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EVE Online: CCP Takes Action on Starbase Exploit
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
CCP has notified players of a starbase exploit which allowed some corporations and alliances to produce large amounts of high end T2 production materials. As a result of the exploit's discovery, over 70 accounts have been banned, and CCP says that "the effects on the markets have been considerable and far reaching."
On December 7th 2008, a date which will live in infamy, a petition from a concerned player alerted us to a serious problem with Starbase reactors. The petition had been filed five days earlier, a far longer waiting time than we can accept with our current queue status and we have now taken measures to fix that. We immediately started investigating the issue and found that there was indeed a problem and that it was being exploited to gain unfair advantages.
We discovered seven corporations with multiple Starbases set up for the express purpose of exploiting the issue. Three of those corporations were members of two alliances. We took immediate action against the offenders and banned over 70 accounts and destroyed all the Starbases run by the corporations in question. All the offending corporations are now effectively inactive as a result of our actions.
The corporations were producing high end materials for T2 production. Working with the Research & Statistics team we have established that the effects on the markets have been considerable and far reaching. The effects of our actions against the exploiters will also be felt on the market as the production of the materials has been cut substantially. However, supply should increase again once players have mastered the alchemy process.
We are still conducting operations to deal with this matter and we will keep you posted on the progress and results as things develop.
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Read more here.
Comments
The drama unfolding over at the official EVE forum is worthy of much popcorn and soda. Much can be said about EVE, but it never fails to deliver on the drama front
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
This will mean war! I wonder if T2 items will go through the roof? Massive market hysteria?
Unfreakin believable.
70 accounts? I wonder if any were alt's of the same people?
I'm not a fan of the game, but I do like the way CCP deals with exploiters.
And yes, EVE is certainly synonymous with drama. lol
Please. They were all alts. I'm certain they were paid for with the money they made via the exploit. As you can buy gametime with isk-- ingame money-- in this game. And anyone in a position to expoit this... expolit wouldn't be stupid enough to do this in any way that could be traced back to their main account or corp/alliance.
CCP really need help. I mean good grief wouldn't it have been obvious that something is amiss if the market fared so differently to what it should have? It took this long for someone to let the cat out of the bag...sigh.
It might slow my progress in building my complete T2 item collection, but great job CCP. If only other companies dealt with their exploiters in this way. We would have a lot less of them
Wonder if it was BOB members, if it was, serves them right, there are several of them that need to be brought down a few pegs.
Post from one of the banned guys:
Hello Every one
I would like to tell you a short eve story
Today all of my EvE Online accounts were banned
I was sure that this day would come.
What surprises me is that it took CCP this long to catch up with me.
Even though they knew about it.
But now to the story:
The time is November 2004.
The EvE Universe is excited about the Starbase patch.
The new System Sov. is introduced.
The face of Eve has changed.
How right they are.
Two weeks after Patch day we built our first POS.
We wanted a piece of the moon mining pie and also wanted to figure out how it word as none of us knew exactly.
After our first try we were aggravated that we could get it working and decided to try again the next day to finish our project.
The next day to our amazment we found that the silos in our unfinished POS chain were full. After a short time we found out the reason for this phenomenon.
The POS system was BUGGED.
Of course a petition was sent to CCP to make them aware of this situation and the answer was sobering.
“Your petition has been received” CLOSE
But the phenomenon was still there.
After a week we decided what to do.
We built a POS network that included over a dozen POS’s in lowsec and checked the market prices. After a short look we decided on Ferrogel and Fermionic Condensates.
The Story today.
The expanse of this so far is probably lost on most people so I would like to make a few facts clear.
In the past 4 jears we are talking about ISK in value of 2.500.000.000.000 ISK to 3.000.000.000.000 ISK.
That’s 2500 – 3000 billion.
Everyone that owns a T2 item can bet that it was build in part from resources due to this phenomenon.
At this point I would like to thank CCP for making it possible to buy GTC’s with ISK.
So much about us.
What the other 3 large alliances did with this knowledge is unknown to me.
But I can tell you that we’ve sat with coverts in front of POS chains and watched it happen.
Titans are expensive !
In closing.
Some I’m sure will say “well are you proud of yourself?” or “You cheater-exploiter”
I only have one thing to say to that.
.
This issue allowed me to play Eve how and when I liked.
It didn’t matter what item or what happened in Eve. I spent ISK with out thinking about the price.
I haven’t paid a cent for any of my Eve accounts for 4 years now.
And have had many amusing moments reading posts in EVE-O.
I don’t know you and to be honest Eve and most of you I could care less about.
But my thanks go out to you all, you were wonderful statistics on this virtual stage.
