Once upon a time, there was insurance...
And for a while it was good. Citizens were happy because they could ease their pain after that evil, evil pirate made them go up in flames while they were peacefully digging the ground - a common event on our beloved Nia. But then came along two monsters, Greed and Hax. And the DEVs of the kingdom saw the gathering of dark clouds.
Insurance frauds? In my MMO?
Robot insurance payouts are based on the global moving average market prices of two weeks. This only means completed transactions so it does not take active orders into account. A system where we take the global average of all markets means that it's much more difficult to manipulate market averages. This, however, is also it's biggest flaw - when certain types of robots are only traded at a few terminals, the local prices go down due to the market wars, up to a point when they can be bought cheaper than the global market average. Due to some additional flaws in the mechanism, with good skills and good facilities it became very profitable to manufacture robots with the sole purpose of insuring them and blowing them up as soon as they roll out of the factory. The insurance fraud is born.
Healing the wounds of economy
We considered many options on how we should go about this, but in the end we opted for counting the robots that were used in these operations, checked the actual insurance payouts they received for blowing them up, and then calculated the real average market prices that the payouts should have been in the first place. The difference of these two values is the falsely gained money, their "profit". This is what we had to take away.
We have systematically inspected the transaction logs of all accounts that we could connect to the frauds. The vast majority of these frauds originate from the corporations Menace to Society, X-23, Mahtisoturit, BattleAxe, Not Amused and E=Mk2 but there are many more (the frauds were not necessarily executed by the corporations but by their members without the corps' general knowledge). During the server downtime today we have removed a sum of close to 1 billion NIC from numerous private and corporate wallets.
Now, this isn’t such a large amount considering the whole economy, but it’s certainly large enough to have an unnatural and unwanted impact on it, especially so early after the launch of the game. One of the most important factors in this game, the even playing field has been jeopardized. Counteraction needed to be done.
And they ganked forth happily ever after?
We certainly hope so. I know this is something that a company doesn’t do too often to its clients (which is sad), but I’ll try to be honest with you: Doing this hurts us just as much as it hurts those who just lost millions of NIC. But you all have to understand we’re in the same boat here. We could have started swinging the banhammer around but we feel it would have done more harm than good, so we didn't take disciplinary actions this time. Both you, the players, and us developers have the same goal - to have an ever-improving and expanding game, which stands the test of time. And if this goal becomes endangered, we have to act, whether we like it or not. I hope everyone agrees and this won’t have an impact on our good relationship with you.
Meanwhile, we are of course working hard to be able to activate the modified insurance feature again, and we hope to roll it out in a patch some time in the next few days.
ps. The next blogpost will really talk about the incoming updates and new features. Promised.
Comments for this post
1 ScilyaStingray
2 Alexander
3 Gaulois
First of all, the insurance return above bot price is extremely important for small corps, as the insurance doesn't cover the modules, and we can't produce them.
I am part of E=Mk2, and I am probably the reason our name was quoted... because I blasted like 20 of our bots surplus to get back some money. (Yes, to get BACK. Because all the materials are purchased on the market. And seriously, you complain because I earned 2-3 millions that way?! Anyone can do that in 2 hours of grind.)
When we blast an Assault, we barely make 150k, which is just enough to repair some T1 modules looted around, and jump back into the fight. That's how we roll, so we don't have to mine all day long in alpha, or slice our wrist over transports missions.
But I can assure you that 98% of our bots are genuinely destroyed in PvP. Just ask... well... everyone else on the server.
So now, Instead of encouraging people to get out and PvP, and still earn enough K to repair and jump back after the bot explode, you want to force us to loose money, and go PvE?
Truly this game has gone in a terribly wrong direction since a few patches.
You already killed most of the PvP, and this is yet another nail on the coffin of small corps.
You should be encouraging small corps, and small scale PvP. Not forcing us to join one of the 3 blobs, or die.
