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EVE Online: Iskbank.com Exposed
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Thanks to a tip from MMORPG.com reader Devilishlydo, we have learned of a major incident revolving around EVE Online players, Iskbank.com and real money transactions (RMT). EVENews24.com has obtained database records of all transactions between IskBank.com and hundreds of players that includes real names, transaction details, player names and more. According to the investigation, over 345,000 real world dollars traded hands over the past year.
EveNews24 has received what appears to be the customer and order database for a major RMT (real money trading) site, Iskbank.com. Provided by an anonymous source, this information details thousands of transactions occurring between mid-April 2010 and until March 4, 2011, which was just last week. A dizzying array of information is contained in the database; everything from names and dates to products purchased and money spent to email and IP addresses.
The overall scale of the operation is breathtaking. Since we received it, we’ve been working through the data in an attempt to make sense of it. Initial estimates indicated that the total sales for the site were approximately $345,000. We then worked to filter out all orders which did not appear to have reached completion. While it’s impossible to be certain of the exact numbers, it now appears that Iskbank.com made approximately $290,000 in sales for the 10-1/2-month period. These figures do not include any sales made through their sister site, Eveisk.ru and yes, those are US Dollars.
Read more of this developing story here.
Comments
BestSigEver :P
Hahah it's beleiveable.. I was pulling in 1k a month when i was saleing diablo 2 duped items.. It was the easiest money i made in my life and it all went up in smoke.. It took me about 15minutes to use the Bonewall + Meteor dupe and eventually i had 6 different D2Loaders running so i could dupe 3 different characters at a time.. Depending what i'd dupe each character would go for $40-100.. I'd even do special orders that'd go higher.
This lasted for about 6months untils Ebay started banning the sale of virtual items (at the time it was unheard of.) After that it was hard to sale them as the .com websites that were already established took over.. Several of my friends made .com websites only to find out the dupe would be patched a few weeks afterwords.
Theres big money in virtual item sales, i know this firsthand.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
For some reason I always expect these sales numbers to be higher. Then again, i guess you can get away with having small profit when you pay your employees $.25 an hour.
You think $350k a year for one website is low?
I wonder if all those buyers will get banned....I don't hink so....
I believe that what you've just done is illegal ;-)
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
haha i wonder what the numbers would reflect if one were to look up how many people accross all MMO's have purchased virtual items against the TOS. Lineage 2 alone would probably include every subscriber it has ever had.
I used to sell realestate in UO back in the day. $2500 - $5000 for castles and $1500-2000 for keeps....Id do 4 to 5 sales a month on 3 different servers lol.
<p>It's part of the argument for cash shops for mmos, if you make it legit and through the game publisher then you can squeeze out the third party guys who break your rules from China...
<p><br>
<p>However, we are talking CCP games here and let's face it these guys wouldn't be able to put together either a in game cash shop or effectively police illegal account or in game activity...remember EvE guys they were busted by an anonomous source not CCP itself, and coding a game in Python in 2011 just plain sucks donkeys.
I hope the list of characters is given to CCP, and every single one of those accounts is permabanned. At least, if CCP is competent in the least, that's what will happen. But that's probably asking too much.
They made the list public if you click on the link.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
You know...whoever this "Anonymous" source is, it was illegal the way it was exposed and the way they obtained the information.
ESPECIALLY if it contains transaction data and real information.
How can they even know this information is legit? They would need to verify that first, before they ban anyone.
Sure they will. Should not be to hard to cross reference transactions on the server with that of the DB.
What is the big deal i dont understand why this is such a problem if anyone has ever actually played EVE then they would know that CCP sells ISK for real money on there own site... its called plex
I am not at all suprised by this.....we may joke about it but for some people EVE online IS serious business. They will do whatever to get ahead.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Shall we say, this is the "Eveleaks" ?
Oh ho....the folks at CCP are far too clever to ban people who buy ISK illegally, they simply take it (or the items) back from the players account. (they can track if you used a mule to transfer the ISK btw). This keeps more people paying sub fees.
If the players account balance goes in the negative, they are effectively locked out from playing because you can't trade on the market place w/o having a positive ISK balance to pay trading fees up front.
This means the offending player has to go out and purchase a PLEX (or 10) and sell it for ISK to someone in order to restore their account to a positive balance. Since EVE players invest a lot of time into advancing their avatars, many suck it up and end up paying for ISK twice (a fitting punishment I think) in order to get back into the game.
Also, if an ISK buy shared the ISK with any of their friends, CCP takes that back too, regardless of the circumstances and if anyone goes negative, they all have to pay.
One dirty trick in EVE is for someone who's bought a lot of ISK to leave the game and give away all their ISK to random players. When CCP catches up with them, all those other players end up having the ISK pulled back, and risk their accounts going negative. (always good to reconsider accepting any gifts from strangers in EVE, usually a catch in there somewhere)
BTW, one misconception I saw, CCP does not sell ISK. They sell PLEX, which are game time cards for cash. Players can trade these timecards to players in game for ISK in order to get it legally. This creates no new ISK in the economy, it just transfers it from one players account to another, causing no inflation.
As to the ISK seller having a stockpile of PLEX, makes sense, they can buy PLEX's with their (freely) farmed ISK from other players and then turn around and sell them to players at a discount (hey, they paid nothing for them) and earn cash on that side.
Truth is, 345K seems way low, not a very profitable business especially if this is a 5 man venture.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I just started looking at how much people have spent on the list, and holy hell...
People really want to spend over 1k on virtual money? Maybe 20 bucks or something, but 1000 USDs? I added one guy's purchases up and it was over 2550 dollars.
Sweet Baby J
Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!!
Not unusal at all, many people who get involved in 'F2P" games like ROM routinely spend anywhere up to 1000 bucks or more on their current armor set (to be done again at next expansion) to be the top tier of the game.
EVE's no different, ISK is power, so it makes sense people would turn to the dark side and try to spend their way to the top.
Face it, rich people in this world spend their money on many items that you and I would never dream of buying, heck who spends 5K for a watch for heavens sake. But they do.
Same with gaming, I think a game like Entropa Universe (or whatever its called these days) has players who have spend 10's of thousands of dollars in the hopes of earning even bigger rewards, with reports from that game having some players selling vitural property to others for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars.
MMO's are serious business.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
time or money, thats how its is in most mmos. e.g. if you need to farm money for 2 weeks to buy a new mount its even harder if you have a real life and job.
rmt is the answer. WoW would not work without rmt. still blizzard cant use rmt because they allready rip off ~15$ every month from every player. most f2p/itemshop games work really well with an average of 3-5$ spend every month, just avoid "specials".
What law do you think has been broken? Bear in mind that EVEnews 24 is run by a Portugese guy, the RMTers are Moldavian and CCP is an Icelandic company.
MMORPG.com are merely reporting an event.
Who has broken what law?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Of course they'll verify first. No-one will get banned or fined purely because they're on a list. However, the list is a very powerful aid for CCP to easily investigate a large number of accounts.
The hurfblurf about this on the EVE-O forums is hilarious. See if you can spot the obvious ISK buyers who are now scared as hell and are desperately trying to muddy the discussion with accusations of "jackbooted thuggery", "witch-hunts" and so forth.
It's like watching cockroaches scurry for cover when you snap on the light in a ghetto pizza place...
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Let us not forget: CCP can legally deny access to their server for anybody they choose at any given time for no reason at all.
If CCP decides to react on the "leaked" information, there is little to nothing those hit with the ban-hammer can do.