Regards,
The Writer
Biggest MMO exploit ever!
Can you imagine if isk selling were Legal? Thats what? ~$150,000 for one guy today or three years ago it would have been worth ~$400,000 (isk value has depreciated as GTC prices per isk have rose from 300mil for 90days to 600mil for 50 days).
Its rediculous it went on so long. TBH i would have laundered the money through a large alliance or the market system and no one would ever have known.
wow
They better check on how many OMFG huge isk transfers went off , from and to new and old accounts.
FoE Fist of the Empire
To be fair, there is little to no information to back up that account from the banned player. The market data has been predictable for the last 4 years, until about 3-4 weeks ago, leading me to believe that this did NOT go on 4 years as the exploiter says. So many changes have occurred to POS operations since they were introduced 4 years ago that I find it hard to believe it would go on this long anyways.
However, the drama on the Eve-online forums is certainly entertaining, if not a bit dissappointing. At least the 'virtual economy' of eve is as reactionary and panic prone as the real world economy. I guess this means it's an accurate simulation?
CraziFuzzy
Speaking as a former player of the game there was something i learned when i first started playing.
Find an exploit? Dont tell anyone and abuse it. CCP wont care.
I never did such things but that letter has a few things that make me wonder if he aint telling the exact truth. If anything i am not coming back period now CCP has lost any chance of pulling me as a subscriber. It only sets in the fact that they will not close these holes and people can abuse it.
Look at all the insane scandals Eve has had over the years. Titan thefts corp heists accounts being cracked. Oh and lest we forget the infamous GM bob scandal and the improper banning of an ISD reporter. In no other MMO have we seen such a record of blatent disregard for the holes in their system.
While a lot of games are no real prize If there is anything i have noticed its that most give a damn. CCP hasnt in terms of security. Nor background checks i suppose. Maybe this will finally wake up people to the fact CCP doesnt care about the isk sellers the exploiters and all it does is lip service. 70 accounts? 3 characters per account 210 at most. What about accounts linked to those 70? If CCP wanted to do this right they would go nuclear and if a credit card was held in common between the accounts frag the whole damned thing.
I play AOC right now and even in the beginning stages it still tears apart EVE. When the PVP exploit happened they examined the evidence. Worked out the proper script to trace it and jacked the sumbitches hard. Players handed out their own justice wiping two different guilds out of existance on the Cimmeria server. I pray this is the wakeup call to EVE online players to get them out of that pathetic excuse of an MMO. It was once great. Now its just garbage. Graphics and mechanics can not overcome a staff and a GM crew that does not give a shit about exploits.
At last!!
Speaking as a former player of the game there was something i learned when i first started playing.
Find an exploit? Dont tell anyone and abuse it. CCP wont care.
I never did such things but that letter has a few things that make me wonder if he aint telling the exact truth. If anything i am not coming back period now CCP has lost any chance of pulling me as a subscriber. It only sets in the fact that they will not close these holes and people can abuse it.
Look at all the insane scandals Eve has had over the years. Titan thefts corp heists accounts being cracked. Oh and lest we forget the infamous GM bob scandal and the improper banning of an ISD reporter. In no other MMO have we seen such a record of blatent disregard for the holes in their system.
While a lot of games are no real prize If there is anything i have noticed its that most give a damn. CCP hasnt in terms of security. Nor background checks i suppose. Maybe this will finally wake up people to the fact CCP doesnt care about the isk sellers the exploiters and all it does is lip service. 70 accounts? 3 characters per account 210 at most. What about accounts linked to those 70? If CCP wanted to do this right they would go nuclear and if a credit card was held in common between the accounts frag the whole damned thing.
I play AOC right now and even in the beginning stages it still tears apart EVE. When the PVP exploit happened they examined the evidence. Worked out the proper script to trace it and jacked the sumbitches hard. Players handed out their own justice wiping two different guilds out of existance on the Cimmeria server. I pray this is the wakeup call to EVE online players to get them out of that pathetic excuse of an MMO. It was once great. Now its just garbage. Graphics and mechanics can not overcome a staff and a GM crew that does not give a shit about exploits.
I hear of people getting suspensions and bans all the time they do deal with people accordingly there. HOw long did you play EVE? Seems that your bragging about how great AOC is you must have not played EVE for long sounds more like a whine post to me, I wont quit the game cause of some e-tards behavior and neither will others, still the only sandbox out there that I truly like and I will keep playing it as will others, see ya when you get bored of AOC , cause you will...
