Iskbank.com Customers Speak Out
Before we broke the story about the Iskbank.com database leak, I approached several of the players who were listed as customers. Originally, this was a way to test the validity of the list printed in our first article and to gather some quotes. As I progressed, I became more interested in the stories that the customers told. Once the interviews were complete, I decided to publish in an article of their own. Whatever the actions or motivations of the people involved, I believe that their stories deserve to be told.
All names have been changed. As there is no way to confirm the facts behind the stories, all interviewees have been given the benefit of the doubt.
The Big Spender – A Brother’s Regret
The decision to purchase of thousands of dollars in items from Iskbank.com was born from a destruction. “[My brother] let me use his capitals. Imagine the rest,” confessed Eric, referring to the accidental loss of the Titan and Supercarrier class ships owned by his brother, another avid Eve player.
After the loss of his brother’s ships, Eric went into panic mode. “I was going to buy GTC[s] from [Iskbank.com, but the representative] said he would give me a deal, and I needed to buy a lot. It went back and forth, and he said he would just get me the two ships. I was in a hurry, because I felt like a dumbass.” Eric agreed to the transaction, paying by his estimate, about $2,500. While the order was prepared, Eric realized that he didn’t have any way of moving the ships, so he purchased characters for the express purpose of moving the ships (it is unclear why the ships’ original pilots were unavailable). Later records indicate that he made a separate purchase to outfit the Titan.
When asked about his willingness to spend such a large amount of money to replace in-game items, Eric’s response reflected embarrassment. “This is going to sound gay as can be, but I don’t have a lot in common with my brother, other than this game. I’ve had a successful life, all the breaks; he has had none. He was proud that he was better than me at this game, and I fucked up his work, even if it is a dumb game. At the time, I panicked. I should have stuck with the GTC route and gave him the ISK. It only saved me a couple hundred dollars and some time. I’m not sure anyone relates, but it mattered to me at the time.” He added, “The [Supercarrier] is gone already. [My brother] lost it, like, a week later.”
The Regular – Money Talks
“It’s simple, really. Isk is cheaper thank PLEX, and PLEX is just a legalized way of buying ISK,” replied Paul, when asked why he made several ISK purchases from Eveisk.com. His purchases, spread out over several months, ended up costing more than a thousand dollars. For Paul, dealing with RMT retailers gives him more for his money. Originally, he bought ISK to pay for equipment and resources, but over time, he used the ISK to fund market speculation. When asked if he’d ever been caught, he simply replied, “Nope. If I did [get caught], I doubt I’d continue.”
The First-timer – A Clueless Newbie Story
“I came from World of Warcraft. There is no PLEX system in that game, so old habits kind of carried over,” admits Angela, who had only been playing Eve for a short time when she found Iskbank.com. “I had just started playing, so the risk was low and the reward was high. I don’t have a lot of time on this character yet, so I can always start new if I do get caught and banned.” she said, speculating that, “The longer you play, the more you risk and the reward is probably a lot less,” noting that more experienced characters have more options when it comes to making ISK.
Angela had heard of the PLEX system, but didn’t really know what the difference was between it and buying through RMT sites. “I’d heard about PLEX before, but didn’t fully investigate what it was,” she mentioned. She has since learned more about the PLEX system and the penalties for engaging in RMT, coming to the conclusion that, “I honestly don’t think I’m going to be using 3rd party [sites] anymore. I feel more inclined to play legitimately.”
The Scammed – Cheater Gets Cheated
Mark wants me to be clear. When he tried to buy a character from Iskbank.com, he didn’t know it was against the rules. “I was a newb back then. I thought – because of the way it looked – that it was a legit site; like how you buy time codes.” After paying a few hundred dollars for a character that he didn’t receive, he learned otherwise. Out of ignorance, he contacted CCP to complain. “[They said] that wasn’t the way to buy characters and pointed me to the Eve Online forum where you can buy characters with ISK.”
I asked Mark if he ever got his money back from Iskbank.com. “Ultimately, no. They took my money and I didn’t get anything back from it. ISK is money anyway, when you’re a PLEX player, so I took it as another Eve scam.” He added, “I thought it was a legit way to buy characters. I tried to contact them about it, but after a while I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I can’t sue them.”
