Last week CCP Games released an EVE Fanfest 2025 presentation titled "EVE Frontier - Open Economies." One of the four EVE Frontier presentations on Friday, I encountered a problem when trying to compose a review of the session. I didn't understand several of the terms used in the presentation. Instead of just passing along a summary I only half-understood I decided to look into the concepts of which I was unsure. The first question I encountered was: what is an open economy?
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| Turning the game economy into an open economy |
I turned to Copilot for answers. Using the Frontier white paper and a dev blog as the base for the answers, the AI assistant came up with the following description.
In EVE Frontier, an open economy means a fully player-driven and interoperable economic system where players can create their own markets, currencies, and trade assets freely. Unlike traditional MMOs with fixed in-game economies, EVE Frontier allows for real-world economic interactions, meaning its economy is not isolated from external markets.
The game uses composability, meaning all items, currencies, and objects can be combined and interacted with dynamically. This allows for unpredictable outcomes, as player actions shape the economy rather than developer-imposed constraints. Additionally, energy and risk play a crucial role—every action requires fuel, ensuring that automation and botting have diminishing returns compared to human decision-making.
EVE Frontier’s economy is designed to be open-ended, meaning developers do not dictate trade volume or impose artificial constraints. Instead, the economy evolves based on player-driven trade, value creation, and market speculation. The game even incorporates real-world economic theories, with experts analyzing inflation, pricing behaviors, and resource distribution to maintain balance.
Okay, what Copilot provided sounds in-line with what I heard at Fanfest. Of course, the next question is: what is a closed economy?
In an online video game, a closed economy refers to an in-game economic system where all transactions occur within the game world, without external influences like real-world currency or player-driven markets. This means that players can only earn, spend, and trade in-game currency through predefined mechanics, such as completing quests, selling items to NPCs, or purchasing goods from in-game stores.
Unlike open economies, where players can influence market prices or trade with real-world money, closed economies are tightly controlled by developers to maintain balance and prevent inflation or exploitation. Some games with deep economic systems focus on player-driven economies, where supply and demand dictate prices, but these are different from closed economies.
Interesting. So basically any game with real money trading, whether sanctioned or not, has some sort of open economy. The question I had was to what degree. But that's a topic for another post. Moving on, where does EVE Online fit on the closed economy to open economy scale?
EVE Online is a fascinating case because it operates as a player-driven economy, meaning most goods and services are created, traded, and priced by players rather than NPCs. This makes it more of an open economy, where real-world money can influence in-game wealth.
One key aspect of EVE Online’s economy is PLEX, a premium currency that players can buy with real money and trade for ISK (the in-game currency). This creates an exchange rate between real-world money and in-game wealth, allowing players to purchase ships, equipment, and services using funds from outside the game.
Additionally, EVE Online has market hubs, such as Jita, where players engage in large-scale trading, speculation, and even market manipulation. The game’s developers monitor the economy closely, even employing professional economists to ensure balance and prevent extreme inflation.
I'm not so sure about the professional economists in EVE Online. If so, I want to attend a presentation at the next Fanfest. Now we have player-driven added to the mix. Player-driven and open economies are related concepts. So I asked Copilot to explain the difference.
A player-driven economy and an open economy are related concepts, but they focus on different aspects of in-game economic systems:
Player-Driven Economy - This refers to an economy where players dictate market prices, production, and trade. Instead of developers setting fixed item values, players create, buy, sell, and determine the worth of goods based on supply and demand. A great example is EVE Online, where nearly all economic activity is controlled by players—corporations manufacture ships, raw materials are mined and sold, and market speculation influences pricing.
Open Economy - An open economy is a system where real-world money can influence the in-game market. In games with open economies, players can purchase in-game currency with real money, trade items for real-world value, or participate in official marketplaces that allow real-world transactions (like purchasing premium currency). EVE Online qualifies as an open economy because of PLEX, which lets players trade real-world funds for in-game wealth.
A game can have a player-driven economy without being fully open. For example, Runescape has player-controlled trading, but its economy remains mostly closed because real-money transactions are restricted. Similarly, some open economies still have developer-controlled elements, such as price caps, restrictions on trading, or marketplaces only accessible through in-game mechanics.
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| The meta-level differences in the economies of Online & Frontier |
The differences between EVE Online & EVE Frontier led back to the picture with which I led off this post. The quote I wish to highlight is:
Blockchain integration turns a closed economy into a (proper) open economy.
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