The Economy of EVE Online 

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I like the idea of EVE online more than I actually like playing the game

When you want to become a space pirate but end up dealing with logistics and getting shouted at for messing up

I tried to play EVE, but I already have a second job ...

I have always thought of Eve Online not as much a Video Game, but as more of an Economy Simulation.

Tbh tho. I've spent 200 hours on this game but it's seem like i barely finished the tutorial.

When I was in high school, I played this game. I bought ships with ISK first and disassembled them into minerals. Then sold the minerals to ISK. My first ever successful business model, Hahaha.

This is the kind of thing you do when you win the lottery and don’t need to work anymore

I was speaking to someone at my work who played this game religiously and he was saying a lot of the people who he is in command over. Are Ex military personal and they left the Military and found this Eve to continue the lifestyle of sorts. Like routine and following orders.

Surprised that nobody has done a Phd thesis about this, and other games.

Eve is complexed it took us around 2 to 3 years to get the people and skills to make titans, we spent many months developing spreadsheets and finding a home, after 16 years the core group is still active in eve and outside.

I love when you said the most surprising thing is that these alliances have Social Security xD But frankly, the most surprising thing is that they have CIA (central intelligence agencies) within each alliance... Literally players that spend all their time doing BACKGROUND CHECKS on members and ensuring no scams or ingame theft / spy sabotague is going on. Isnt THAT insane xD

Interviewer: so do you have any experiences before we hire you? Me: I played Eve Online Interviewer: Sir we got the man!

I played that game for roughly 600 hours and still had no idea what i was doing.

Algorithms dont run this economy, Player demand and supply do.

I heard this about Eve a while back: "Eve is like being a small child walking through a park at night filled with child molesters." After having played it for a while, I find this description highly accurate.

It’s likely that the EVE economy is larger than several countries.

What is that stock footage you used for "hardcore space accounting?" That shit had me dying.

How tf do you live in real life if you have a game like this?

I was once intrested in EVE. Then I saw the spread sheet of diffrent professions. I already have a job. I wasn't intrested in EVE anymore.

This game is more interesting to be heard about than actually playing it

I've played Eve for five years and this is an excellent explanation of the in-game economy. Thanks for making it! CCP used to employ an in-house economist to keep things from spiraling out of control (inflation etc) but he's been gone for a while. CCP have just raised in-game taxes to try and pull more money out of the economy, because too much isk was being created by mission runners and NPC hunters.

Regarding the investment amount, you could probably add in there the cost of structures anchored, structure modules fitted and structure fuel used. The problem is that, like real nations, these things don't happen per month. Alliances set their structures in waves, depending on when they relocate to an area, win or lose territory, start or end a war. But if you really want some info, try contacting some of the Imperium diplomats (yes, we have diplomats in the game!) I'm pretty sure they could get you numbers you can use from their industry people. Besides that, great vid!

This game still exists? I played it on release for about a year. I could've been a galactic meme lord emperor by now.

Hi Guys exciting news, as widely requested I have created a Discord server for this channel. This is my first time making this type of server so I hope I have done everything correctly. Feel free to come hang out and chat, or even just come and get help with your economics homework :P discord.gg/TjWDPAA

Very cool stuff man!

Hi Guys, very interesting video this week that I really enjoyed putting together. A bit left of field but the economy of EVE has always been something I have been dying to look at in some kind of academic capacity and the video of making a video gave me an excuse to do so.

Anyone here remember OTEC, the Organization of Technetium Exporting Counties?

Hi, I am a PhD student at University of Pennsylvania and I've been floating the idea of doing a term paper on the economics of EVE for a while. However, I haven't played the game and only have limited understanding of its structure. Is it possible for us to talk over email about some additional details? Best, William

Three. Million. Dollars? I was expecting it to be in the ten thousands. And this is just one nation? That’s amazing.