Actually firefly i played for about nine months before i got pulled into age of Conan. But even before i left the game i could see how badly things were being messed up. Over 20 ships in my personal inventory and easily a couple hundred million credits solo. I left things in a state that if i had decided to come back i would be well ahead of the game. I was even thinking of capital ships at the point i shut it down. But now i am glad i never started it up again.
ISK sellers? Dealt with somewhat but not before the economy was radically altered. Hell it wouldnt surprise me in the least if the ISK farmers were using this exploit if they knew about it! Think man, just what in the hell brought so many in the first place. Mission running can get you a fair amount of credits. But you and i both know the outer regious are where the ISK is at.
Exploiters? They never ban the core accounts just the ones that do it. Never the primary player allowing them to continue to cheat. While its hard to track down people talk and they never investigate rumors.
The ISD reporter incident which happened while i was a player there proved that BOB still had GM friends within CCP. Even if phatz weren't being transferred.
You are one of the diehard fools who doesnt bother to understand what is going on. Or maybe you do and you take an active role in it. Wouldnt surprise me at this point. A sandbox is only as good as the rules that make it up. If its fair a sandbox is a hell of a place to play in. But when players are consistently allowed to use cheat after cheat after cheat to exploit that system its a garbage game. Plain and simple. EVE allows sploits and encourages behaviour that i find disgusting. It pays lip service to keep people like you subscribed and has yet to deal with the real problems on their staff. This incident only shows the level of incompetience CCP's staff actually has. I dont know if the letter is true but given the track record i saw when i left the game it would not surprise me in the least. I wont be back to eve. I have removed all traces of the game from my computer and i plan on posting on the eve bank forums soon to make my balance of over 250 million ISK a donation to the operations of that service.
The sandbox is broken.
It is rather interesting to read you two Fighting chickens testimony about how hardcore you once were in EVE-online -> Mind you "once".
But please give me a break!!
Did you guys forget what this article really was about?
What CCP has done here is just so über !
The most of us "Who is really playing this game" (EVE-online) - Praise You for it
Keep-up the god spirit !!!
If all you did was solo mission and make abit over 250 million isk and only 20 ships in 9 months then you really did not play EvE in that much a depth as alot of other people. Still, if you don't like EvE and how CCP goes about it self, fair enough, its not for you don't play it. But CCP do do things eventually, even though they frustrate their own subscribers with the way they do it and the length of time it takes to happen.
But for alot of people its not about who exploited what, and i'm not going to leave because they exploited, if i can still PvP and blow shit up with my ships with my corp then thats great, i'm having fun, thats all i'm looking for.
With the bit about them never banning the core accounts, I agree, I doubt they would ever ban mass amoutns of core accounts of players in the big alliances linked to the scam because they seem a bit to scared to shake things up that much. But really, that is what EvE probably needs for alot of people. A hell of a cleansing.
And their really is no need to make an attack on us subscribers saying that the only way we would still be playing is if we are taking part in exploiting ourselves. You'll find the majority abhore the idea. What is going on is people attempting to upset the market, and ISK flow for their gain/alliances gain. Groups like that can be gotten rid of. All just depends on your line of play and gernal proneness to being a whinge about how things, or if you just get on with what you enjoy to play the game in a fair way and screw the exploiters.
Edit: Spelling
I just cant agree with you more..
Please 250M ISK, he must be joking!
We who really play the game wants the justice that only CCP can admit us!!
Wir sind etwas sehr ernst nehmen or in eng.; we play for keeps in EVE-online.
Perhaps CCP dont ride the same day they saddle the pony but they ARE trying to stop those scammers!!
In each & every game on this planet there always gonna be someone who will try to go the non-tolerant way!!
"Speaking as a former player of the game there was something i learned when i first started playing."
After reading this nonsense post, I have doubts you played more than the trial offer
"Find an exploit? Dont tell anyone and abuse it. CCP wont care."
Oh give me a break, they are like any other developer, they find an exploit then fix it.
"I never did such things but that letter has a few things that make me wonder if he aint telling the exact truth. If anything i am not coming back period now CCP has lost any chance of pulling me as a subscriber. It only sets in the fact that they will not close these holes and people can abuse it."Again you are attempting to rely on a post by an alledged abuser of the system, pretty shaky ground to base such an inane assumption on.
"Look at all the insane scandals Eve has had over the years. Titan thefts corp heists accounts being cracked. Oh and lest we forget the infamous GM bob scandal and the improper banning of an ISD reporter. In no other MMO have we seen such a record of blatent disregard for the holes in their system."
The only scandel was the T20 incident where a dev gave a few bpos to a corporation he was in. It was fixed as soon as it was found out. It had little effect on the game itself or on the playerbase. All MMO's have problems with account hacking, Wow leading the front on that. Improper banning of an ISD reporter? Let's get the facts straight, the idiot was bumping other ships, preventing the player of the respective ships from playing, please explain to me how his banning was improper?