4 Shelts916
5 Lucius Marcellus
6 Alexadar
7 Siddy
8 Gaulois
Bots that costed me close to 900k as all the materials are bought on the market for production. This is a net gain of 150k per bot, which means I earned 2 millions from fraud insurance. Yet, It appears I lost over 20 millions. (All the money I had.)
This feels extremely bitter, and unfair, specially for something that appeared to be a normal game mechanic.
9 Ember
New insurance could link to a basket of minerals (either directly or via a "market health" ratio, much harder to manipulate) There are also lots of great statistical methods for detecting outliers, skewing averages and such might not hurt to wander over to the local college and offer some bright economics student an internship(code word for making students work for almost nothing)
@Gaulois - You should liaison with a friendly corp that has a strong indy base like IRS. I'm sure we can work something out.
10 HereticZero
11 HereticZero
12 Redline
13 Warhawkz
14 Haesung
This would make it much harder to game the system and implement diminishing returns on scale.
15 Shaedys
16 MrJake
17 Jita
18 Smokeyii
19 Whys
If you start naming corporation, then name them all or said nothing.
I am sure some people inside this corporation have nothing to do with this and now have to assume that their are inside of a corporation presumed coupable of using an exploit.
And in the other way some people can have used this exploit and their corpo aren't named here.
I would have prefered to see nothing from who did it or see all the name of all the people involved. Blam all or said nothing.
Corporation reputation are not easy to create and with that you just ruined them.
20 Ashar
21 Immortalmerc
butthurt
22 Immortalmerc
23 Gremrod
24 Whys
I didn't lost anything from this because i didn't use this so called "fraud". But i see my Corp name and i don't see why because corp wallet didn't lost any NIC only some member of the corp lost NIC. That was there action not the corporation act. Why accuse and name a corporation if this corporation didn't do anything.
I would love to see named all the corporation of all the people who used this "fraud", and maybe your corporation will appear to Immortalmerc, and then we will be able to judge you to like a cheater, like all the people do and judge just because their corporation are named.
For what i know as far as your aren't judge guilty you'r innocent, by named corporation and not player you judge all the corporation member for what have done only some of them. Like DEV zoom said "(the frauds were not necessarily executed by the corporations but by their members without the corps' general knowledge)."
But we all know how people read true line and get only what they want to see.
25 Lupus Aurelius
You can not prosecute someone for an activity if it does not violate a law. You cannot claim someone violated a rule or requirement, if no requirement or rule exists to cover that issue. A general rule that could be applied to cover unanticipated situations still has to have some criteria to which it applies. Until you can show such a rule / requirement, you cannot state that anyone violated anything.
WHere is the INTENDED USE defined? Who decides what is intended, and not? And how is that criteria communicated to the players, so they know?
Don't get me wrong, I thought the system was poorly designed and defined, and needed to be changed. However, my issue is with the way it has been handled. To out of the blue accuse people or corps of violating the rules, and summarily issuing judgement/punishement, without discussion or a thorough investigation, is not justice. It is a knee jerk reaction, and to retroactively punish people for lack of the DEVS listening to advice in the past about this issue, and they having stated to several people tht it is working as intended until it is changed, is logically and ethically wrong. Everyone who plays this game needs to understand, that when you allow people to use arbitrary decision, and make accusations, not based on the facts, is not in anyone's interest, regardless how it might or might not benefit someone.
26 Lupus Aurelius
A) Devs put in an insuance system, that had short term(16 days at max skill) life, and payouts that actually allowed you to make significantly more than the actual cost to build the bot.
B) Before the announcement that insurance was being turned off, there was no statement on the forums, in the EULA, in the game description of insurance, no where in game or out that this was designated an exploit or a fraud. People, GMs and Devs, when asked in the past, stated that it is working as intended.
C) Devs were informed, from multiple sources, how this system potentially was "broken", and took no action.
In RL, when you do a Root Cause analysis, you start off with with:
1) What is the issue?
