A Look At The Active ISK Delta In July 2025

On Monday CCP Games published the July monthly economic report (MER) for EVE Online's Tranquility shard. Before taking a look at the Active ISK Delta for last month I'd like to point out a detail from Pearl Abyss' Q2 earnings call held last week. According to the presentation, not only did the EVE IP financially generate the highest revenue since Pearl Abyss' acquisition of CCP Games in 2018, but EVE Online itself generated the most revenue in a quarter since 2016. This in a quarter in which the Active ISK Delta was positive for two consecutive months for the first time since CCP began publishing the statistic in 2015. Coincidence?

Average logged in users returned to last year's total

Perhaps. But what is the 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. Given the rather large drop in users one would expect a large drop in the New Eden money supply due to players leaving the game.

The Active ISK Delta was below 5% for the third straight year

According to the Active ISK Delta, the summer slump is real. In raw terms the 130.2 trillion ISK removed from the game in July was the second highest amount in EVE's history, only following the 141.5 trillion ISK removed last July. So in year-over-year terms, 8% less ISK was removed from the economy last month compared to July 2024. Still, I don't want to minimize the size of the Active ISK Delta last month. The amount surpassed the total of all formal ISK sinks by 5.7 trillion ISK.

In percentage terms, the 5.2% of ISK removed due to player movement into and out of the game marks the third year in a row that amount exceeded 5%. Observers can probably assume that figure will remain above 5% as long as CCP continues the twice-a-year expansion deployment pattern. The 4.3% reduction of the money supply when the normal sinks and faucets are added in should probably also not be an unexpected figure if seen in future Julys.

The top 10 months on a percentage of money supply basis

I do need to point out that while the last three Julys are the only months in which the Active ISK Delta was measured at -100 trillion ISK or less, last month only ranked eighth on the list in terms of the percentage of the money supply. At the top of the list was January 2019 which followed a very successful December which, in addition to a holiday daily prize reward, also featured Operation Permafrost, the precursor to the current day Winter Nexus event.