CCP banned over 1800 EVE Online botters in January alone

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to EVE Online over the past few months, you know that the playerbase’s anger over the botting problem in the game – which has been a factor for much longer than the past few months – is reaching a fever pitch. Last week, CCP Peligro vowed CCP was “coming for the bots” and told players not to take his word for it, to “just wait and see.”

Now CCP’s Team Security is trying to make good on that promise. A new dev blog out today claims that CCP banned over 1800 accounts in January for botting – mostly mining bots, followed by ratting bots. A third of those were repeat offenders receiving permanent bans, while the rest were merely temp-banned. In March, the botting policy will be updated to inflict a mandatory 3-day temporary ban on the first offense, with permabans on the second.

The team has requested help from the playerbase and outlines the steps for reporting botters (start in the character info window). CCP further warns that RMT and account hacking is on the rise since the lucrative skill trading patch that made accounts themselves much more valuable (since they can steal your skill points, not just your stuff).

“At this point, most of the ISK and other stuff sold on the shady RMT sites out there comes straight from other players’ hijacked accounts,” CCP laments. And yes, there are recommendations for how to keep your account safe too.