Topic: Insider Trading
All of the ores (Titan/Sterm/Iment) were were bought off the global market yesterday... The supply side was completely taken out... I thought it was a not so subtle market manipulation but as it turns out it was much more sinister.
From todays patch notes:
Change: Material regeneration rate has been decreased on alpha islands.
The fact that the markets were so drastically affected prior to the public announcement can only mean that some "special" players were given advance access to the patch notes and then exploited the non-public information to further their own interests.
Accusations of nepotism have been made before, and while suspected they were largely unfounded since their was no hard evidence. This most recent development is pretty damming.
While it may have seemed harmless to the person leaking the information, real world economics has shown that a lack of confidence in fair markets leads to a loss in investor confidence and results in investors seeking alternative markets or dropping out all together.
What that translates to here is that no one wants to play a rigged game, and as they become frustrated with unfair treatment (real or perceived) they will quit. I really like PO and don't want to see that happen.
In the real world, in order to address a loss of market confidence regulatory bodies will investigate the market activity and persecute the offenders. I'm not sure that Dev's will go that far, but publicly recognizing that asymmetric information sharing and conflicts of interest have become a problem and will be addressed would make me feel a lot better.
No matter how much you enjoy a game, in the end no one wants to pay to watch someone else cheat them.
) If they leaked information to some friends without thinking of the consequenses then they should look into now and learn from it. no point doing accusations tough, there won't be evidence anyway.