EVE always scared the heck outta me. Always seemed like an overload, however after delving into the economics of UBI+VAT and how they effect the economy... It absolutely intrigues me now

Actual investments would be pretty impossible to measure unless you're in the Alliance leadership and involved in making those decisions. Player-made investments would be pretty impossible to measure, as they'd be done on an individual basis 99% of the time and would be done most likely in high-sec. Most people either do short term commodity investment or long-term investment in the form of things like blueprints which will be used, usually as a collective, to make some item for profit.

This is why iv been playing now for 10 years, EVE ONLINE is so unique

Played it for 3 intense years 2006-2009 (mostly 0.0 and piracy from Murethand) and I still get an addict's deep longing 10 years later whenever I come across a video like this... I loved/hated it and will never get those years back. I can genuinely say I learned some great stuff there, but man did I miss opportunities in real life. funny enough it's the small stuff I miss most. Covering an important stargate for a few hours while bullshitting with the peeps on vent. That and the insane adrenalin on chewing on a too large target but coming winning out of the fight with a huge bounty to share and sell. Eve is the game where I most felt losses and wins.

I find tales and stories about this game so fascinating. Maybe because so much of Eve is driven by the actions and desires of people, a mystifying group!

Eve isn't nearly as difficult to get into as some people are saying, you can jump into the game, open recruitment chat and talk to a corp recruiter and get into mining fleets or pvp roams in your first week playing the game. There are tons of tutorial videos on youtube when you want to get into something more specialized like exploration sites.

I still have my old independent trade business in EVE where with a few days of flying and trading I can make a years premium account, it's much easier than in real life 😏

Surely Bitcoin or Ethereum would make the perfect in-game currency.

Very nice video and such a clear explanation on how eve works economically, especially to non eve players. Keep it up!

Large-Volume orders are normally investment. If someone buys say 10k units of something that is used in the multiple thousands by a single ship (jump-fuel for example) then that's regular spending. Buying 100Million units of the stuff is gonna be a long-term investment or fueling an entire coalition worth of supers.

WHEN A FEW MOMA'S BOYS KNOW HOW TO RUN AN ECONOMY BETTER THAN YOUR GOVERNMENT :V YEP IM ARGENTINIAN

This has me convinced we could be living in a simulation Love EVE Online! I might make a video on it

I saw a 6 minute RU-vid ad. It was so interesting I looked it up. Lol I'm not surprised you made a video on it

This was a fun video. I played Eve Online from March 2005 till August 2019 (a few weeks ago), and got to experience the full gambit of this game. There were times where I did use a spreadsheet, but to be honest you don't have to do that to be successful or have fun.

I don't know how this video was recommended to me. I've never played Eve and never really wanted to. That said, I do love learning about in-game economies. RU-vid is scary.

Few Comments: MER had bugs in the way CCP calculated contracts which was only fixed later on. Investments will not become visible because much of the really deep pockets keep their items in non-conquerable stations in various regions. And much of that has been placed into forward manipulations even as far back as 5+ years ago. Zkillboard only includes ship, structure and certain drone destruction events where one or the other party gave them an ESI key to read the feed. There is an issue with these keys when the system switched over from API to ESI. Imports/Exports figures also include fleet movements between regions. It can include forward long term deployments of SIGs and Squads. So won't ever be 100% local events. If you really want to understand the highest level stuff I would suggest listening to podcasts and articles where a player called "Aryth" made any appearances.

Thank you for uploading this. You're a great youtuber, i appreciate you.

great video ..ive been playing since jan 2004 ..240mil sp there abouts..this stuff still blows away (liked & subbed)

Net spending is not 90.6 trillion isk. 48.6 trillion isk + 32 trillion isk is 80.6 trillion isk.....

Is based on TEARS...

You just know there’s someone who escapes their everyday normal life working for an international shipping company by playing eve online and living a virtual life working for an interplanetary shipping company.

