3-5) transaction chains.
So now you have a good idea who (people, corps and alliances) did it, and how much they made. How to make it right? I have an evil suggestion:
1) Levy a fine of 150% of the estimated ISK generated.
2) Apply it proportionately to every player in a fingered corp/alliance based on how long they've been in the alliance and how much ISK they have. Name and Shame of course.
3) Make a minor patch so that characters with negative ISK balances cannot use gates (already true), cynos or jump bridges.
The bad actors will find they have a choice between ratting in their Titans or selling them. The leaders of the corps will have to explain themselves to their outraged grunts. And most importantly, a powerful message will be sent that knowingly using an exploit results in a fate worse, in many ways, than the banstick.
Finally, if this exploit was clearly reported by a good samaritan who went out of his/her/it way to do the right thing, CCP should say so, and cough up a nice reward, to encourage others to do the same.
World Domination - It's fun for the entire family!
EViE - The iPhone / iPod Touch Skill Training Monitor
|