On June 15, CCP announced that Ghost Training was an exploit, and people have been looking to CCP to take action against those involved.
Over the last 10 days, CCP has been sending emails out to Ghost Farmers. Whether the individuals did it knowingly or unknowingly, CCP has been taking action.
The action taken is not the usual negative wallet that we associate with CCP acting on ISK gained through exploits (although there was one player who claimed CCP had taken ISK). The players involved have been given a list of the characters they used, and how much ghost training they did.
A value has been given to them based on Total Ghost Trained SP/500k*(injector price-extractor price) They have been asked to provide either the total amount of SP calculated via extractors which CCP will provide, or provide assets or ISK equivalent to the value calculated.
SP is the preferred option, but, if players have already extracted and sold the SP, (or they do not want to do the click-fest of extraction) they have the other options available to them. There has been no mention of Concord ships in the mails that we have heard about.
The reason given for those who did it unknowingly being punished is that the amount of SP is so large that it would impact the economy to leave it in there. The amounts we have heard about range from 50b-800b, so it is not small amounts being removed.
The option to hand over assets or ISK is an interesting one, as this has the potential to impact on other markets. We know of some individuals handing over raw materials, modules and other assorted items. The industrial related items will now need to be repurchased from the market, which will increase the demand for materials.
The way CCP are doing this avoids the issue of accounts not having ISK, or not having sufficient ISK, and allows them to remove the full value from the game in a more meaningful way. Negative walleting an account you do not use would not really matter, and if you owe 100b, and only have 20b in your wallet, them removing 100b does not remove that value from the game, it just removes the 20b. This way they remove the full equivalent value from the game.
The asset value they are using is not the in-game value. Values we have seen show CCP undervaluing by 75%, but they don’t count fittings in ships and use the estimated price, which can lead to ship hulls being massively undervalued.
