Eve Bots - are they a bad thing, is CCP complicit in their use?

Communications Center General Discussion
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Historically, and I’m talking 4 or 5 years back, CCP took a hardline approach to botting and RMT’ing. That approach appears to have ‘diminished’ over time, to the point where it almost appears they take little, if any action at all, towards those that are botting.

The frequency of posts concerning bots ‘ruining peoples game play’ is increasing and all complain of a lack of activity by CCP. Its also worth noting that a number of these are quickly ‘closed’ on the pretence of offering no further useful purpose whilst other posts are allowed to ramble on for days and weeks

If you are not aware, if and when you spot a bot, you are in theory supposed to click their profile and from their dropdown select the report bot feature. However, this feature does not ask for any supporting evidence you may have and it doesn’t provide you with any update at a latter time. Some, including myself, now question does this ‘report’ actually go anywhere and is it really fit for purpose

Recently I had the frustration of dealing with multiple bots within the Jita market - all of which incidentally were Alpha toons … When I initially reported them to CCP at first they wouldn’t act. Months went by with me raising support tickets ‘Shawshank redemption style’ and eventually they did something half baked, namely banned approx. a third of the toons that I had reported. When I queried sorting the remainder I was basically told tickets closed and leave it with us’. A month later and toons in question are all still happily doing their ‘thing’.

I would like to think that CCP has a grand plan for these bots, but as I have been banging on CCP’s door for over 6 months to do anything, and as they still operate up to the present day, I distinctly get the impression I’ve now been fobbed off.

To put it into context, one toon which I reported several times, had what were clearly multiple daily RMT contracts which were worth on average 20 to 30 bill per day. Did CCP ban this client or take any action against them to date, no, nothing. 2 months post me initially reporting them and several tickets later and he still operates daily.

Screen dump of his contract history… and their are pages and pages like this - Contract history

Contract%20History
Contract History.jpg847×717 127 KB

Sample contract

Contract%20Example
Contract Example.jpg757×702 58.7 KB

Its also worth noting I did 20 plus dumps of Jita local over many days and cross referenced them, looking for toons which remained logged in 24/7, consistently throughout the week. It came back with 97 toons which looged in immediately after DT, remained logged in throughout the day / night, and reclogged back in the next day and so on. Might be something, might be nothing.

So, my questions to you are:

Are bots in game actually a bad thing, does any of this really matter?

Are Alpha toons likely to impact on the number of bots?

Do you have any experiences of bots and reporting them to CCP, if so, were you happy with their actions / response?

Do you think CCP are complicit in their use, if so, what have they got to gain from this?

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The answer to your original main question is “yes”. The reason,of course, it adds to their (CCP) bottom line. The next important question to ask is whether they are going to crack down on the bots or is Tranquility going to go off the same cliff the China server did earlier?

So far CCP has failed to have any significant enforcement program in the last 3+ years in regards to bots; I doubt we’ll see any response/action soon from the security group ( who must be down to only a couple of people by now based on CCP’s track record). Combined with RMT transactions, EVE is currently on a steadily increasing slippery slope into oblivion.

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Any stats on how many bots and farmed ISK were removed in recent years?

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At one time CCP would champion their effort to combat the bot/RMT problem with multiple Dev blogs and presentations at Fanfest. Recently (3+ years), CCP has gone silent on the problem and it has become obvious that the raw number of bots/RMTs have exploded. Has CCP thrown in the towel, planning some cunning mass destruction of the offending accounts, or reached accomidation/profit plan with those that do it? No one knows for sure; all we know is that CCP just won’t communicate LIKE THEY USED TO. But ,hey, we got new skins, so all is good I guess.

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It wouldn’t matter if everyone was allowed to use them, if not it’s a huge huge issue especially for a spreadsheet game. (also it’s going to get more and more difficult to catch them with current AI development)

Theoretically yes, and you say you have seen them doing bot activity, no subscription required means unlimited free accounts to work with.

Yes, but not happy with the responses and response to it.

Impo not CCP as a whole, but I do suspect and believe there are people inside CCP who are complicit in their use yes, what they gain from it depends, if they send an application to work at CCP with intensions and to lobby for certain bot enterprises they gain profit from it backdoor.
If they have been blackmailed, what they gain from it is not getting blackmailed. (such as (sensitive) private information shared in public/internet)

It’s easy to get your thread locked, when the topic is derailing out of subject the mod is forced to close it down, and some people know how to get this done, it would be more sufficient to remove posts of individuals which are deconstruction a topic, although this method can also come with its own problems.

Also make sure you’re not talking to much about the market for example, that way it will moved to market section which has somewhat less activity in human interaction.

Anyway props for doing stuff you’re not going to get paid for :+1:

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CCP do care about bots.

Their load profile is higher than that of a normal player.

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Some good points.

Yes, this is definitely about botting / RMT’ing in general, the impact they have on the game and the way CCP manages it (good and bad), not just about bots within the market.

