The virtual pilots of EVE Online are up in arms over a massive exploit found in EVE that has apparently been going on for four years, ever since moon mining was added to the game.

Accusations are flying thick as it appears that some large alliances who control the "wild" 0.0 regions of space have actually been funding their operations in part by cheating and the playerbase in general are not amused. Official EVE forums are predictably in flames as people are fuming how this could have been going on for so long without the developers noticing anything odd in their supposedly bullet-proof logging of the game systems.

Now those who have never played EVE Online on a high level may find the details of this exploit somewhat hard to understand, but I'll try to explain - read on...

Background: Moon Mining and Tech 2 Ships & Modules

Key feature of EVE Online is that all ships, weapons, modules and other goods are almost entirely player-made. People mine the asteroid belts or recycle looted components to raw materials. Raw materials, some factory time and a "Tech 1" blueprint sold by NPCs is then used to make the final goods, which are then sold on the open market. Some have laughed that the game is "Excel in Space" due to the complex market system of the game.

High end ships and weapons, "Tech 2 stuff", also requires two additional bits to build - a Tech 2 Blueprint not available by normal means and additional Tech 2 components, built from materials obtained by performing reactions with rare materials that can only be mined from moons. Reactions are a form of refining - two mined materials are placed into a player-owned structure with some fuel, the structure runs for a while and out comes the result of the reaction. There are several tiers to the process - further high end materials are made by reacting two mid-level materials, and high end materials can end up being very expensive.

Part of the reason for this is the fact that the EVE universe is a single huge server cluster, and the number of moons providing certain raw materials used in reactions for the most expensive Tech 2 materials is limited. There is a finite number of moons you can mine, and the number is same as it was back when the system was introduced four years ago. Naturally this leads to nice conflicts over the ownership of these lucrative sources of raw materials, and over time as the playerbase of EVE has grown, the value of the goods has gone up - demand has kept growing while the supply is limited.

The Exploit: Free Materials

What some people found out while fooling around with the complex manufacturing cycle of moon materials four years ago was that it was bugged. You built a player owned station tower, anchored silos, a complex reaction array and a coupling array next to it for refining moon materials.

To start the reaction you obtained the blueprint for the reaction and the input materials mined from moons that the reaction requires. You then inserted all the required bits to the input silos and then started the reaction. After waiting for a little bit, you then disabled the input links of the reaction and turned off the silos containing the source material - you might think that by shutting down part of the system, the reaction would stop incomplete.

Except that this was not so. The next day you would return and pick up the finished goods - with the source materials still in the silos you shut down. The batch would finish without consuming the resources. Free supply of Tech 2 component materials. Free money. The only limiting factor was the output rate of the array - and all you needed was some capital to set up multiple stations and some time to micromanage the array operation. The bug was reported four years ago to the developers, but it appears that the bug report was either ignored, thought to be fixed without actually being fixed or swept under the rug on purpose.

The Effects of the Exploit

The bug is nothing too fancy - things like this can happen in complex games. The fact that the bug was petitioned about four years ago and reported to CCP Games, the developers of EVE Online is somewhat troubling. Stories also float around that some people had found the bug independently over the years, reported it and went on with their merry way using the reaction arrays like they are supposed to work, thinking that the bug they had discovered was fixed - of course it would be, it would otherwise allow you to generate infinite resources!

The tinfoil hat crowd is already pondering if someone inside CCP squashed any reports of the bug on purpose. CCP developers are allowed to play the game in the live server "undercover", but supposedly their conduct is carefully monitored and absolute fair play is always maintained. Some players are not so sure, mainly due to the ultimate cut-throat gameplay EVE boasts at the highest level of play in the lawless 0.0 space.

In any case, the bug was never fixed... and some people who found out how it worked have apparently made a mint with it over the past four years. The potential scale of the exploit is just staggering... after the news broke, some have calculated that perhaps as much as 80% of the high end materials on the market were manufactured "out of thin air".

One self-confessed exploiter (now banned) stated that he had made between 2000 and 3000 billion ISK (ingame money of EVE) from the bug over the years. The potential total profits across EVE from all this run into tens of trillions of ISK, which is almost as big number in ISK as it is in real money. As a comparison, a common well-fitted battleship costs about 200-300 million ISK and an average player might spend a week or two to come up with that sum. A billion is something you might find in the pocket of a player who has been around for a year and played his cards well. Ten billion? Quite rich. Hundred billion? Super rich. A trillion... get outta here, no individual has that kind of in-game funds... except that apparently some had, most likely laundered and spread across multiple accounts.

Interestingly all this money was made off the "normal" players of EVE online. NPCs do not buy the materials - the manufacturers of Tech 2 goods do. They in turn sell the final goods to the players who ultimately pay for all the materials used in the production, plus some profit for every man in the supply chain. All that money comes from just a couple of money "faucets" - NPC mission rewards and bounties paid by NPC corporations for shooting down hostile NPC pirates.

In summary, a number of individuals used the exploit to effectively scoop up a good portion of the whole "GDP" of the in-game economic system by selling materials they manufactured out of thin air. All that was naturally then used to fund further operations. Some speculate that a large chunk of the irreplaceable Tech 2 original blueprints were bought up by the cheaters - they would definitely have the money to pay tens of billions for these blueprints. These Tech 2 blueprints were initially seeded into the game through a lottery, but they are no longer available by any means and they are used to manufacture limited-run copies for sale to the manufacturers of Tech 2 goods - another very lucrative business limited only by the time and ISK it takes to "run the printing presses" to make the copies. Indirectly they then could corner a monopoly on some Tech 2 goods by just keeping all the limited-use copies themselves, further increasing the profits from their "counterfeit material operation" - selling goods at monopoly prices manufactured out of free materials.

