Last week, we reported on a situation brewing on the EVE Online subreddit, where player after player spoke out about the game’s botting problem, exacerbated by a recent post about a specific botter corp leaving expensive capital ships where other players could easily take them out.
Seeking a statement on the botting situation, we reached out to CCP, whose CCP Falcon posted a response to our article on Reddit.
“[Botting is] to the detriment of the game and it needs to be stamped out,” he says. “It’s garbage behavior, it’s against the rules, and it’s something that has a magnified effect in EVE because of the single shard nature of the game, the economy, and the fact that everything on the market is player built or sourced.” Specifically, he dismissed the idea that CCP generates revenue from botters. That said, he also believes CCP has more work to do on the problem.
“Are we doing enough at this stage to combat it? No, I don’t think we are, despite the fact that our Security Team are doing a rock solid job and are working flat out to combat these kinds of issues. I also don’t think it’s acceptable that it’s making our pilots feel like their efforts are diminished, and neither do our security guys. We discussed this both internally and with the CSM today over the course of several sessions, given that it’s a recurring theme that keeps coming up. We’re looking to change things in the coming weeks and months, and to see some more concrete action on RMT and botting.”
Falcon also says that the studio has this weekend “taken out just under a thousand accounts that were complicit in botting.”
A representative for CCP also pointed MOP to a developer post from October, in which the security team announced it had banned 23,000 in 2017 up to that point, at least some of whom were botters. The restructure apparently delayed the studio’s plans to continue publicly addressing the problem, but the rep told us that “CCP recognizes this problem and is committed to doing more about it” and promised more official dialogue soon.