2) What procedure, standard, regulation, etc., that it violates
If you find that there is no regulatory or procedural requirement that the issue violates, you implement corrective action by creating a new requirement to cover the issue. You cannot at that time claim it is a violation of a requirement, only that your system did not anticipate the need for control of something that at the time was not an issue.
There was not exploit or fraud. Because there was no rule / requirement / procedure that it violated. There was no hack, becuase someone did not use out of game mechanics to affect in game performance. The only ones that are at fault here are the Devs, everything else was done according to the at the time published game rules and functionality. Corrective Action at this point would be to declare it an exploit, create a mechanic to prevent it, and publish it in an easily referable source, such as an Exploit Forum or list, and state from this point forward, it is not allowed. To retroactively punish people for something that was not a violation prior to that point is inherently wrong, logically, and ethically.
27 Nujabes
28 Gremrod
29 Ashar
This is a sandbox game afterall, which means we are allowed to do what we like, within the confines of the rules, whats the point if you then change the rules, dont tell anyone, and then punish people for breaking them. Yet another example of the devs driving people away. How about you add some of that cool stuff youve got planned for this game, instead of removing stuff that we actually like.
30 Immortalmerc
31 Immortalmerc
32 Lupus Aurelius
33 GLiMPSE
34 Gulliver
35 Ralph Law
But in my opinion you made few critical mistakes on the issue:
1) You didn't let us know that doing this was wrong. I personally knew people are going to do this due to the nature of sandbox game.
It is expected for players to exploit the market for profit, and they should be applauded for it not punished.
2) You started naming corporations in the blog post, but you didn't name all of them. Now it seems like you wanted to attack against these corporations.
3) Excuses. "Doing this hurts us as much as those affected"
Another words you are afraid you might lose clients.
I'm personally going to continue playing, unless banned for my criticism, and forget about these mistakes made in the customer service.
I believe your intentions were good, just the execution wasn't really done professionally. It's a young game, and we're all learning and making mistakes.
36 Immortalmerc
I didn't lost anything from this because i didn't use this so called "fraud". But i see my Corp name and i don't see why because corp wallet didn't lost any NIC only some member of the corp lost NIC. That was there action not the corporation act. Why accuse and name a corporation if this corporation didn't do anything.
I would love to see named all the corporation of all the people who used this "fraud", and maybe your corporation will appear to Immortalmerc, and then we will be able to judge you to like a cheater, like all the people do and judge just because their corporation are named.
For what i know as far as your aren't judge guilty you'r innocent, by named corporation and not player you judge all the corporation member for what have done only some of them. Like DEV zoom said "(the frauds were not necessarily executed by the corporations but by their members without the corps' general knowledge)."
But we all know how people read true line and get only what they want to see.
Whys my corp name "Roving Guns" would not show my Ceo when he heard of ppl blowing up bots to get their nic back just before the insurance ran out said if they were gonna do that they would have to buy their bots off the market other than out of corp store and in general RG has not blown up any bots for profit
37 Immortalmerc
38 Immortalmerc
39 Raiser
And to all the compainers: Do you really never had a bad feeling or where worried that you are using an exploit? Really really not??
We are playing Agents of Megacorporations. This it no democracy. There is no trial or lawyer, only a scentence.
The upper management is accting in the best interest of all of us. Play/Be fair and have fun. My advice for in-game and real life.
40 Nujabes
41 Deadmeet
Bots that costed me close to 900k as all the materials are bought on the market for production. This is a net gain of 150k per bot, which means I earned 2 millions from fraud insurance. Yet, It appears I lost over 20 millions. (All the money I had.)
This feels extremely bitter, and unfair, specially for something that appeared to be a normal game mechanic."
You tried to fraud.
You lose
Don't complain... consider that as a fine for frauding
42 Deadmeet
If you start naming corporation, then name them all or said nothing.
I am sure some people inside this corporation have nothing to do with this and now have to assume that their are inside of a corporation presumed coupable of using an exploit.