When asked if he thought CCP could do more to explain that RMT is a violation of Eve Online’s rules and that the alternative exists. Mark replied, “Yeah, it’s in the fine print at the start, [but] there should be something simple, like a corp bulletin, which says ‘anything bought with real money outside of Eve that isn’t a time code is illegal’.”
Final Thoughts
When asked, all of those who agreed to an interview said that they had faced no consequences from CCP for engaging in RMT activities. While most (but not all) of those interviewed stated that they were more likely to use the PLEX system in the future, it is impossible to know if this is more due to a genuine desire to play by the rules or simply a result of their discovery that Iskbank.com‘s customer database was leaked.
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Heh, each of those touches exactly on argumentation CSM 5 put on CCP's table, including the NPE/Newbie awareness. Maybe it's time for them to start looking up from this myth of rmt = bots.
Not all RMT is fueled by bots but most of it is. Where do you think iskbank.com got the ISK they're selling?
But related to what you're saying, everyone involved should acknowledge that RMT is a problem regardless of how much botting funds it AND botting is a problem regardless of how much of that ISK goes to RMT.
They wont get baned : P Too many subscriptions for CCP to just trow away. I have wrote a big collum but admin removed it.
CCP refuses to ban White Noise botters and exploiters every time we report them and we have reported them more then 10 times so far whit video and image proof.
If you go to White Angels / White Noise space in Omist you will find a ton of systems where they use mining, plexing, ratting and market bots. In addition they use exploits to anchor large ammounts of bubles. A week ago my corp took down about 400mil worth of bubbles.
What they do is they somehow anchor up to 20 large bubbles around the gate wich usualy span off to 100km-200km off the gate. This allows their carrier YES CARRIER Bots we killed a few to have more time to warp out to safety of the pos. If you roam in their space you will notice that they do this all the time durning USA Timezone. When u jump in to a systems scan it you will pickup ships like tengu, ravens, golems, carriers, loki, machariels, drakes. If u use probes u can easily pickup that the moment you jump in to the system they start warping out to the pos.
Also as you pass their space you will notice large amounts of characters in local whit same name and diffirent word at the end like: Dylan A, Dylan B, Dylan C, Dylan D.
They were reported time after time. But nothing happens. In addition there is a exploit where you can light a cyno in a cyno jammed system that they have been abusing.
And no ban so….
If you like to have them banned you would kill your supplier of ISK, NC boy
I am not NC, i just dont agree whit what they are doing.
In addition i do not buy ISK. I have to take my fucking abaddon out to do 3-4 sanctums to have enough for a BC or BS. Unlike my CEO who just recovers his losses from corp wallet xD
I didn't realize we could get Guristas banned.
whats bots got to do with tech moons?
Well if you wanna kill them why not put a bubble in line of their pos?
Their carrier will get stuck on it, and you would have it before it can warp again
Dont complain, but look for a solution instead
So much bullshit dude… Don't complain? Look for a solution?
Think about what you just said.
He is right so. I do not consider complaining a solution. Play the game or STFU.
Iam not complaining, iam just stating a fact that CCP refuses to take action against those people so its highly doubtfull they will take action in this case.
anchoring 20 bubbles isnt an exploit and judiging by the content of his statement i doubt he could tell the bots from multiboxers
dude, RMT != botting
in most cases 0.0 botting is actually really really far from RMT black market
Figure out what belt/anom these carriers are in before they warp out, go to it and log out for 15 mins – enough time for them to think "oh goodie it's safe". Come back on and proceed to rape slow-to-align bot. +1 killmail, +1 kick in the teeth for the macro.
the only problem is that these people are like the same people who work at CCP. Some I heard were disgruntled workers fired and they used backdoors to circumvent the system. All I am saying is anyone can find them but are you getting to them or just a smaller piece of thier take………
yeah, in WN we just sit around using market bots in 0.0
lol morons… seriously morons….
