Topic: Caution: Serious market bug (2013-01-15)
We just found a rare but serious market bug where items can disappear.
Normally, when there is a buy order on the market and you try to sell something to it, you simply click sell and the system finds the highest priced buy order that you can (/should) sell to. In this case the system limits the maximum quantity you can sell to the quantity of the selected highest buy order. This is the case that can't go wrong.
The bug happens when you try to forcibly create a sell order at the same or a lower price than an existing buy order. In this case, the system instantly sells to the highest buy order, ignoring that you wanted to create a sell order - this is normal behavior. However, if the quantity you wanted to sell is higher than the quantity of the buy order which the system instantly sells to, the surplus items will be lost. (Normally these should be returned to your storage.)
As you can see this is a very special case, so here is an example to better understand it:
There is a buy order on the market for a Gropho for 10M NIC.
You want to sell 3 Grophos for 10M NIC a piece, but you don't check the market and miss that there is already 1 buy order for 10M NIC.
You also miss that the direct market sell window suggests you that 10M Gropho, so you go for the create sell order button.
The create sell order window is filled with the 3 Grophos you want to sell, you enter 10M as a price, you click ok.
1 of the Grophos is sold for 10M NIC (minus fees), the other 2 go poof.
You make wtf face.
If you think you have been a victim of this bug, please send in a support ticket and we will investigate.
UPDATE: fixed.