Where does the PLEX-money go?

We know that there are about 100K PLEX bought every month. So about 1/3 of the 350K accounts are not self-sustaining, they need constant ISK influx in form of selling PLEX on the market to keep on going. It also means that about 1/3 of accounts are played for free and only 1/3 of the accounts are PLEX-neutral, playing the "normal" way: the player pays to the company monthly subscription and does no RMT.

This last 1/3 can be called "casual". My girlfriend is a perfect example. Looking from "professional" way, she is bad. She spent almost whole day playing last Sunday with about 30M income as she was doing L1!!! securities with a destroyer simply because their story looked fun (the Minmatar-Gallente air show for example). Her activity wasn't really affecting anyone in the game and she had fun, so her subscription money is well spent. However you must notice something important: she earned ISK, no matter how little. Also her expenses and risks were near-zero: some small projectile ammo was used and worse case she could lose a destroyer with fittings worth 3M (half of it being the tractor beam). Compared to this, her income isn't that bad and she can clearly continue to play that way without ever buying ISK.

I gave her 400M ISK as gifts, since I received the same amount. Half of that ISK is still in her wallet, another half was spent on a Rokh battleship that she can barely fly and for that reason she doesn't like to fly. That ship is practically only used when I hire her to help me finish security storyline missions that I get after 16 distributions which I do for faction standings. Since she is months from even fitting it properly (she can't even fit large turrets) she finds it more fun to fly a destroyer. The point is that the 400M gift did not increase her game enjoyment at all, so she isn't even motivated to buy or grind ISK.

The first 1/3 is anything but casual. They - unlike the casuals - can't sustain themselves. Why? How? I doubt if they have less knowledge of the game than my girlfriend. If she doesn't need ISK, why do anyone else? Not for gaming fun, that's for sure. Shooting frigate enemies in a frigate isn't different from shooting battleship enemies in a battleship. It applies to PvP too, the success of RvB proves without doubt that frigate PvP is fun.

The "sucker 1/3" are socials who want to be respected by peers. They want "awesome ships" that make everyone say "woot". Unfortunately people rather lure their expensive shinies into traps. They also want to earn respect by having high killboard ratio (because RvB is for noobs). Of course when they go lowsec they lose their ship because "the other guy spent more on deadspace fittings" or simply "bad luck" and surely not because they are just barely better in EvE PvP than a random 1 week newbie.

So the sucker 1/3 constantly try to fly things they shouldn't and try to kill enemies definitely out of their league. They have constant losses and have to replace it by constant ISK purchases. The simple way of being PLEX-neutral as a casual player makes it crystal clear: anyone buying ISK is a moron since he is keep trying to play in a league where he does not belong. His skills destine him to run funny missions or do frigate PvP but he neither accepts it, nor learns to be better but for social reasons insists to play with the "big boys".

However the really interesting part is the remaining 1/3, the ones who play for free. I guess these accounts don't mean so many players, rather 3-4 accounts/player. I have 3 accounts. One "main", who is a trader/industrialist/freighter-pilot/wannabe logistics pilot. The other account holds two active and one learning station traders for Amarr, Rens and Dodixie. On the third account my future titan/triage carrier pilot sits on a station learning skills.

Obviously I wouldn't have these accounts if I couldn't play for free. I'd pay for one account to play a game, but would find it stupid to have a second account to increase my ISK income when my main is already having a lot, and even more stupid to pay for an account that does nothing for 8-12 months. I have the extra accounts because they are free. They cost me nothing but pixel money.

The second account helps me make more ISK. About 6B/month comes from these characters, so the 0.5B/month for PLEX is well spent. If I wouldn't have this account, I wouldn't have the income. Since I'm trading, I introduce no ISK or materials to the playerbase, every ISK I get is an ISK someone loses. So by having a second account I'm taking 6B/month from the other players. My third account also has an effect: to sustain it, I must not slack (not like I would), so I'm more motivated to make ISK, and we already established that it means taking ISK from others.

So the fun thing is that every PLEX the morons and slackers pour into the system per month means an extra pilot existing in EVE with the sole purpose of preying on them either in a PvP ship or on the marketplace. The harder they buy boost from CCP, the worse position they get into, causing them more and more losses, "forcing" them to RMT more.

If only they could accept that they aren't good and do what my girlfriend does, the endless income for good players would stop, diminishing our ability to devastate them. But they just can't accept being worse than the Joneses. They must look competitive. Good for us.

However this is the reason why CCP can't go for full RMT like Blizzard with Diablo 3. Imagine we could sell PLEX we earned to other players legally. The end user would still use it as game time so CCP would keep getting profits as the only creator of PLEX. Great business for everyone, right? Not really. With this scheme, my current income would be $6000/year. It's 150% the minimal wage in Hungary. If I could sell my PLEXes for money, I'd be tempted to quit my job (you know, Atlas shrugged), get 4-5 more accounts, 2 more computers and earn $30-40K/year (still top 2% of my country) playing a game. Of course it would mean that I'd spend my day taking ISK from bad players. They would be so exploited (not just by me, of course) that they simply couldn't keep up, quit the game and the whole system would collapse. In Diablo 3 you don't take value directly from worse players, you just give them loot they couldn't earn but you can easily grind. So Blizzard don't have to fear that the good players simply destroy the bad ones. Of course it means that the illegal RMT will flourish in EVE as good players try to somehow cash in the vast amount of ISK they get from the bad ones. Remember, 100K PLEX/month is $1.5M/month. Even a shard of it is good money.


PS : I had my first lowsec haul. Managed to buy 450M worth of wares in a highsec island, surrounded by lowsec. Scouted it, jumped back and forth empty and then made the haul and lived! EVE isn't that scary place, come and try out!

EVE Business report: Wednesday morning 13.0B (2 PLEX behind for second account, 0.3B spent on Titan project)
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