The question is, fundamentally, how do you not understand that this statement:
Is nonsense?
It’s not free, the EXACT same amount of cash gets paid to CCP (likely a little more as plex are more expensive than straight subs).
From the botters perspective, someone else is buying the PLEX from CCP. So still free to them - but costing real $ for someone else.
With respect to whether or not they are subsidizing the game why would we look at it from the botter’s perspective instead of from the perspective of CCP’s ledger?
I’ve been playing the game since the beta and somehow i always got invested in high profitable playstyles that got nerved afterwards, because that is what CCP/FC does.
I have made my peace with it. Every 2 years or sometimes faster my playstyle got nerfed into the ground and i had to reinvent myself. Sometimes it also went into circles after a few years and an old playstyle became valuable again. So now i don’t sell my ships and fits anymore, to have them ready if the “weather” changes in a few years again.
What i have learned from it over the long period of time is that i am not angry at all. I learn from it and see it as an opportunity: It keeps the game from getting boring, because it forces you to constantly adapt. I have come to like this!
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What exactly is your question or point here? Other than botters, I don’t think anyone generally disagrees that they’re bad for the game (there are probably more than a few that also sit on the fence and look the other way).
They’re a drain on the game in terms of resources (both internal and external), and I don’t see them subsidizing the game in any way. They’re parasites.
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Asked and answered.
But I don’t think people did it with bad intentions, they are saying the truth.
It’s up to FC to decided who will prevail in the end, if they don’t like single acc players, what can we do?
The sentiment is real, but we can only speak… The game is like 20y old, it’s not an accident.
If you expecting anything more than opinions from this… Well…
Botters and megaboxers are bad for the game from the perspective of ordinary players. However, they do, in fact, subsidize the game. From a financial perspective, botters and megaboxers are good for FC’s bottom line—up to a certain extent.
Recall that (almost) every PLEX is purchased originally for real-world currency, regardless of how it may be traded for ISK before it’s inevitably redeemed. Right or wrong, healthy or not, botters and megaboxers drive demand for PLEX. From a financial perspective, botters and megaboxers redeem PLEX for Omega no differently than any other account. On the FC balance sheet, it all looks the same (black).
So at the end of the day, it benefits FC to keep an optimal number of botters and megaboxers. Too few, and FC loses significant revenue. Too many, and their presence could drive off ordinary players and potentially cause reputational damage (“Don’t bother with EVE, it’s a bot-ridden game”).
Numbers may fluctuate, but because of the financial incentive, don’t expect that botting and megaboxing will ever be removed entirely.
EDIT to add: I’m sure if FC had a choice in the matter, they’d rather the circumstances were different. Having 60k single account players logged on would certainly be healthier for EVE than to have 10k single account players and 50k accounts run by megaboxers and botters.
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It’s a valid point. I’m not sure the % of PLEX botters consume - but it would contribute towards demand for PLEX sales.
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It’s a reasonable estimate that of 25k accounts logged at any given time, 3-6k actual people are playing. Half of those players do run a single account, and the other half is split between those with just a few alts and those running an entire network of bots and spies.
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A number usually floated around is 2.5 characters for every real player online. I’m not sure how accurate it is.
I can’t recall the exact numbers, but it was something like each account (player) had an average of 3-5 characters, and there was something like 75-100k active accounts.
So at any given time, you’re seeing between 25-50% of active players (not alts), ie: 10-15k. This would vary of course by timezone and region.
quite a large extent imho.
But the part I don’t understand is why you think multiboxers are bad for the game. We needn’t concern ourselves with botters, we all know they are bad, and banned by FC, but what harm are multiboxers doing to the average player? I fly with a few, they seem fine.
It was accurate like 8 years ago I think, I don’t think we’ve gotten an updated number. It’s something to ask the Data team at Fanfest this weekend though.
I think the distinction by Hatch Nasty between multiboxers and megaboxers is a good indication where we are at… 
So please everyone: refrain from targeting the multiboxers with your non-liking posts and concentrate more on the megaboxers!
