EVE Online developer on ISK traders (gold seller)

[Borror0]

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=687

It was an interesting read.

A few interesting quotes:
"While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2% of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30%. That is a whole lot of CPU for the rest of you to play with, people."

"Another great improvement is that space is now suddenly full of belts of oversized asteroids that were previously sucked up by hoards of macro miners of the RMT persuasion. Regular players are now starting to see mining as a viable means of making some ISK and they are moving in to take over the business."

"Aside from a few implants, the in-game market has been remarkably unaffected by all this. We have closely followed the total number of daily market transactions and total amount of ISK traded per day.

http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/devblog/i...e_Market_t.jpg

As can be seen above those numbers have gone down by only around 10% overall."

Also of note, they named the operation Unholy Rage.

EDIT: I meant to type "gold sellers".

[Strakeln]

Boy, that sounds like a fun job... plotting and executing war strategies with gold farmers, understanding and using vast amounts of data to isolate and identify them... fun stuff.

An interesting point came up from the article mentioning how credit card fraud and account hacking runs rampant in the gold seller's world. Combine that with the potential for laundering money, and you'd think that the more organized criminal elements would see an opportunity to move in.

Up next: intimidation and coercion on game developers to not disturb the flow of money? Games financed by organized crime, designed as an elaborate cover for laundering operations?