A Different View Of The EVE Economy

With EVE Fanfest starting tomorrow I'd like to go back to last Friday's dev blog and address a point.

Let’s talk PLEX - the primary currency of the NES, the backbone of player-driven trading, and, for many, a long-term investment vehicle. It’s no secret that PLEX plays multiple roles in EVE, and right now, those roles are colliding in ways that we believe deserve both attention and action.

I was a little surprised to find out PLEX is the backbone of player-driven trading. Either I'm way out of touch or the development staff speaks a different language than I do. I suspect the latter.

To me, EVE Online has a player driven economy so naturally all trading is player driven. And quite frankly I suspect that most players do not use PLEX to purchase ISK to buy ships, modules, and ammunition. But that is the non-RMT economy. I highly suspect the author of the dev blog was referring to the sale of RMT tokens and items from the cash shop.

Back in August 2019 I decided to take a look at the split between the value of non-RMT items vs items acquired with real life money like PLEX, skill injectors, and SKINs. Six years ago the breakdown was 50.9% to 49.1% in favor of the traditional game economy, although the null sec blackout was in effect. With all the changes that occurred starting in 2022 the ratio is probably reversed. If the ISK velocity data is any indication, the percentage of the economy consisting purely from PLEX sales I imagine is still running around 20-25%.

In context, of course the phrase was describing transactions involving the New Eden Store. After all, the title of the article was "Evolving the NES: Mastery Packs, Expert Systems, and a Smarter PLEX Economy". 

Still, I was a little surprised at the wording. Normally players can ignore how much of the economy consists of RMT tokens. I really didn't expect CCP would come out and remind people of reality, especially right before Fanfest.