"noting that more experienced characters have more options when it comes to making ISK."
well dah they have been playing the game FFS
“Yeah, it’s in the fine print at the start, [but] there should be something simple, like a corp bulletin, which says ‘anything bought with real money outside of Eve that isn’t a time code is illegal’.”
soo soo very lame….
would like to see a name list of all RMT guys.. why cant they play by the rules, and the I didn't know.. oh please.
right RMT is only a major problem in every popular mmo and aginst their eluas. people being like oh i didnt know that buying game currency was wrong, hell most games its cheating here we just have plex to blur the line but i like free game time so i like plex
However, it's still not fun to start from scratch and not be able to do anything for months. Yes, if you get into the right group you can learn a lot, and use your shitty skills to some degree, but there is a reason that there is a "three month bubble" with EVE. There was an article on an MMO website a while back that had done research and showed that something about 60% of all new EVE players went inactive within the first three months of playing. They interviewed a few ex-EVE online players, and they all had the same exact problems with the game. It took too long to be able to do anything, and they felt that no matter how long they played, they'd still be at the bottom of the pack. The fact that EVE online encourages market and contract scamming hurts NEW PLAYERS more than anyone. Yes, if you pay attention, you don't get scammed, but a lot of newer players don't know the ins and outs of the market and/or contracts. If CCP took a harder stance on scammers, they would have a much higher playerbase.
I know I'm going to get flamed by all the little faggots whose only enjoyment out of the game is trying to collect "tears" from other players. To be honest with you, I pity you. If you are such a bitter and nasty person that the only enjoyment you get out of a game is when you can make a new player quit, wow. You are a sad person.
Hear, hear! I have a hunch that as much botting as there is weakening the profitability of newbish ISK making activities such as low-ore mining and mission running.
I don’t understand the concept of wanting to jump into advanced content early in your eve career. It reminds me of my children when they were adolescents playing video games in God mode. In a couple of days they were bored.
I have enjoyed the journey through the various levels of frigates, running missions until I could afford better gear. Earning a cruiser makes a player think twice before doing something they know is stupid.
I am now running level 3 missions and making a fair amount of ISK. It funds my gear as I advance to some type II equipment.
I don’t know that I will ever be to the point of being one of hundreds of pilots in a battle, but I don’t need to fly the biggest, fastest, most DPS ship in the game. I am quite content with my Cyclone at this point.
The quickest way to get bored with a game is to take shortcuts.
Yepp too much money inside for ccp. Nothing will happen. So nice story but with no effect ^^
Keep telling you that bro…
They prolly wont thake action based on the leak. The information could be corrupt since it is from third party and they run a risk of taking action on someone who actualy has not been involved or actualy bought a 30day starter pack or GTC.
What they will do is prolly closely monitor the people that have been reported. In addition the list is by far to long and they would have to take action against all of them costing them bit 2 much money.
BUT. This leak and the information on how much money iskbank.com couldn't have come in at a better time. We are in the middle of voting for CSM and hopefully the money the lost in this case will make them reconsider and actualy listen to CSM proposal's.
And hopefully this can turn out to be a good thing and we can finaly start seeing some change in CCP's adittude towards players oppinion.
the RMT will never stop until ppl stop buying the isk and items. its not CCP that creates the market its the wow kids that find out eve is too hard and have to buy isk to compete. no matter what ccp does as long as there is demand to pay real money for isk there will be RMT
Thanks EN24 for some quality journalism the past few days. This is a great scoop, original coverage and exactly what an independent news agency should be doing. Thumbs up.
Should be being laundered out of the drone regions at a rapid rate right about now.
And you wonder why only DRF chooses to live there.
I agree, this reads so much more like real news to me.
Well done, keep it up!
What is a bot?
Get a clue, grow a brain, its CCP employees actually involved with these ISK selling sites.
Yeah, what heartwarming stories, i'd like to warm their hearts too, by burning them on a Stake.
And to Wicked: Next time, please take down their POS, so the bots who think they are safe there, will jump right infront of your Barrels, once it is Gone.
Considering the dropping numbers of eve subscribers, ccp will do jack about bots, or they may ban 3 or 4 inactive accounts. Its like nailing ur own coffin, whos gonna do this ?
Only thing we can do to help is to use moar macro, sooner or latter there will be no need for rmt's, sarcasm end.
dropping numbers???? u got some facts to back that up lol last i saw they just got more accounts then the population of isceland
EVE Journalism keeps on evolving!
Nice work EN24.
