I have been running a private player run bounty service for 9 years give or take between a select group of corps. Unfortunately for the last couple of years we’ve seen more and more of our hunter contacts leave the game and go on to other things, so much so that we’ve had to start making our new bounties open to the public. We’ve yet to see anybody make a claim against these bounties.
We’re looking to rebuild our network of active hunters who are looking to hunt down and claim bounties. Currently we just want to see these bounties claimed and start seeing some turnover on the public end of things. (We do hold other bounties but as part of the agreement to go public these bounties which were placed before we did so remain restricted to our private network. If you’re looking to place a bounty please see the link below for our terms and fees).
We have have also set up a mailing list where bounty changes will be posted and a public channel (which we will not be monitoring) for bounty hunters to socialise, share intel and band together. Please bear in mind that this is a completely open channel so we accept no responsibility for any spies in there or losses you sustain by using the channel and we probably won’t be placing bounties in this channel and we will never post bounties through anybody outside of the corp so please treat any such claims as a scam. We’re currently in discussion with our current private network members to grant access to those bounties to any hunters who prove valuable in fulfilling public bounties.
To encourage business we are currently offering to pay out an additional 5% on the first few claims made against our current bounties if the claimant posts verification they received their bounty. If you qualify for this additional payment you will be informed once your bounty claim has been processed.
Whilst our bounties have payout thresholds these are set by the person who places the bounty and the thresholds we recommend (2x / 50%) are much better than the inbuilt bounty system (20%).
So if you’re a bounty hunter check out our bounties (and the claim terms) and join our public mailing list to stay up to date on our latest bounties. If you have any questions please feel free to mail me in game, you may of course ask them here but I check the forums less than my eve mail. If you have any suggestions for expanding our services we would be interested in hearing them.
Why is it that gankers are so terrified of competition from others that you have to spread deceit and ill will?
I have my doubts that you genuinely think this is a scam and just want to try to dissuade people from actually fighting back. And if you genuinely do think this is a scam then you’re not very smart. Sure, lets burn a character and corp I’ve invested 9 years into and all those connections that I’ve forged to do what exactly? We’re not even asking people to place bounties in this thread, we’re seeking hunters to claim the ones people have already placed. It’s not my money, I’ve already been paid my share to do the admin on these things. I just think it looks bad if they’re sitting around unclaimed.
Ha, little do you know that powerful nullsec friends™ of mine have been playing since 2003 and have infiltrated your make-believe organization. I have screenshots which unfortunately I cannot reveal so as not to burn a secret society that has influenced EVE for the past 15 years. Overall they do not mind that you are trying to trick the incompetent out of their ISK, but they agree with me that it would be better if you restrict your scam threads to the Service or WTS subforums and your recruitment to the recruitment forum.
If you think you have any tales actually worthy of the Crime & Punishment forum you can leave them with the court scribe and he will process them as appropriate.
To anybody else, simple fact is we’re not asking for any isk from you. We’re not even asking you to go out of your way to kill people. We’re not trying to recruit you into our corp (we’re a broker not a bounty hunting corp). But if you’re a bounty hunter and you get a kill valid to claim one of these bounties send me a mail (make sure to read the instructons under how to claim a bounty) and you’ll see for yourself whether this is a scam or not. It will cost you about 30 seconds of your time to submit a claim.
It makes me sad to think that your patron only has 1.5 bill to place on the mighty CODE. alliance. Salty, but not too salty I guess. I don’t think this sum would be enough to motivate carebears or “bounty hunters” (if they even exist).
Just seems like a “meh…” amount you know.
How many payouts have you made so far? I’m not trolling just genuine curiosity.
We’ve had no payouts on the public bounties else we would update the pools. We knew it would be a struggle to go public because, well, we all know Eve’s chequered history with holding corps and that is going to be difficult to get around. The reason we went public was because of our shrinking pool of bounty hunter contacts due to people leaving the game and one of our established clients asked if we’d consider taking their bounty public because it was going unfulfilled.
The CODE. bounty was a member of the public so I can’t speak to their resources to place a higher bounty or what provoked the bounty. It may be a meh amount to you and potential bounty hunters but it’s not for me to tell them how much to place. The only thing I really advise people on is keeping the threshold around 1.5x to 2x. Set the threshold too high and you may as well just place the bounty on the inbuilt system. I don’t like the bounties sitting unclaimed but at the end of the day I’ve already taken my cut so if it sits forever in the bounty pool wallet division it’s not real loss to me.
I’m not a bounty hunter, I have other things I’d rather do with my time that I consider more fun. Nor do I even place any bounties. I just broker the bounties and charge for the time I spend sifting through my eve mail then validating the kill.
