Chicken Little's Open Letter to EU

[Shadowsong]

Whenever there is a discussion around the sustainability of EU, one of the arguments put forth by those who believe EU will never crash is the following:

"Massive withdrawals cannot hurt EU, because somebody else had to deposit to buy the skills/gear/whatever, so money comes in to replace the money leaving"

Until two days ago, that argument was difficult to refute. Now consider what has happened during the "ongoing exploit investigation", during which numerous accounts were temporarily locked.

To the best of our knowledge, this "exploit" resulted in an account or accounts, being credited with amounts in excess of the actual deposits made. These "surplus funds" (or imaginary funds, if you like) were then apparently spent in a high-end shopping spree, purchasing numerous expensive items, from skill implants to armour.

So far, not a single avatar has reported that any of these transactions has been reversed. The items and skills are gone, and the ped remain. The totally imaginary, undeposited, fake peds have suddenly become very real, and are available for withdrawal. As far as we know.

So we have a situation where an unkown number of ped can be withdrawn as dollars, without the requisite influx of dollars to balance the system. Where does that leave us? Can we be as confident in the sustainability of this universe as we thought, when we have such a clear example that one of the building blocks of this confidence may be flawed?

Now before you all yell that it's an exceptional case, very rare, and that MA dealt with it swiftly, let me say this very clearly :
I AGREE WITH ALL OF THOSE THINGS.

HOWEVER.
I do not believe that MA has dealt with it correctly.

If the imaginary peds are allowed to remain in EU as real cash, and we have no indication of whether the items will remain in circulation - (remember, they were bought with imaginary peds, so even their TT value is 100% profit to whoever has them, but they have no value to MA as input into the system) - then we must acknowledge that the universe has been unbalanced. Only MA can know by how much, and only MA can tell us how the balance is to be restored, without effectively punishing the NON-EXPLOITING players through reduced loot, increased bug decays and other loss-inducing mechanisms. Oh, and those are quite prevalent at the moment.

I think this is damaging EU far more than many would like to admit. One of my mates described this as yet another "take more" VU, and I'm worried he may be right.

So, feel free to preface your responses with the usual chorus of "the sky is falling", but understand that there are a number of people who are very concerned about how this is resolved.

[Rayne Jade]

Originally Posted by Shadowsong

...Now consider what has happened during the "ongoing exploit investigation", during which numerous accounts were temporarily locked...

Please tell me more about this part... did I miss a thread stating (confirming) there is such an investigation?

EDIT: Disregard.... I think I found it

[J. Mandrake]

Hmmm... so who is locking these accounts, MA or some hackers? It would be helpful to my post if I knew the specs of the problem, I guess.

[Norbert]

Good post Shadowsong


Firstly I don't believe the locks and the quite alarming bugs are related (see link below).

Warning!!!! Missing Loot!

I think this is just bad timing and the bugs becoming known at the same time, but really i believe MA should post something about these serious issues - but thats another subject..

As for the fake ped in circulation we can only hope that the amount involved is not huge, and that MA can input an amount of revenue to maintain the balance of the economy. I'm fairly sure that if a huge amount was involved that transactions would have been tracked and undone - presuming that it was caught in time.

again good post - is late here in UK, I'll sleep on it and have a think.

[Badger]

it would be worrying if it was a common occurrence on a mass scale. However, this is an isolated incident and probably very unlikely to happen again given its severity. The sky is NOT falling

[DanielleYourMom]

I just think the items should be returned to their rightful owners - to be resold at a later date.

Don't care much for the idea of these imaginary peds in the equation.

Good post Shadow

[Shadowsong]

Originally Posted by Badger

it would be worrying if it was a common occurrence on a mass scale. However, this is an isolated incident and probably very unlikely to happen again given its severity. The sky is NOT falling

The thing that concerns me is that we do not now how severe this incident was, and it is unlikely that we will. Call me a pessimist, but I am hugely mistrustful of anyone who conceals the extent of a problem, because it generally indicates that it is larger than meets the eye.

I also do not believe in unsinkable ships. If it can float, it can sink.

[Rumsponge]

As I understand your post and other threads on EF,

-Someone managed to "deposit" non-existant money and MA gave them PEDs for it.

-Said person(S) then purchased a bunch of high-dollar items with their ill-gotten PEDs.

-MA found out about it and reclaimed said items from the alleged perpetrators.

Am I correct so far?

If so, someone essentially forced MA to buy a bunch of items which were then removed from circulation. The original owners were paid, MA has the items which they can put back into circulation through loot drops or simply retire from the game.

There seems to be no net change aside from the fact that item prices may actually go up in price because of all of this stupidity. And, if you are concerned about MA's losses, consider that their operational budget must be on the scale of $100k to $1 million per week, so I seriously doubt this will make a dent.

...unless it has been going on for much longer than it seems.

[Rayne Jade]

We may never know exactly what happened... and I would actually be surprised if we did know the whole story. Basic principles of an investigation are that you do not reveal all the aspects of the "crime", nor do you recite the specifics of how it was done. Especially true when the investigation in happening. By revealing all, this just informs people how the bad guys were caught and will quickly turn into a lesson on what "not to do" - meaning it turns into how to succeed next time.

MA's reaction seemed harsh, but I understand their point of view. If there is/are bogus PED floating around in the RCE it up to them to clean it up. It is THEIR universe after all. It is basically the same as paying for a Big Mac at the McDonald's drive thru window with a counterfeit $20 bill. If it is detected, you are out $20... it is not up to McDonald's to replace your bogus bill... same at your bank.

The good of the "whole" outweighed the good of the few this time. If an exploit regarding depositing went unchecked the entire RCE would be in danger and the results much worse than a few players being locked out for a few days (if it was even that long...)

In hindsight, I would rather be questioned in a murder investigation and CLEARED as opposed to dragging a cloud of suspicion around. Best thing might be to take note of those NOT cleared

Very happy for those that are cleared and are now unlocked. Best of luck!

[AlphaGeek]

Interesting theory, Shadowsong.

My guess is if that is what happened, that a large amount of PEDs were introduced to the in-game economy without RL funds behind them, then the balancing manager would simply squeeze the loot a bit harder till the balance sheet returns to what the MA beancounters consider nominal.

Without some statement from MA, we'd be none the wiser, save for the subjective "getting even less loot" feeling... and such a statement from MA would be bad press. As such, an announcement like that would never see the light of day.

AG