A Look At The Active ISK Delta In August 2024

The monthly economic report (MER) for August covering EVE Online's Tranquility shard dropped last week. Before performing my monthly look at the Active ISK Delta, I need to point out two items of interest included in the release of the MER by CCP itself. The first involves the growth of the money supply.

In August, we observed a significant upward trend in the money supply, reaching 2,190T ISK. By the end of the month, this represented a 1.5% increase compared to the end of July, when the supply was 2,158T ISK.

No commentary from the developers whether the change was good or bad, just that a change had occurred.  The second involves ore introduced back in December 2022.

Last month, we identified several ore types that were missing from the charts and these have since been added:

• Ducinium
• Eifyrium
• Mordunium
• Mutanite
• Ytirium

In fairness, though I think Mutanite was introduced sometime in the first half of 2023.

Already we see a potential issue with the data in the MER. The accompanying article mentions the rise in the money supply rose from 2,158 trillion ISK while the beginning point in the MER is 2,160 trillion ISK. Not a good start, especially after the disclosure of ore missing from the MER for over 18 months.

But the purpose of this post is not to complain about the MER. Instead I want to review the Active ISK Delta.  The Active ISK Delta is the net effect on the New Eden monetary supply of players leaving and returning to the game. The Active ISK Delta also includes any reductions due to any and all GM actions. In July, 35.5 trillion ISK disappeared from the game economy from the movement of players into and out of the game. For the second month in a row, players leaving the game was the biggest ISK sink in the New Eden economy. The drop is much less than July's total of 141.5 trillion ISK. Still, the Active ISK Delta was 88.9% greater than the amount of transaction taxes paid by players in August.

The change in the Active ISK Delta led me to wonder how much of the change was seasonal. Looking back to the beginning of the Alpha/Omega F2P period of EVE history, the average value of the Active ISK Delta was -13.1 trillion ISK in August from 2017 to 2023. The median value of -16.5 trillion ISK over the same period doesn't show too much of a difference. One item of interest is that the Active ISK Delta was positive for 2 of the last 3 Augusts. But still, the value of the Active ISK Delta was smaller than average in August.

Last year the summer slump only lasted two months, August and September. In 2024 will the summer slump also last two months, just in the months of July and August? September has always served as an indicator of player interest in the game. If players come back earlier, the third quarter of 2024 may look better financially for CCP.