A Look At The Active ISK Delta For April 2025

On Friday CCP Games released the April Monthly Economic Report (MER) for EVE Online. As this post will look at a major influence on the New Eden money supply I want to take a quick look at the developers' main takeaways from last month's MER.

• The daily average mining value saw a slight decline of 2.5%, following higher activity levels in March.
  
• Null Sec mining activity appears to have stabilized at 56% of total mining value, potentially establishing a new baseline share—up from around 50% observed over the past few months.
• Increased player activity during Capsuleer Day contributed to a positive active ISK delta.
• The rise in Sleeper Components faucets is linked to the Capsuleer Day-themed item Sleeper Protocol Subverter.
• A notable spike in ISK velocity was observed, primarily driven by transactions related to skill training items.
• The Mineral Price Index (MPI) has decreased by 6.9% since March.
• Module prices dropped by 1.6%, while ship prices declined by 2.7% compared to March.
• A new ore type, Tyranite, has been introduced and is now included in mining reports.

The Capsuleer Day events saw a peak daily average concurrent users hit over 24,000 in the middle of April according to Jester's ACU graph. As noted, the event affected the month's Active ISK Delta.

The Active ISK Delta is the net effect on the money supply of players leaving and returning to the game, including all GM actions. In April, the Active ISK Delta went from the 2nd biggest ISK sink in March to the game's third largest ISK faucet in April. For the second time over the last 7 years the economy recorded a positive Active ISK Delta, this year at 1.4% of the month's starting money supply.

I didn't have data for April 2018 so the historical average Active ISK Delta in the chart above only covers the years 2019-2024. For the second month in a row, the Active ISK Delta percentage of the money supply was greater than the historical average. Last month's 1.4% increase to the money supply due to player movement is greater than the average decrease of 1.3%.

I'm sure CCP would like to also credit changes to the code that manages site distributions and respawning. The most visible effects of the changes were that Rogue Drone combat anomalies spawned randomly in highsec and Mercoxit mining sites spawned from sovereignty prospecting upgrades will both cluster in unvisited systems less often than before. But the changes occurred on 9 April and the Capsuleer Day spike occurred on 15 April.

Looking ahead, will May finally be the month when the recorded Active ISK Delta is positive for two months in a row? Not only did the finale of the Capsuleer Day event launch on 6 May but the Legion expansion launches on 27 May. If EVE is going to experience a longer than usual return of players who have "won" EVE, now is as good a time as any.