The Aftermath - Economic Crisis?

The players are currently awaiting for a statement from CCP on the issue and the official forums are under a virtual lockdown - all new threads are getting nuked. CCP has so far confirmed that there has been an exploit of some sort and bans are being handed out. People have also noticed that the market histories on some high end materials have inexplicably been zeroed for the past few days - most likely due to a selective "rollback" of the transactions in question.

The market of Tech 2 goods and their components and materials are rapidly getting into disarray - some are speculating that the prices will spike due to the constrained supply of moon reaction materials after the cheaters are cleaned out - and they are buying up everything available on the market on the hunch that it will seriously go up in value. Some even suggest that CCP should take extraordinary steps and stabilize the market by injecting additional materials "out of thin air" to the market to replace the supply that was taken out before the supply and demand can be re-balanced. Funnily in some ways EVE eerily reflects the real world - and the developers, CCP being headquartered in Iceland, know all too well what can happen when the economic system ends up in a mess. EVE economy is not quite as complex as the real economy, but it's not too far off.

Rumors are already making rounds how some big EVE alliances are involved with the cheating. Until the smoke clears, it's too early to say what's based on truth and what's just usual EVE forum gameplay - big alliances are always on each others throats and what better way to discredit your opponent than to spread some rumors about cheating. In any case, this scandal has once again proved that life is never boring in EVE Online...

Comments

	demi 2008-12-11 #1 I've never played EVE (or even tried it), but from what I've heard of it this kind of a major scale conspiracy is in the core of the whole game. I might think differently if I were one of the players who playing straight, but from an outsiders point of view I can just think 'Cool'. :)
	WiZZyWiGG 2008-12-11 #2 As a player from since the game went live... in a way I still think cool as this sort of drama always happens in the game and it what makes it in some ways. Although CCP have now banned and destroyed assets of the people they have found to be involved in this one, so sucks to be them.
	munkieNS 2008-12-11 #3 Quote: Originally Posted by WiZZyWiGG As a player from since the game went live... in a way I still think cool as this sort of drama always happens in the game and it what makes it in some ways. Although CCP have now banned and destroyed assets of the people they have found to be involved in this one, so sucks to be them. Yes, especially considering how long it takes to do anything in that game, or at least that's what I've seen in the little amount of time I have played it.
	Unregistered 2008-12-12 #4 Games are a fun for a few hours, but I already have a life so EVE isn't that appealing to me. For instance I can play a game for a few hours, and then leave the house that I own (not my parent's basement) and go hang out with some friends in real life. I can't stand the era of games that people use to replace having a life.
	darkblade088 2008-12-12 #5 wow it took them this long to fix it? I worked as R&D for a power leveling / gold farming company about 3 years ago and i accidentally figured this out also.. too bad we never had any EVE clients, everyone was crazy with wow back then..
	IeatNvidiots 2008-12-12 #6 Biggest problem of EVE is things are to limited, u have something everyone needs but only introduce it with a lotery Thats just asking for a small group of people getting a lot stronger then others and thus taking the control of the whole game. In 4 years no extra resources in a growing game, yet again a stupid limetation any exploit people find they try to keep it a secret for the sake that the whole game gets starved. Readin your article the whole game is flawed in so many ways.
	Jarnis 2008-12-12 #7 Indeed. EVE has done a bunch of things very right, got a bunch of other things right by accident, and fails miserably with a bunch of things they call "design". It's getting better and they have more resources these days with the larger playerbase, but I still found the game lacking. Initially there is a cliff of a learning curve. Once you get beyond that the game is fun in empire space for a few months. Then you hit the point where you effectively have to move outside safe space or dedicate your life to trading and repetitive mission running - and at that point it almost has to become a second job so you can keep up with all the politics and stuff. If I'd end up unemployed one day, I might pick up the habit again. I have two characters (two accounts) both with almost 20M skillpoint chars with almost a billion ISK in assets still tucked away... (used to have a freighter that I over half-owned with the corp but sold my share of it for 600M when I quit playing after getting tired of constant moving in 0.0 as the crappy Alliance I was in got whacked around by Razor and D2)
	WiZZyWiGG 2008-12-15 #8 Quote: Originally Posted by Jarnis (used to have a freighter that I over half-owned with the corp but sold my share of it for 600M when I quit playing after getting tired of constant moving in 0.0 as the crappy Alliance I was in got whacked around by Razor and D2) Man your alliance must of sucked if it got kicked around by Razor and D2 Don't really get the whole needing to have no life to play comments, I guess after 5+ years of playing I dont have this issue. But with a full time job and 2 kids I have never had a problem. I can login, blow some people up and logout pretty much when I want. Its a shame there isnt more proper PvP mmo's out there tbh, or any.
	Pottsey 2008-12-15 #9 IeatNvidiots Said “Biggest problem of EVE is things are to limited, u have something everyone needs but only introduce it with a lotery ” What? That was years ago. There is no lottery in that only a few people can produce things. Anyone can use invention to invent what is needed. The situation of a small group getting strong and stronger has not been true for many years.