And in the other way some people can have used this exploit and their corpo aren't named here.
I would have prefered to see nothing from who did it or see all the name of all the people involved. Blam all or said nothing.
Corporation reputation are not easy to create and with that you just ruined them.
> This is the role of corporation leader to choose their members and this is their responsability.
So, growth slowly, choose and test your members (instead of publicly recruting everything just to outnumber the enemy) and your corporation name will be preserved. (this is the same in reality, so, to me, it's a good thing).
43 Jelan
On an unrelated note, I work in Customer Relations Management and am available for the right price
44 GLiMPSE
-GLiMPSE™
45 Zirpc
46 Outlaw
47 Lupus Aurelius
Of course, he proceeded to remove that NIC again. Trolls, have your fun, I know the "Umads?" are coming...
People, all of us, the entire customer base, need to be concerned how these issues are dealt with and resolved. When an individual can arbitrarily set a criteria, unpublished, and state that a paying customer violates that criteria, THEN ALL OF US ARE AT RISK!
Anyone of us, ANYONE, can have this applied to them. There needs to be clear definition of what are exploits, communicated in a visible way, and transparent review and resolution process, that assures fair and equitable resolution of issues.
We pay RL money to be here, and at the same time we are the ones that provide the content to make it interesting, that draws more people to this game, and we need to know that issues will be handled objectively, in good faith, and fairly.
WE ARE ALL AT RISK IN THE FUTURE TO THIS BEHAVIOR, EVERYONE OF US, AND WE NEED AS PAYING CUSTOMERS TO KNOW THAT WE WILL BE TREATED EQUITABLY AND IN GOOD FAITH.
48 Dromsex
49 Max La Menace
[02:35:35] <*Someguy*> what your corp gonna do now without the insurance scams :D
[02:42:20] <*Corpmate*> Look at most dangerous agents and **** ****
[02:48:04] <*Someguy*> uhhh
[02:48:11] <*Someguy*> anger issues
[02:48:19] <*Someguy*> i just spoke the truth and you get all mad
[02:49:53] <*Someguy*> its pretty muc hsaid on the forums that ou guys are cheater exploiters of the worst kind
[02:49:58] <*Someguy*> no wonder you where doing so well
[02:51:34] <*Someguy*> also. a **** is a person who isnt fully aware of whats going on around him/her, i thought you should know better than to use words you dont understand
[02:51:53] <*Corpmate*> You just talk without knowing issues ...
[02:52:00] <*Someguy*> how so?
[02:52:26] <*Someguy*> didnt you guys insurance fraud? so your saying the devs are lying?
[02:52:42] <*Corpmate*> this is just because of Dev's stupidity ...
[02:52:56] <*Corpmate*> because I still have all of my NICs
[02:53:34] <*Corpmate*> like most of my corpmates ... only 1 or 2 (or maybe 3 that don't log in anymore) got their NICs to 0 ...
[02:54:06] <*Someguy*> eve had the same problem, the had to nerf it as well
[02:54:12] <*Corpmate*> and ?
[02:54:19] <*Corpmate*> They nominate guys ?
[02:54:24] <*Someguy*> cause of people like you who dosnt understand free markets
[02:54:25] <*Corpmate*> or take back any isk ?
[02:54:39] <*Corpmate*> NO, because they know MMO's rules ...
[02:55:15] <*Someguy*> dude if you can make money like that its bound to destroy the free market, it had to be fixed
[02:55:20] <*Someguy*> wouldnt be fair otherwise
[02:55:33] <*Corpmate*> That's not the problem mate ...
[02:56:20] <*Corpmate*> Even if they take back NICs (in fact, i'm agree with this), YOU never say names ...
[02:56:28] <*Corpmate*> Never nominate
[02:56:50] <*Corpmate*> in a real MMO, you won't see any name in blogs/news ...