"While a lot of games are no real prize If there is anything i have noticed its that most give a damn. CCP hasnt in terms of security. Nor background checks i suppose. Maybe this will finally wake up people to the fact CCP doesnt care about the isk sellers the exploiters and all it does is lip service. 70 accounts? 3 characters per account 210 at most. What about accounts linked to those 70? If CCP wanted to do this right they would go nuclear and if a credit card was held in common between the accounts frag the whole damned thing."
Another diatribe completely ignoring the facts. Please explain to me a MMO that has code in place to follow an extensive money trail? You can't, they are in the business of writing a game, not an accounting system. You don't ban arbitrarily, you only do it when you have solid evidence. As to ISK sellers, sorry to waken you from your sleep, but they remove a lot of isk from the system everyday. No need to ban an isk buyer, they just remove the isk and make the player suffer with a negative isk account. As to the sellers they have new accounts up and going with a week or two.
" play AOC right now and even in the beginning stages it still tears apart EVE. When the PVP exploit happened they examined the evidence. Worked out the proper script to trace it and jacked the sumbitches hard. Players handed out their own justice wiping two different guilds out of existance on the Cimmeria server. I pray this is the wakeup call to EVE online players to get them out of that pathetic excuse of an MMO. It was once great. Now its just garbage. Graphics and mechanics can not overcome a staff and a GM crew that does not give a shit about exploits."
Yeah right, AoC is still the laughing stock of the industry. Trying to compare it to Eve is an exercise in futility. Funcom is well known as having some of the worst support in the industry. AoC might be a decent game someday, when they finish beta testing it. Eve developers make Funcom's look like a rookie crew.
It brings a smile to my face knowing the pain some of those exploiters must now be feeling if their account had quite a bit of time behind it. It's not like you can power level your way another character in Eve online.
There is definately a good sense of justice, that CPP did the right thing, "this time", but, in the past, the Devs and GMs have been lax in the way that they merit out punishment for those scammers, exploiters and other ppl who detract from the game.
As for the mention of the ISd reporter who was banned 'pernmantly' for bumping the BOB Capital Ship, it was well shown that he used the ISD control menus correctly and actually didn't bump even 1 ship in the battle, but, because a well known BOB member was the one doing all the bad mouthing, CPP took the side of the BOBs without even asking. or, looking at the official log evidence.
In the case of the T20 scandal, they even let the Dev off the hook, after all, you don't actually want to send one of your top Devs out the door all because he took advantage of his power.
But, what about next time?
as the old saying goes
"Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"
EvE economy has been tainted for years. I recall the high ore nerf that benefited early players and gave them an unfair headstart with manufacturing, the first T2 blueprint donated by an EvE artist to his friend giving that corporation a monopoly, the manipulation of markets by players who didn't have to deposit their bids in an escrow account so that when it came time to pay there was no isk in their accounts and other players got the shaft by having to bid higher.
The fact that they sponsor RMT with their time cards just makes it worse. That player's confession proves the whole player economy is a joke. Glad I left EvE when I did.
Sorry to break you fantasy bubble, but CCP does not support RMT. There is no shop you can buy any Eve item from, no special leveling tools, etc.
Please inform us of a MMO that has not had problems with it's economy and exploiters? Bingo, they all have had that problem, one time or another. Most of these companies don't provide half the information that CCP does when an exploit is discovered. At least CCP is honest about it.
Eve is not for everyone, it's harsh environment discourages many. I won't criticize anyone that does not like this type of play. Everyone of us plays games to have fun. But pointing out minor blips in the development of the game, like the above post, just makes you look foolish.
Sorry to break you fantasy bubble, but CCP does not support RMT. There is no shop you can buy any Eve item from, no special leveling tools, etc.
Please inform us of a MMO that has not had problems with it's economy and exploiters? Bingo, they all have had that problem, one time or another. Most of these companies don't provide half the information that CCP does when an exploit is discovered. At least CCP is honest about it.
Eve is not for everyone, it's harsh environment discourages many. I won't criticize anyone that does not like this type of play. Everyone of us plays games to have fun. But pointing out minor blips in the development of the game, like the above post, just makes you look foolish.
RMT= Real Money Trading
In EVE, you are allowed to buy time cards ( a non virtual world entity) with real money and trade those time cards ingame for ingame coin known as isk. End result is that a player gets to buy isk with real money.
What part don't you understand? Or is the intermediary step of trading the time cards for the isk too confusing for you? Who is looking foolish for being in denial?