Eve is not a free game, so I buy isk to Iskbank each month, in order to buy 2 plex and sometime I got a small bonus. It makes the game cheaper than buying plex to ccp, and sometime less boring than if I had to farm or things like that. And I don't "scam" ccp as the PLEX I use have been purchased legally buy another player. I don't know where's the problem, as long as you can buy plex or trade GTC, CCP already organise his own RMT. I just don't want to spend too much real money for this game.
And I prefere to give my money to russians players, or people who aren't lucky to live in rich country like me, what I give to them is not much for me.
I don't really have a well payed job here in France, but I'm sure I earn in a day as much as those people win in a week of hard work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
That's real life, not Eve, in Eve, when you kill a guristas BS, you'll get 1M isk, in real life, you will kill the same Guristas BS, but the North American and the West European will get 3M, while the russians will get 0.5M for the same job. Here is the problem!
Excuse my english^^
you werent crying when the drone region was bugged and you were getting your esclations all the time
think of the poor isk farmers
The most funny thing in all this, is that the alliances who cry about RMT louder then other, buy more isk too
if your allience is rmting and buying isk they fail…….if your trying to take a shot at the larger allys they would be on the isk selling side of things…..you dont buy isk when you have trillions……
However, being a "bff" and yet talking about how you have to runs sanctums, you should know that ISK in alliances don't make the trip down except for certain reimbursement programs. Of those "trillions" (Btw, those trillions in the NC came from exploiting the game which got a couple of token accounts banned, but the ISK stayed in the game, go figure) the only time a grunt will see it, is if he loses an important ship in a sanctioned fleet op. Most of the alliances, with a few exceptions, even if they lose a normal ship in a fleet op, they aren't reimbursed. If they lose a special ship, such as a Logi or a HIC or some capitals, then they are reimbursed. However, in all but a VERY few cases, the original ship has to have been bought by the player in the first place. So getting the 1-2b ISK for a Dread/Carrier comes out of the player's pocket (Plus all the skillbooks which cost hundreds of millions of ISK). Those large alliances with trillions of ISK still don't buy initial ships for people, in the majority of the cases.
The problem with releasing that list the way they did, it does not give any indication of when a player purchased the ISK. The was a near 1-year period that database covered. My alliance is represented in the list, as are many others. However, the players that are on the list from my alliance have been in the alliance for less than two months. The likelihood is that the ISK buying was from before they joined the alliance, yet the way the information is presented, it points a finger at my alliance as being a huge ISK buyer (Even though it's a character that has not been in the alliance long at all that has bought like $1000+ worth of ISK.)
Just because someone bought ISK on an account and you check now and they're NC doesn't mean they were NC when the ISK was bought.
Accounts are bought and sold all the time…
You do know the companies selling items are all in the Russian alliances right? Who do you think is doing the botting? Dude the people that bought this stuff feed your kids
RMT…RMT never changes… As long as they turn a profit, they will continue despite CCP's actions. Money and violence are some of the greatest forces on planet earth and there is plenty of money to be made.
You can all feel better they banned all of the accounts they could find this morning at 7:06am PST.
In this article: lots of stupid people protesting that they didn't mean to do it, and didn't understand what they were doing! What a bunch of crap.
So you mission for months(subscriptions cost RL money) to get a fancy new ship and faction fit. The day you get it you un-dock from Jita and get ganked at the first gate.. CCP does nothing.. it is all part of the game. Every laughs at some noob for not paying attention. Noob really liked his ship, so buys some isk to replace his ship, suddenly its a problem… mmm now that is a bunch of crap
Good article. Interesting to see the other side of things, true or not.
I think of it this way. If someone payed RL $$$ to buy ships, mods, whatever and I get to blow those up, well it just adds a little extra something when I gank them and drink in their tears. On top of that, I probably made the ship & some of the mods. So thanks for the ISK & the killmail. =P
some years ago i heard a story about a chinese guy melting ice and bottling the water, selling it as a "two billion years old water" with a relevant price as well lol. i thought to myself: what crappy ppl would give their money to buy such a crap product…they sure must be idiots! only i was the idiot…for thinking that scum to be outrageous.
these muppets here give their rl money only to buy and absolute nothingness. then i realized a big rl truth: nothing is the most profitable product…
Dude that was like so fucking deep man. You are like some new age philosopher for real.