On the back of some posts

Didn’t realise that the Chinese server ‘imploded financially’ due to over inflation brought on by RMT’ing. Can anyone source any articles on this, other than general chit chat on Reddit

Perhaps one of the issues is that of feedback.

If we are told no one is banned for RMT’ing / multiple botting, then regardless of how many are actually banned, are we wrongly perceiving that no one has been banned . Should there be more feedback, stats on the subject? I know when ban figures used to be posted by CCP following purges, it actually felt good to be one of the good guys…

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Hey,

Team Security is still here. I know we’ve been quiet for some time now. We’re going to have a dev-blog out SOON TM, because there sure is a lot to talk about. We’re committed to getting this out by the end of the year.

CCP has banned ~23,000 accounts this year, so we’re not snoozing. There have however been major changes (and increased load) following Ascension, we are making some adjustments as such. More on that later.

Botting is 100% not allowed on TQ. There is no such thing as a good bot to CCP.
I’ve seen a few threads about botting recently on reddit, and it’s clear that there is a demand for more action. In general, you won’t find the security team posting on reddit, although we do lurk around in the shadows…
My message is this: we hear you, and we are working on exciting new ways to catch and ban cheaters.

Please, feel free to email security at ccpgames.com directly with bot reports. This inbox is monitored daily, but we do get a lot of emails - so replies may not be sent depending on the circumstances.

Obligatory policy quotes:
See section 6. A. 3 of our EULA:
You may not use your own or any third-party software, macros or other stored rapid keystrokes or other patterns of play that facilitate acquisition of items, currency, objects, character attributes, rank or status at an accelerated rate when compared with ordinary Game play. You may not rewrite or modify the user interface or otherwise manipulate data in any way to acquire items, currency, objects, character attributes or beneficial actions not actually acquired or achieved in the Game.

https://community.eveonline.com/support/policies/eve-eula-en/

See also our Suspension and Ban policy, section 1. F.
“An immediate permanent ban of an account may result if a player is found to be:
A player has created, distributed or advertised an illegal 3rd party program (i.e. macro or cheat program) that disrupts game mechanics, is considered unfriendly or gives an unfair advantage by misusing game features in a way for which they were not intended.”

Thank you and fly safe out there!

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They Live!!:grinning: Thanks for your post; look forward for more details later.

Keep up the fight!

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Good to hear it.

Make sure to remind people that abusing alpha accounts by using multiple simultaneous logins ain’t kosher. I get the sense that using the simple methods to circumvent the lock-out on multiple logins is becoming normal and accepted behaviour by many segments of the player-base. And this is only going to get worse come December’s changes. It would be a shame to let your silence lead people to think you are turning a blind eye to this only to have you have to ban them at some point in the future.

I guess you know all this though. I’ll stop lecturing you on how to do your job and let you get back to banning the cheaters. :wink:

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Your complaint may have merit, but you need to realize that:

  1. They will NOT give you any additional information, justify themselves to you, or give you access to a bot-detection tool, because to put it bluntly you are a player and enforcing the CCP anti-bot rules is NOT your responsibility. They will never ban 100% of the people you put on a list, because you’ll never have a scenario where you can detect bots with 100% accuracy. Despite appearances.

  2. The rule that prevents them from discussing ban or enforcement details is NOT political or debatable. It’s a “we do not disclose account details or who did what” because of a non-debatable privacy policy. No matter how bad you (think you) make CCP look, they will NOT break a privacy rule to justify themselves or make you feel better about CCP or more confident that they are handling the issue.

So, because of these two reasons, there is no point to discussing your topic. CCP cannot say anything about it, and we players can only rumor-monger or flame, and likely CCP will just have a moderator close the thread with no comment or with a blanket citation of the forum rules.

EDIT: Saw CCP Peligro’s post above.

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How much have been alpha accounts, how many were plexed, and how many were paid by real $?

For example you can give someone the sense of having something under control by deploying decoys.
They throw bots out in the open to give the impression you are able to capture them, while the real deal goes under the radar.
It’s like they send a ship into a port carrying 5 tons of drugs, the same people call the police to tell about, while the security is celebrating this huuuuge catch of the ship, a ship carrying 25 tons passes by into the port, not talking about numbers here but the concept.

Maybe this is not RMT going on, but if it is found it out it actually is, how is it possible this stood so long unnoticed what Mathra is showing here.

Also have you guys considered implementing AI to catch these activities, it will be an eternal cat and mouse game (botting) anyway it’s just a bad thing if those who bot (always) are a step ahead.
Why not open this project to universities where people can experiment security in games for the gaming industry using artificial intelligence with the current revolution in AI lol.

:scream:

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Kill AFK options by making every activity requiring a human brain sitting in front of the PC. This will maybe not catch market bots (as the needed brain power is limited), but all the miner and ratter bots… until AI can fully simulate a human player.

