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CCP addresses EVE faction warfare exploit, players punished
Last week we brought you the story of five EVE Online players who gamed the new faction warfare mechanics to produce trillions of ISK worth a total of $175,000 US. The players who found the exploit did report it for developers to fix, but not before abusing it for a full two weeks. CCP Games spent the week deliberating and today released its official statement on the exploit and the punishments those involved will face. As market manipulation has always been a legal part of EVE's sandbox gameplay, the lines between exploit and gameplay were not as clear in this case as they could have been. The accounts of those involved will remain in good standing, but all of their ill-gotten gains will be completely removed. The five offenders will essentially be rolled back to where they were before the exploit happened. CCP reminded players that there are rewards for reporting an exploit to developers and that abusing an exploit before reporting it is not considered responsible disclosure.
EVE players abuse faction warfare to produce trillions of ISK
If there's one constant in the EVE Online universe, it's that the players can never be underestimated and every care must be taken to make sure systems can't be abused in unintended ways. In 2009, a handful of players figured out how to artificially boost the number of valuable faction warfare loyalty points rewarded for completing missions and farmed enough ISK to build a titan. That record was completely blown out of the water today as five EVE players revealed how they'd generated five trillion ISK using game mechanics introduced in the Inferno expansion. Inferno added a new reward system for faction warfare that gave players loyalty points for enemy ship kills based on the value of the destroyed ship and cargo. A bug was found that rewarded players for both the destroyed and surviving cargo, even though surviving cargo could be recovered. GoonWaffe pilot Aryth and four friends began destroying their own freighters full of minerals to cash the minerals out into loyalty points, which were then used to buy items for sale. When CCP discovered this bug and fixed it, the group manipulated the market price of one of the game's least-purchased items up to a huge number. When the price index for the value of that item updated, the players began destroying haulers full of them to generate billions of loyalty points for almost nothing. The points were cashed out into items for sale on the market, producing a total profit of over five trillion ISK. The abuse has not yet been declared an exploit, but CCP has fixed the issue and is still investigating it. At current market prices, five trillion ISK is enough to buy around 10,000 30-day game time codes worth a total of $175,000 US.