Time is money. Are you any more lame to spend hundreds of hours to make the same amount of isk? A good player can make 60 mil per hour in sanctums. That comes to about $3.25 per hour. How much do you value your time? I pull down about $55 an hour after taxes. Its way more time efficient for me to buy plex then rat on CCP's lame ass PVE system…
You could argue that the whole idea of spending time and money on this game is lame…but then where all in the same boat…
Spending RL money to fuel your hobby is a reasonable thing to do in my book.
Goes along with spending money on renting movies or going out and getting drunk. To each his own.
Its not nothingness, you get something in return that you hold valuable enough.
As long as you play by CCP's rules its all fine with me, thats why they put the PLEX system into game.
In a Sour note, Sour, that same practice of the Chinese man goes on in RL. Go to your supermarkets. DO you really think your drinking purified water?
It does the same for the game. CCP should have stricter protocols to make it harder to disgruntled employees (and they DO have them) as well as update not only the lag that occasionally happens but the security of the game mechanics. Damn, I mean the lag could be form the bots, the backdoor going ons and lack of caring IMO.
Perhaps you didn't notice it in the first article, iskbank has something like 5500 plex cards in their inventory. CCP will not do a damb thing, because they are making money in there also.
Why is an NC run evenew24 leaking all this shit on vuk's operation? Some kind of internal faggot fest drama bomb going on inside the down syndrome zone?
I know i have pesimistic comments, but i have some experience with botters too… really, just pick up any T3 cruiser with cloak/interdiction nullifier, and go to drone region sector and you will see on your eyes! My friends are hunting those bi*ches, good and expensive killmails, but… WE ALL know true, what we will destroy (golem for 2b etc) they will replace it in few hours. CRAP! Only way is if NC, stainwagon and future querious/delve will do the pleasure and clear "unhabitable" region of DRF to new alliances, like everywhere no matter there are drones etc.
That news are just awesome and EVENews24 are doing awesome job at this.
Guys who are you going on Fanfest, make presure on CCP, coz i think not only i want clear game of those im not saying i had desire to buy isk from them too, or try to RMT and make some cash, somekind of corrupt. But never happend, cos i want clear game, good and morale game, coz its game, where we will solve politic, pirates, empire prices, relationships and when we are growing as community, we wont our greenhorns will RMT, coz they did it in Lineage 2, WoW or anywhere else.
I think even pirates are doing good, just they need alliance support, and everyone should be interested in this problem, because it is now out of EVE, and we (all game community) should do something with it. You know, cheats are good in games like Doom 2, etc, but everyone from us know, cheats are not why we want play that game.
One time i thought i will make corporation specialized in T3 cruisers to hunt every day those bas*ards, but not happend yet, just practising now, but we will do one day. Do with us, counter espionage, pirate attacks, alliance attacks, lets clear eve!
Iam not complaining, CCP isnt taking action we are we kill a fuckload of them every day but they keep coming back whit new ships the next day.
Now: If someone is multiboxing i would assume he would have about 3max characters prolly whit diffirent names ratting since i doubt anyone can multibox rat whit more then say 3 accounts.
And ofc i would consider multiboxing if i saw an orca and say 10-15 mining barges. With prolly diffirent names. I highly doubt one person can multibox 20-25 mining barges in asteroids, all chars whit same name, rat in 4 plexes and farm belts all at the same time.
Also these are people from EU / Russian time zone online at US timezone during week i would understand seeing about 10-20 of them but there is a fuckload of them.
Also i think its an exploit to anchor 20 bubbles on each gate in system i thot u can have only 8 on grid or so ?
Its true, u cant anchor more than a certain number example 5, anchoring 20 means some CCP "insert name" comes in local and says u r using an exploit and this is not allowed.
Apart from that, if u put 20 core scanner probes on gate, which hardly cause even a speck of lag, u still get CCP "blah blah" at ur door complaining about it. Has happened to me, thats why i reported it. But then why wouldnt CCP go WN space and look for themselves what those 20 bubbles are doing, its bcoz CCP doesnt give a crap about it, as someone here said, they dont want to lose subscriptions.
You're a boob to think 3 is the max you can multibox with.