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@ Memphis Baas I agree with what you typed in part but…

I’m not saying their existing policy is right or wrong. What I’m saying is its good to revisit policies and procedures from time to time and rather saying we do this because we do, to say, is it still fit for purpose and has it kept track with current times and can we do anything better.

Nor am I asking them to disclose anyone’s private details or breach privacy in any form. Another poster made mention of stats that CCP used to post around RMT’ing, bans, isk seized etc. I just commented that I remembered the reports and reintroducing them may bring some confidence back into the game around enforcement, which may be currently lacking? Likewise, if you spend multiple bill and many hours gathering evidence on a botting / RMT operation, making test purchases, tracking and linking contract / employment histories etc then spend several hours writing it all up on an email only to submit it and then never hear anything again, not even a thankyou, is that good service / policy?

@CCP Peligro - Thankyou for taking time to post within this topic, its appreciated. Its good to hear that team security is still alive and kicking and swinging the ban hammer as and when required. Trust me when I say 99% of Eve is in your corner and routing for you. Its also good to hear you have plans, that a Dev blog is due out on the subject and that you acknowledge the ‘demand for more action’

But… During the interim, whilst we are waiting for all the aforementioned, please understand that what many of us appear to be seeing is an increase in blatant botting on an industrial scale across the markets, FW, null sec and mining, with little effort by their operators to actually hide it, thus demonstrating a clear lack of concern around getting caught… which in turn appears to be fuelled by a lack of action as and when ‘suspected’ bots are reported by the common player (ie the market bots which I have experienced first hand operate 24/7, with basic botting ‘rules’ and have blatant RMT contract histories… and yet having reported them they still operate weeks / months later…

That said, others may have had different, more positive experiences, which in part was the purpose of this thread.

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Well, a dev has answered, so I’m going to bow out.

I’ll say, though, that to me this looks like standard policy for the gaming genre, not any different from other MMO’s I’ve played. We love to get invested in a game, feel like we own part of it, but ultimately we don’t. A “thank you” would be nice, but realize that if they thank you, they’ll also have to thank everyone who submits bug reports, who helps them troubleshoot things on the test servers, etc. There are many contributors and many ways to contribute, and they’d have to hire a whole department to write thank you notes 23/7.

So, after a while, you become a bitter vet and get used to the complete silence and lack of response that’s part of the bug reporting system and the bot reporting system. (The same frustration happens with bugs; OMG I submitted a major bug report, with pictures and step-by-step instructions, and 3 patches later they haven’t fixed it!!! And no response to the bug ticket, just silence!!!)

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Most mmo games are infested with bots tho, they always have to swipe the banhammer through the servers again and again.

Why not include they have to use their keyboard all day long, have you any idea how tiresome that is?
And no, I’m not saying here they have to say thank you to everyone, but the way you form you arguments like that is soon people would be getting tired of being alive 24/7.
But you can always twist concepts in someway it always makes sense yes :smirk::grin:

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The way I form arguments. Well, how do you or the OP know that they never thank anyone? They could thank some people, like you say, but just not YOU or ME or Mathra. Or anyone in this forum. So first we accuse that they never reply (false) and then you want more replies with more info. Because what are those keyboards for?

They must use their keyboards, like the movies where the main character asks “put up that video footage on the main screen, and zoom into this corner and enhance” and they start typing furiously at 120 words-per-minute.

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And that’s exactly why I asked for peoples feedback at the start of this thread, to try and establish what exactly was the case and if there was room for improvement / need for change

Just for info, if you put an email in straight to team security you receive nothing, not even an automated reply saying thankyou, received and will be allocated - Don’t you think having taken the time to submit a mail the least you would expect was an automated mail saying that they had received it. You could even go one step further and say if they have time to read it they have time to respond in person but that’s another argument,. for the time being lets just stick to the automated reply

Equally, if you put a support ticket in there’s no dedicated dropdown for bots / RMT so you go with rules etc. Then you get a response saying received, forwarded to team security and next time use bot function… then you hear nothing and the bots continue so you again wonder if it was actually received by team security or its fallen between the cracks, also you wonder how can you use bot function next time when there is additional information you think they need and the bot function doesn’t permit this - again, wouldn’t it be simple to have a drop down in the support tickets for Bots / RMT, that the ticket goes straight to them and an automated thankyou saying received at team security, thanks, will action.

And why encourage emails, support tickets and bot function report, why not make it policy that the one route only is used and make it fit for purpose and have it going straight to team security with an automated reply on submission.

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speaking of which, look what I just received:

image

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Ok, so you want automated read receipts. Not a big deal to set up. SWTOR has them, and the complaints move from “it’s total silence, would be nice to get a read receipt” to “I get this automated response all the time and it’s annoying and they’re still not doing anything about it.”

And also, before we get too angry here, I’m just a player, what I type is just an opinion, and the only thing that matters is that your stuff is all here for CCP to read and make a decision about. And we’re giving them a clue about how passionately we feel about it, too.

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