Flying Solo In EVE: A Decade-Long RMT Rule Is Broken

After slowing down my blogging last week I return to give my weekly column on EVE Online. Despite publishing the monthly economic report last week, I'm returning to an old subject I first became known for: real money trading. To make the situation worse, the offender has a history of working with Fenris, from hosting Fanfest streams to receiving an award. Of course, once reaching the pinnacle of EVE content creation, he fell down to earth. I'll briefly cover exactly what happened.

First, though, a little news related to July's data. Last week the average concurrent user line on EVE-Offline.net rose from the previous week's 22,000 to 23,000, plus or minus 500 accounts. Hopefully we have reached the bottom of the summer slump. If so a yearly ACU of 24,000 is well within reach.

Jester's five year graph still shows the 30-day rolling average of logged in accounts up by 2000 over both 2024 and 2025. Perhaps more impressive is the 30-day rolling average is still up over 6000 over its low point in October 2022.

In the global PLEX market volumes are down and the price is slowly inching up. Last week the average price of a PLEX went up 10,000 ISK. The current sale -- 20% off Omega time in the cash shop -- isn't having a visible impact on the market.

Now for the news on real money trading. I don't think even the most obtuse observer can now say a content creator did not do so after FC Swift made a couple of posts on Reddit. The case involves a streamer/creator called Loru, who won Video Creator of the Year at this year's Fanfest. 

For those who want to defend him, the violation of the rules about RMT were just too great. As FC Swift posted on Reddit.

Hey hey!

Thanks for the flag - this is an issue that we were made aware of last week. This type of giveaway falls outside of our policy and isn't supported.

Players are allowed to raffle off in-game items or hold giveaways, but entry into the giveaway cannot be gated behind a paywall (even if it's a donation-wall), and there needs to be parity between subscribing and free viewers.

The content creator policy, which applies to everyone, is here: https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/8563917741084-EVE-Online-Content-Creation-Terms-of-Use

These went into effect after the big kerfluffle back in 2015. I'm seeing the same white knighting for Loru as I did for people's favorite content creators 11 years ago. And at least the content creators back then tried to stay within the posted rules as were commonly understood. Loru just ran right over them. The fact Loru is reportedly only received a 7 day ban. Here is another post from FC Swift.

Hey all,

We don't usually comment on infractions involving other players, but I also don't want to hide behind policy either. So let me be upfront and explain the situation and how we got here.

Last week during Loru's stream there were a few giveaways that violated our policy. I talked about it in a different thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1vjobxu/did_this_streamer_just_commit_rmt/p2ofm6o/)

This was reported to us on the day of, and we immediately began our investigation. This involved looking at where the ships and items originated, looking at the context of the giveaways, looking at where the ships ended up, watching the stream as a whole (all 12 hours of it), reviewing recent streams, and just turning over every leaf as possible. Because we want to make informed decisions, this is a multi-team effort.

During the investigation it became clear to us that Loru is not an RMT broker selling ships as a side hustle. He absolutely violated our giveaway policy, though, and he absolutely exchanged spaceships for money. It feels like we're splitting hairs here, but intentions play a role. The GM teams also look to Community to add additional context to situations when they involve areas we are very involved in like content creation.

So while it's true that Loru's giveaways weren't an organized attempt to create a black market for trading ISK, it's also our opinion that this wasn't a minor transgression, either. Further, and something we are very conscious of in all of our decisions, it'd be a disservice to every other content creator who stays within the guidelines to not take this seriously.

And this is where I fucked up.

I didn't communicate to the teams handling the situation that additional level of context from our team to make an informed ruling. So they sent out a punishment that only dealt with the items, and not the full situation. To that end, we'll be issuing a temporary ban on Loru's account to go along with the punishment already levied.

I understand that it looks like we're reacting to pressure and outrage after fumbling a situation, and I can see how you'd come to that conclusion. It does look that way. But we value the open and earnest relationship we have built with the players too much to let a bad decision stand because of optics or worrying about how we look. Simply put: nothing should stand in the way of making the right decision.

So apologies for fucking up, and I hope the above explanation adds the clarity and context that you all were looking for.

I have to admit this was not a very good post. Selling ISK or in-game assets for money is usually a permanent ban for a first offense. Or, at least at one time it was. I even remember stories of players from Ukraine who sold assets during the first Russian invasion back in 2014 in order to live who were banned. Now, I have heard of players getting their accounts back after some time, but receiving a 7-day ban at the get-go? Either a change in policy or some major favoritism is going on. If I had to guess, I'd go with the latter choice.

Looks like I need to do some research, because everything I know says Loru should have won EVE, with Fenris making sure he didn't start losing again.