Comparing The October 2023 Monthly Economic Report To A Year Ago

As we approach the launch of EVE Online's Havoc expansion next week, I have looked back to see how well returning to the 2 expansions per year release cadence has affected player activity. On Friday I looked at player activity, both flying around in space and shooting ships, both NPCs and other players. With CCP releasing the October Monthly Economic Report, I thought I should add economic activity to my review of the last 12 months as well.

I posted last month I would not be surprised if the Active ISK Delta was positive in October. The Active ISK Delta is the amount of ISK added to the economy by players returning to the game minus the amount withdrawn from the game by players not logging in for 30 days. A negative Active ISK Delta of only -3 trillion ISK indicated players were sticking around the game.

Last week I noted that the number of average concurrent users for last month was around 25% greater than in October 2022. All things being equal, the major ISK faucets and sinks should have also increased by the same amount.

8 major ISK faucets

Looking at the major ISK faucets in EVE, 7 out of 8 saw year-over-year increases. Only payouts to Sansha incursion runners fell. All other categories rose, with commodities (28.4%), bounties (62.1%), ESS bank (70.2%), insurance (54.2%), and pirate FOB (162.5%) all rising by over 25%. The insurance payout is instructive on determining whether more people play EVE now compared to October 2022. Have insurance payouts increased that much? Or are more ships blowing up requiring reimbursement to players? Below is a year-over-year look at player and NPC deaths in New Eden.

Source: Dotlan Maps

The ISK sinks are perhaps even more telling. All 8 categories of ISK sinks increased by over 30%.

8 major ISK sinks

I am open to the argument that CCP instituted game changes that raised taxes and fees. In fact, taxes did increase in the Viridian expansion, but in my opinion not enough to account for the increased amount of the ISK sinks. Unless I am missing massive inflation in the non-PLEX portion of the economy, I think increased activity by players accounts for the increased flow of ISK out of the game.

Unless CCP returns to its practice of EVE's first 10 years of disclosing subscription numbers, those of us on the outside won't know for sure about the number of players in New Eden. But I think by all observable measures, the number of players in EVE Online has increased since the return to the two expansions per year release cadence.