Illicit Real Money Trading In EVE Online's Alpha State

One of the truisms of MMORPGs is if a game introduces a free-to-play element, gold sellers will come to try to make a profit. EVE Online is no exception. The illicit RMT markets exploded as ISK sellers tried to keep up with the increased demand that began with the launch of the Ascension expansion on 15 November 2016.

Once again I will use information collected from Player Auctions, a site that hosts virtual currency sellers for many games. I record the transactions on the site as best as I can and even post tears when CCP catches the buyers. While not making up the majority of sales on the secondary RMT market, the site is still substantial enough to give some idea of the trends among the ISK sellers.

In the first three months of 2017, sales boomed on the illicit markets for ISK and skill injectors. The U.S. dollar value of sales increased almost 83% from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017. The below graph breaks down the sales by month instead of by quarter.

Notice the contribution of skill injectors to the gross sales numbers on the secondary market? I don't believe the love of skill injectors is just confined to the buyers on PA. Players who roam from one F2P experience to the next are noted for wanting to level up quickly, which is why most cash shops offer experience point boosts. In EVE, the only experience boost available is the skill injector.

The above chart shows the steady growth of skill injector sales while the sale of ISK is relatively seasonal. Even with the introduction of the alpha clone F2P system, ISK sales on PA rose less than 10% in Q1 2017 compared to Q1 2016. The big difference was skill injector sales. In the first three months of 2017, the number of skill injectors sold exceeded the number of billions of ISK sold. While ISK still brings in more money, I think skill injectors have supplanted PLEX as the second biggest thing sold.

One of the reasons for making the post now instead of earlier is that everything in this post may become outdated. One week from today the changes to PLEX and the cash shop go live. I am eager to see the effect of the new PLEX on the market. I also want to see if the change will also bring about more people getting caught buying the item on the black market. People tend to want to purchase the new shiny and I suspect PLEX are a little easier to track than other virtual objects and currency.