I would say in EVE econometrics that all consumer spending is investment in inventories or capital until the product is destroyed (read consumed). So you can consider them to be the same. Goods are either consumable inventory - commodities, ammo, and any other good depending how it is used - or a capital asset - ships, components. For example you could deploy 1m ISK of capital to buy, fit an insure a Venture + 1 hour of time = 500k ISK. Or you could deploy 1m ISK capital to buy, fit and insure a frigate + 100k consumable ammo + 1 hour time = 500k ratting earnings. On top of that you have player to player services such as haulage, insurance, loans, and piracy/scams.

I love this game, have played for ten years, and I'm still at the noob -level, doing safe mining and manufacturing. Just subbed to this channel because of this vid btw :-)

Amazing video, earned a sub without a doubt. Lots of work and very well appreciated! Although, there is one overwhelming problem, market trade value as well as the value of contracts can’t be measured the same way as real world transactions. Many contracts and market transactions are bought and resold for profit, meaning they were counted twice (or more). In real world transactions, very few people buy a couch from ikea and sell it for a profit. Which means the majority of the 100 trillion monthly isk is unreliable.

Amazing analysis of an amazing phenomenon! Great job :D

As a long time eve player, this is one of the most well written explanations of the eve economy I have seen in a long time

I remember installing EYE a couple of years ago. I played for a couple of hours and I just didn't get it.... This game truly is something different.

5:56 When a game keeps the spending of a in-game government private... you know things are getting real...

Now I’d be really interested to see what 1 isk would really be worth if eve was real life. Not just based on how much isk you can buy with usd, but based on how much the ships and other stuff would actually cost in real life.

The economy is not completely without NPC interaction. There are some things this and other reviews of Eve's Economics that are left out. First off as a game the resources are unlimited in the game, thus you will never run out of resources as long as you control the region where those resources spawn into existence. Second is the currency in game is printed on mass by the game as it assigns value to various NPC targets. See the game has two main resource types, materials and cash. The materials are mined from asteroids that spawn into the world and these are used to build ships. However a barter system would be quite hard to manage so there is also cash, aka ISK, which is generated by several means. You can hunt random NPC bad guys like typical MMOs which have a bounty and thus get paid, you can run missions for NPCs, and there maybe some other ways since I last played but those are the primary way of earning ISK that is "new" to the economy. Trades between players only move cash and minerals around in the system. The sinks in the system are somewhat obvious for minerals as every time a ship is blown up the mineral cost of those is lost. The cash sinks though are not as obvious to those who don't play the game. See it's fine to talk about how players "make" everything but that's only partially true as the means of production is mostly owned by the NPCs. As the players simple "RENT" factory locations on stations and those stations have a limited number so companies will often horde them to prevent their enemies from getting them. Now I haven't played EVE in years, but my understanding is to combat this as these stations were in NPC controlled space so players had no recourse to get factories they introduced the player stations and player controlled space. Because before this the NPC stations allowed companies to lock in monopolies on the production front as long as they kept up with their payments. Now with the ability to have capturable stations that have their own production the players can secure a means of production by force if need be. Even with this there are huge Cash upkeep cost on these stations and the facilities. Thus the players are constantly having to pay an NPC workforce/taxman just to keep what they own. The developers of EVE are often trying to balance things out so that the amount of expenses the players have to pay in upkeep is on par with the amount of money being produced so that runaway inflation doesn't happen the way it does in other MMO games. For example when a curtain game first came out the idea of saving up 500 gold to get a mount seemed like a monumental task but now it's chump change compared to the thousands of gold you have. Though with EvE it tends to be more the minerals that get run away inflation due to bot miners and them dumping the materials on the market which drops the price. Besides the endless supply of resources EvE is also a War economy as everything in the game revolves around getting more and defending yourself against those who want to take it. Even if you are not on the front line you are still a worker in the system to supply resources for the war effort. Which is why the social security program as he calls it works in EvE. It's not a living expense to unproductive retired people but more like if a soldier's tank, jeep, etc breaks down they can't fight so it is better to get them a new one as it supports the war effort rather than having them out of the fight. There is also no threat of death as you simply respawn and pickup from where you left off so people happily throw themselves into the fray as they know they can just buy a new ship or if push come to shove have the corp get them one. Overall though it is nice to look at EvE and see how people approach the supply and demand in this unique environment it is ultimately not a good representation of the real world.