[02:57:02] <*Someguy*> except they do here
[02:57:08] <*Someguy*> wich is good... they called ou out
[02:57:11] <*Someguy*> you*
[02:57:16] <*Corpmate*> This is just stupid ...
[02:57:22] <*Someguy*> its brilliant
[02:57:29] <*Someguy*> now everyone knows
[02:58:19] <*Corpmate*> 30 guys corp ... max 4 scammers, make the maths ... you'll see le poor % ...
[02:58:55] <*Corpmate*> and now we all have to handle stupids convo with stupid guys (in fact all exept guys that scammed atm ...)
[02:59:11] <*Corpmate*> so, ty for your contact, play and **** again
[02:59:15] <*Corpmate*> Thank You
[03:00:35] <*Someguy*> ill stop bothering you... but you just soore that you got called out like the cheater scammers that you are
[03:00:46] <*Someguy*> have a good day losers
Happy DEVs ? Great !!!!
(You can check you *****ing logs, I and corpmate still have all of our NICs)
Bunch of noobs trying to do a MMO !
Life long and prosper.
50 Myles Norvid
51 Nujabes
52 dOob
Now everybody know that all my frags are fermis' sequer :'(
53 Dromsex
54 Qatarn
55 Qatarn
56 Raistling
I didn't use assurance problem and I didn't lost ingame money, but I don't agree with the last patch, I don't agree with the fact that they call in public place some corp name. In short, I don't like last changes of this game and the mentality of CMs, and in order to express that, I stop subscription. Byebye
57 Sergent Mac Couille
I think there is a big communication problem, name the scammers (and even then there would have been to violate a law, but in this case I do not know) but why include all the people of a corpo knowing not all are responsible...
That prevent people without common sense begin to insult innocents as the conversation reported above...
And, another thing, why not warn before sanctioning? I find it limits dictatorial, it disappoints me a lot, especially after buying a 6 month subscription ... I hope I do not regret my investment and I amuse myself more than I'll be disappointed in the future.
PS : I'm not concerned, never buy any insurance, that's for people without common sense not begin to insult me...
PPS : Sorry for my bad english...
58 Roader
Le problème, c'est que tout le monde est mis à la même enseigne au sein des corporations avec ce genre d'annonce.
Ce n'est pas bien et ça peut montrer un certain parti pris de la part des dev.
Soit on nomme tous le monde, soit on nomme personne, mais on fait pas un tri sélectif qu'on jette en pâture sur un blog, c'est vraiment déplorable.
On voit le résultat, des mecs qui te font des grands discours moralisateurs en plein jeu... on est là pour s'amuser, pas pour se prendre des trolls.
Au lieu de faire des coups tordus successifs comme ça, moi j'aimerai plutôt voir du contenu... comme par exemple "un système d'assurances" car là on essaye de faire du pvp, mais on croise quasi personne...
J'ai franchement hâte de voir ce que vous allez nous pondre comme système d'assurance... si un jour ça revoit le jour.
59 Roader
I bought a year subscription so I left in the game (and I like the game), I'm not part of the so-called "fraudulent" but the naming of corporations shows amateurism in the dev this area.
The problem is that everyone is put this together in corporations with this type of announcement.
This is not good and it may show some bias on the part of the dev.
Is called all the world, we call someone, but not a selective thrown at pasture on a blog is really deplorable.
We see the result, guys who make you great moralistic in full play .. we're here for fun, not to take trolls.
Instead of successive blows twisted like that, I would rather see my content ... eg "insurance system" because there we try to do pvp, but almost anyone you meet ...
I frankly can not wait to see what you're going to lay like insurance system ... if one day it reviews the day.
60 Lupus Aurelius
61 Warhawkz
62 Lupus Aurelius
63 DEV Zoom
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/19712/#p19712
64 Alandrix
You can spin it any way you want, any adult here can see the bottom line. Acccept your punishemnt or bugger off, but for pity sakes stop whining like a little kid.
65 Jelan