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How many boxes is mega?
More than I’m running. 
It’s subjective, but I think there’s an obvious distinction between someone running two or three accounts and someone running 20+.
Again, multiboxers → fine. Megaboxers are (IMO) a problem.
I think they’re bad because the game wasn’t designed for that level of multiboxing. Many of the systems in EVE (like missions) haven’t significantly changed over the decades. In 2003, running 20 EVE clients would require a pretty huge investment in hardware (and some crazy setup to control all those PCs), so there was a natural constraint over how widespread the practice could be. (EDIT: As a result, the systems weren’t designed to counter or accommodate for it, which was my point.)
These days, running 20+ clients is doable on one or two high-end machines. EVE’s game content doesn’t scale well in terms of difficulty vs fleet size, which places megaboxers (as I’m calling them) at a significant advantage over a small fleet or solo player.
As a result, we’ve seen the playerbase optimize for efficiency, with more and more multiboxers running more and more clients. New players come into the game, see themselves squeezed out of a belt by 20 Hulks (flown by pilots named MinerBob01-20), and they decide they can’t compete, or aren’t willing to invest the time and resources it would take to compete. I’ve seen posts on Reddit from new players dejectedly asking if they have to have alts or even multiple accounts just to play the game. That discourages many would-be capsuleers, which is not healthy for EVE in the long term.
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Aha, yes, and therein lies the problem.
I don’t have much experience with seeing 20 Hulks stripping a belt, but maybe I fly in the wrong areas of space. But I don’t see how it makes any odds if they are flown by one player or 20. I often wonder if the anger comes because the toons have sequential names, and then if it’s more anger at lack of imagination than any damage to gameplay.
I don’t know the stats, but I see a lot of sites, gas, ore, ice, data, relic etc. in a lot of empty systems when I play, I’m sure many of them are cleaned out by the end of the day, but by no means all. If the part of New Eden you are in is full of fleets of 20 Hulks and you wish to mine, then maybe mining somewhere else is a good idea.
When it comes to needing alts to play, the answer is probably yes, whilst there are corps who do all the things in fleets with each player only doing one thing, it becomes much easier if people can do a couple of things, and there are roles which are just too boring to be done by a player. Who wants to be the mid cyno for a fleet, you get to sit in an empty system and light the cyno twice in 2 hours? Who wants to just be eyes, keeping a lookout for potential movement in a system, but likely to just sit there for the duration? Also would you trust a corpmate to be your exit cyno or webber when you’re moving a JF through highsec? There’s some I’d trust, but also I’d not want to have to bother them every time I wanted to move something. If people are put off playing Eve because they don’t want multiple accounts then it’s probably fair, it’s not the game for them.
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I never had any issues with EAC. I play several games that use it. I have heard of players getting banned for playing too well and the program mistakes them for auto-aim bot. But those players are so super rare I could count them on one hand. Also they are elitist snobs, so they probably deserve to be banned like card counters from casinos. 
That was sarcasm. I didn’t think I needed to add “j/k” or “/s” but maybe I did?
I see that all the time. It doesn’t personally affect me, because I’m not much of a miner. But I imagine for miners and aspiring miners, it’s a little annoying. I didn’t mention it specifically, but you also see gank fleets named MurderBob01-20. Same issue, different aspect of the game.
At some time in the past, we reached a tipping point where it became easier to put together your own multibox rig and run 20+ clients yourself than it was to assemble and coordinate a fleet of 20+ players. Once we reached that point, the game becomes a prisoners’ dilemma, where coordinating with others can have benefits, but going it alone is easier. The more multiboxing proliferates, the worse that problem becomes. On a long enough timeline, EVE may become populated by a handful of players all running their own armies of alts and playing the game largely independent of one another.
At this point you basically conflated multiboxing and megaboxing, and since I’ve already said I don’t have a problem with the former, there’s nothing more to say.