I lost it at "Hardcore Space Accounting" rotflol!!!

Great video man. its always good to se more eve videos.

My character and I have had a personal economic impact of at minimum 5+ Trillion ISK to the New Eden economy affecting all 4 major quadrants of empire space as well Wormhole occupied space. I think it was fuzzy how I started playing the game. I just heard people keep talking about it, so I was intrigued and started playing out of curiosity and for something more interesting than the normal run of mill MMO’s. I worked full time as a Process Engineer at a Pharmaceutical company and at night after work I’d play EVE in my free time. Worked my way up from completing started playing solo for a long time as a Industrialist and logistics Capitalist making, supplying and running my influenced control aspect of the economy for years. I made everything from all kind of ship parts and in between up to Capital sized ships to Space Stations. A massed over 4K+ Researched Blueprints for making all that stuff. Not as much spreadsheets personally though I tracked everything I made, sold, traded. But because I knew the market in the very thing I sold or cornered. I had logistics running all over empire space and other people moving my stuff everyday to other stations to supply my trade stations of business. Became a wealthy in game Billionaire that could buy whatever I wanted short of a Titan Ship which could care less for. Was welcomed into a Corporation and ran my own R&D Division Of Corporation. Eventually becoming the director of all R&D and Industry. Eventually I realized life was passing by outside and hadn’t really notices things going on in real world as much. Job changes happened and eventually one day just decided to walk away from the game, resigned from my in game Corporation. So in walking away I gave away my entire wealth to 5 people who were friends and vast majority to a blogger friend as a benefactor who’d do well with giving it all to him. No regrets. I had a good life in New Eden. When it comes to the economic game, there is absolutely no game like EVEOnline, no other game is close.

As a former EVE Player from roughly 2003 to 2013, I can tell you there was a large player owned bank and several competing smaller player owned banks operated in game. It was all managed 3rd party outside of the game and deposits would have been made from a player, corp, or alliance directly to the player owned bank corp in the game. The player owned banks had various investment options ranging from safe (like bonds) to more risky investments with higher returns (like funding a start up corp with plans for operations in 0.0 space). These banks would lend isk as capital to all kinds of corps and alliances in the game and collect payments with interest back. I was not part of any of these player owned banks nor did I invest money but I do know some of the investment funds reached 10's of trillions of ISK in value.

"Hardcore Space Accounting" LOL

this guy just insulted the mittani bold move

Fascinating stuff just discovered your channel I'm hooked !!!!!

Wow. I had no idea. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I am thankful you put an "*" next to the value i bring up to people i play(ed) eve online many people ask me how much money i spent to get items ships etc. I attempt to explain that its not a pay to win game (we know you can pay real money to get game money). It got bothersome each time.

Eve has everything a real economy has, to some extent, including corruption... Almost all of the mods are current players, involved in the largest alliances, and they have no oversight so they use their positions to benefit their alliances... I've even seen them ban people during events for 'botting' so that their friends can be first to complete the events...

Biggest surprise I learned watching this: the Imperium holds Delve. Last I played was during the Fountain war, so quite some time ago, and at that time TEST held Delve.

Bloody insane. I've heard of Eve online so many times but I never paid much attention to it. Finding out all of this is fascinating.