My buddy and I have multiple accounts (11 total together) and we share. We often have all 11 toons out together ratting, He has a kick-ass system and can run all 11 together on one box with triple 24" screens. No special software required or used to make this happen. Just a bunch of eve clients open on the desktop. It works well, no lag. I can run maybe 6 max before I overheat my vid card. need to upgrade!
Sharing accounts is a EULA violation and I agree with your name
I agree with delago, but I DO have two toons. Its had to ACTUALLY mine and not get popped for beign legitimate. As a result, one character is a miner and the other, well is there to keep the other company
Now thats FUN!
If CCP can allow the theft of corporate and personal assets in game with no consequence, subscriptions take real money , then I see this as the same, just part of the game dynamics
once i met a character in game and he was on 24/7 online ratting in belts , it was not a bot , was a sister and brother playing non stop making isk ( for selling ). when one of them was a sleep the another was making ratting they where chinese people
My opinion is even CCP will not do much about this because is not in there best interes to do soo.
1.more accounts means more money
2.the real money made from selling isk comes without taxes
Simple solution to CCP's headaches and losses.. sell it cheaper
many of the accounts got perma banned today in case anyone was wondering
I understand and feel the same as those who say players should (and could) fight the bots in game to diminish the related RMT, but this is not a player's task, TBH.
CCPnians are the ones who should stop the practice within the game but they have shown no truthful interest on such so far.
I wonder if it is the case that perhaps there are too many bot accounts to deal with so banning could indeed reflect on subscription numbers. IMO, none of the bots and their respective owners pay real money to CCP. The practice pays for all their alts and mains game time in PLEX.
As any other practice as such, in RL or the game itself, this only damages the real players. Those who pay real money for a subscription (that is not cheap, btw), are the supporters of the company and everything that feeds from it. The more bots and PLEX trading, the less income for CCPnian families and the higher disappointment for legal players.
CCP lacks the confidence on the industry IMO. Perhaps their hype depends on numbers and just that. Maybe they don't care for legal players because their rents and bills are covered by those stupid enough to pay real money for something so many people aren't willing to invest a cent on.
Maybe it's time for a RL movement to engage in RL actions against the practice. But not in game, for dure.
Sadly, for the moment, it's CCP's job.
And worse of it all, we all have to realize that bots are winning the game, both IG and RL. Talk about sense of irony.
Personally I think people who Trade ISK for Real Life Currency do NOTHING for a game, at the same time they also destroy other peoples game by doing what they are doing, yet CCP seem to do very little about it.
I for one would love to see a monthly list that is posted from one of the GM's with ALL the names/Corps/Alliances/Reason For Banning the people who got banned/caught were in. I am unsure why they refuse to publish that sort of list & it really is just for the other players to glance over so they feel something more than nothing is being done.
As for ship replacements during OP's.. Most if not all of the corps I have EVER been in have had a replacement system in place as long as it was lost during official Fleet OP & was fitted correctly. So I am unsure which alliances your talking about but I know a few of the bigger setups do have replacement programs (ME/WI/MH/MM/RZR/IRC/IT/COW/INIT/ all have or did have them up until they disappeared or if they are still around they still have them.)
RMTers ARE PARASITES & CCP need to do something about them as it is becoming a joke & they are being showed up by publishing all these IP lists etc as CCP staff seem to think it would be too hard to do anything OR they might loose a heap of $$$$$ <Would they rather loose players or the $$$ because thats what it will end up coming to just like games like SRO etc>
I think CCP should introduce something like "Certified GTC Seller" badge or someting to help people as your friend distinguish more easily where to buy and where not to.
Russians=RMT=bot=isk sellers
i don t mean all russians, just 99,9%
the fact that some ally have the change isk/Rubli in their KB means all.
For them it s not a game of internet spaceships, it s business, it s a job.
CCp will not do a shit cause they re scared of what a change in this kind of thing will have in subscription etc
LOL !
stupid is as stupid does….
About the bubbles thing, if they anchor so many bubbles that if makes computers lagg from not being able to load all the bubble gfx its an exploit, i think there should be a minimum distance for achoring bubbbles from one another, enough that the bubbles overlap but that there isnt a solid wall of bubbles.
stupid RMT's