How did Old Casinos Work?

Communications Center General Discussion
1

There was a time in EVE’s history when there were casinos which were not excluded in the EULA. Players would send money to a casino corp, they would play on a different site, and then if they won they would be given ISK, if they lose the casino keeps the winnings.

If everyone is honest, the players scratch their risk taking itch (If you want risk, why not try solo PVP instead of blobbing into gangs? But whatever, I guess people like roulette or cards of whatever). The casinos get ISK.

The problem is asking random people on the internet to be honest has a much lower success rate than asking random strangers you meet face to face to be honest. I can see this system was ripe for abuse.

First of all, I doubt European regulators would check these sites like they do with regular gambling sites. So the house would be free to lie about the odds. And that’s on the low end of the abuse of this system.

Even before I finished reading the article which described why CCP changed the EULA to ban them, I already guessed casinos would probably be used for real money trade. A player could bribe a casino to make sure his character won and boom, illegal RMT right here, and totally undetractable.

On top of this, there doesn’t seem an obvious way to combat the abuse other than not allowing the practice altogether. CCP would only have information on the game side of things, they don’t control the gambling sites. To be it’s no surprise they eventually put their foot down on this practice. Oh and seeing Valve find out CS GO was involved in money laundering also probably made their decision easier.

That does leaves me with some questions. The first is, why did CCP think it was OK at first? The fact that they didn’t ban it immediately suggest to me they thought they could prevent RMT without banning the casinos.

Another is that apparently before they had enough, they actually banned some casinos for the practice of RMT. They were essentially playing wack a mole. But how did they even wack a first mole? With information only on the game side and everything else out of their control, it seems to me the devs would have little information and this would be untraceable. CCP eventually got tired of the wack a mole game and banned the practice, probably for the better since the game of wack a mole couldn’t be won.

So to recap on questions:
Before the practice was banned why did CCP think they could allow it while still preventing RMT abuse?
How did they catch anyone at all if the gambling sites were out of their control?

2

The player driven casinos were better than the hypernet because the house didn’t participate with a 50% chance to win. CCP made gambling scammy while player made gambles were fair and those that weren’t people simply didn’t use. I personally know some gambling sites were legit because I participated in them and participation could have been as little as 1 million isk. I was upset when they made them against ToS too. I actually made more winnings than loss but from seeing the hypernet full of half the nodes being taken by the house shows how illegitimate it is. The house for the player run stuff didn’t gamble in their own lotteries and were more legitimate than hypernet.

3

I’m willing to bet while some casinos were clean, the system had abuse potential. I mean CCP actually caught a few of them involved in RMT red handed… which to me seems impossible given that they shouldn’t have the information to find out.

4

Punishing people over fears is one of the best ways to take an arrow to the knee.

5

The only way to find out how the casinos really worked in detail, is to get someone who operated a casino to give you a honest behind the scenes explanation.

One thing you can be sure of, is that the odds are never good for the gambler. For a bunch of super nerds, EVE players can be surprisingly stupid, so there is ISK to be made for the House.

6

“Check, check. Promo.”

You get it or don’t. I’m not explaining. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Yeah that’s kind of obvious, but many people whose co-workers think they are geniuses do go to real life casinos (and they know casinos are in it for a profit), so I guess people specialize in what they’re competent at.

8

Gambles are easy fair to hold. You have a pool with prizes divided into tiers and upfront tell them house keeps 5% or 1% of the pool for providing the service.

So say a ticket costs 1 million, for every ticket sold the house will keep 10k isk or 1 %. It’s modest honestly but would get them wealthy quickly. Allow people to purchase up to 1000 tickets and viola, the rich among the player base will gamble large and fill your pockets with millions. Newer players could participate and lose low sums of isk but when someone wants to hedge their odds against the competition and maxes out the 1000 ticket limit he just made you 10 mil isk.

9

Im so old i remember the casinos in the game ultima III :smirk:

I think its a great idea for any mmo

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