Ugh man. I can't watch more if its going to nearly have me die laughing lint this. The first part of the whole ecomony thing to the "So an end game player can do this *click* *fart noise* -Glasses-"

Eve: the game played by sociopathic accountants

Very impressive. Also check out two of the largest online battles ever so far, “The Bloodbath of B-R5RB” and “X47L-Q Keepstar Citadel”. The citadel involved more supers and titans than any other, yet overall a substantially smaller amount of in game credits and overall losses. That, and the battle was well planned out and staged, where as the Bloodbath was more of an accident of mismanagement (or was it...🤔). Yes it’s just a game, but the epic scale is worth of any space opera novel.

I remember the Eve Waifu Wars, that was hilarious. Nice video. Keep up the good work.

All they have to do is create a crpto currency for the game list it on an exchange and now you can make an income from Eve.

Excellent video. Pleasantly laid out rules and perspective of EVE. Good work man:)

imagine logging into your favorite online game after a 12 hours shift at the office and the first thing you see is "pls fix thx"

The primary form of investment in EVE, is also the primary transitory currency: The PLEX. The fact that it is a transitory (on a monthly basis not yearly) resource/currency increases demand due to being consumed at a rate I'm guessing is in the hundreds of thousands of units daily range. They are transitory for the Imperium specifically because we have to pay our subs too yes, but so does everyone else.

I'd like to see you provide GDP in terms of percentage of new eden.

Ive been looking at this game for a long time, I think ill pick it up, because you made it seem interesting.

1:06 "Stimulating da economy" killed me.

Additional government spending would also be things like sov and ihub fees, structure construction and maintenance costs, and structure fuel costs. All of these things are typically payed for through taxes on individual player income or from fees to use structure functions.

NOW! analyze the rest of the clans and calculate the total GRP, pretty please

Would love to see a new ip do something just like this, I feel like I’m about a decade late if I wanted to play this

Just found your channel and just found Eve Online. It was my wildest dream for you to make this and low and behold here it is. 😍

You could potentially gather a very rough estimate for investment by looking at the structures (Engineering Complexes, Citadels, Jump Gates and the like) placed in a region by a given alliance. These bits of infrastructure are vital to the functions of the coalition day-to-day, as they enable the industry and logistics to a significant degree. The "easiest" way to do this would be to use the in-game structure browser and look through each alliance in a given coalition. Although this would require physically going to the regions you wish to look at, then opening the tool, as it only filters by region. Although it's possible that one of your other figures captured this expenditure anyway, assuming one accounts for the mining, PI and advanced manufacturing that goes into building and maintaining these structures. This is because many major coalitions have built these items in advance and have them stockpiled to some degree.

How have I never heard of this. I’ve wasted my life :c

I've got a player in my online D&D campaign that plays EVE and he constantly questions the arbitrary prices and economy models of local regions, states and nations in my world. I can now understand why he does that.

Great video, thank you!

Interesting topic. Nice upload!

It's definitely true that Eve Online isn't for everyone, but it's also not true that you wouldn't have fun if you didn't want to look at contracts and trade-related spreadsheets all the time. As far as I know, a comparatively small percentage of the population actually dedicates themselves to trade in a hardcore way. Most players have a simple means of making money (sometimes as part of someone else's larger operation), and use that means to acquire ships and go fight for fun. No real knowledge of trade required, beyond "how not to get scammed".

You left out the running costs of all the structures off the government spending bill

You missed one government expenditure. If you want the data, contact someone in Goon Swarm Isk, they'll be able to give you exact numbers. The expenditure is the fuel and sovereignty costs for each and every structure we have from the smallest Raitarus up to the massive amount of keepstars we have littered about the various regions.

Great! Not only interesting generally, but nice to see you spread the message of economics to a demographic that might not care about national economies. Keep it up.

Do old school runescape grand exchange bruh

Very cool video. The numbers are a bit off, but in general great job. If you feel like talking about these things further feel free to contact me. Its such a deep rabbit hole, and there is academic stuff out there, one fun fact is that Yanis Varoufakis actually did some work on EVE economy.

2:10 I learned this the hard way by getting suicide ganked in my shiny new blackbird while sitting in 0.9 highsec :(

brilliant stuff!