There was never any recruitment. It was more of a friends, corp mates and friends of corp mates all sitting around talking about how the bounty system was terrible and I as a passing joke said “I’ll hold the bounty on my alt, but it will cost you 10%” and then it kind of grew from there. It was always just a thing between people I knew but after 9 years most of the pvpers have moved on and the indies have stuck around. Not that I’m saying the bounties mostly came from indy players, the pvpers placed their fair share too because they didn’t want to waste time hunting them down when they could be doing other fun stuff but yeah. But most of the people who used actively hunt to claim the bounties no longer play. And those that still play are either in small corps (so they can’t take down structures) or in corps they have no real power in (so they can’t war-dec to take down a structure). Which is why the first public bounty was a structure one, the reasoning being that if someone is already at war with that corp they may have some incentive toactively hunt down the structure. Truth is we actively had people hunting for it and they just coudln’t find it.
So yeah, no recruitment, just friends/corp mates of friends/corp mates who all slowly drifted away from the game.
I have no desire to lead some sort of bounty hunting initiative or even manage a corp and the recruitment. I’ve done that in the past and corp recruitment and member retention just felt like a huge headache. If uniting into one corp was something they wanted to do I’m sure they would have done it already. Most of them just do the bounty hunting thing when nothing else is going on or if their corp is at war with the target’s corp anyway. Most of the people into full time bounty hunting are the ones that left (probably not a coincidence since CCP has always tried to sell the bounty hunting thing as a viable profession but given very few tools to actually make it so). Hence why we’re having issues with bounty fulfilments.
My total desire to be involved in bounty hunting is to log in to check my wallet and evemail, looking up the kill and cross referencing my notes to make sure that someone hasn’t already claimed for that kill and updating the mailing lists (and now forum posts). This is time that is taken away from doing other things I find more fun hence why I take a commission for this service. That commission helps me pay to do things that I find enjoyable without having to grind things I find less enjoyable, which is why I don’t mind doing it. But I’ve no interest in leading the actual hunt.
Way to quote things out of context to try to fit your narrative. That first one is partially my fault. I should probably have stated that we’ve had no claims against the public bounties rather than saying payouts. But still, if I was trying to scam people surely it would be better to tell them “Oh I’ve paid out to many people” than being honest and saying nobody?
Yes, I check my wallet. How else would I know if somebody has placed a bounty? Because checking to see if somebody has put money into the account is a stupid thing to do when you’re running a brokering service. Of course. How silly of me. That just proves it’s a scam!
No, you’re right. Maybe some of the people I have worked with in the past may post here, but then of course that wouldn’t be proof would it? They’d just be claimed to be my alt. But once again I’ll be clear. This thread is not seeking people to place bounties with us, it’s seeking bounty hunters who would be interested in claiming them. Not a very smart scam if I’m throwing money at people.
I can also see the next proof of scam. Someone killing someone in their own alliance for the bounty then trying to claim we wouldn’t pay out to them. Read the fine print people, we try to safeguard against such fraudulent claims (though make no guarantees against it).
There would be much easier scams to do. It would be a lot less effort to ctrl + v spam Jita and I wouldn’t be offering up 2bil out of the corp wallet without anything in return. So lets just think about this for a moment shall we? What will make me more isk?
Option 1:
I could burn a 9 year old alt. Even if I used it for nothing other than to sit there that’s still a huge price as anybody can look at the character’s birth date and see how old it is and see how long I’ve been around.
I could payout 2bil in the hopes that someone places a bounty with me in excess of 2bil. (Bear in mind the minimum standard bounty is 500mil).
I can scam them and get that money, they come straight back here and post screenshots showing the scam. Boom I’ve made a little profit for a lot of effort, a lot of isk and a 9 year old character.
Option 2:
I can carry on doing what I have been doing for 9 years, earn 10% on standard bounties and 35% on pool bounties. Do you have any idea how much isk that is over 9 years? No? Me neither but I’ve never had to grind missions for anything but standing, I know that much.
I could go back to my hunter contacts and ask them to post but people would just claim they’re alts. I’m not going to ask the people who place the bounties to post because half the point of the service is to offer anonymity to avoid retribution. So yes, sure, this could be a scam. But there are MUCH easier ways to scam people with a LOT less risk to the scammer’s wallet. If I expend this much isk (which in reality I’m not spending any of my own isk on these bounties but if it were a scam it would be my isk is my point) and this much effort on a scam then I’m an idiot who is only scamming time and isk away from myself when I could be making hundreds of times what I would make in a one off scam by actually offering a legitimate service.
Hej, if you are trying to make a legitimate business, then you go get’em tiger.
Resistance and doubt is a pretty obvious initial reaction in eve. Who knows… Maybe over the next 9 years, you’ll have built up enough trust to even compete with Chribba in his heyday.
