EVE market scams: how to not lose ISK for nothing

Deception is allowed by EVE’s rules, and the market is its prime hunting ground. We break down the real schemes — an extra zero on the price tag, a copy swapped for the original, contract and chat scams, market traps — and the habits that shut them down.

Is scamming legal in EVE?

In EVE, deceiving other players is part of the game, not a violation. CCP forbids only what reaches outside the universe: real-money trading (RMT) and account theft. Everything else — luring, misleading, winning on someone’s inattention — counts as fair play. Which means no one will refund your ISK: the only defence against a scam is you and a couple of ingrained habits.

And they hunt where the money is: in Jita and around the market. This is where ISK concentrates, the biggest deals go through and the most people mill about — including those who came not to trade but to harvest the careless. The good news: nearly every market scam rests on one thing — haste, and the fact that you looked at a pretty number instead of the details. Slow down and check, and the scheme falls apart.

The price-tag scam: an extra or missing zero

A market classic. Someone lists a sell order on a familiar item at a price one order of magnitude above normal and waits for whoever buys “without looking”, clicking the top row out of habit. The reverse version is a buy order placed well above the best sell: it looks like “someone’s buying high”, but it’s bait to make you sell into it below market in a hurry, having confused the sides of the book.

The defence is trivial and fast: always look at the per-unit price, not the total, and compare it to normal before you confirm. In Mercator that’s a one-second move — fair value and the “vs fair” column show how far the price has drifted from the volume-weighted history, and cross-hub on the item card instantly tells you whether the number is out of line with the other hubs. If a price is “too good”, it isn’t luck — it’s a tag with a hidden zero.

How does a BPC differ from a BPO, and how to avoid buying a copy as an original?

Not everything with the same name is worth the same. The most expensive trap is a blueprint: a copy (BPC) with a limited number of runs looks almost identical in the list to an original (BPO) that can be copied forever — and the price gap is hundredfold. The same bucket holds name look-alikes: a faction module and its plain T1 counterpart, the SKIN of the ship you want and a similar one for another, an item whose name differs by a single letter.

There’s one protective habit: open the item’s own card before buying instead of trusting the row in the list. Confirm it’s exactly that type, whether it’s a BPO or a BPC, how many runs are left, the right variant. Thirty seconds of checking is cheaper than a copy blueprint bought at the price of an original.

Contract scams: wrong side, wrong quantity

Contracts are a risk zone of their own, because the terms are set by whoever created them and the interface is easy to skim. The usual schemes: a contract where you actually pay rather than receive (the “buy/sell” side flipped); the right item but in a quantity of 1 instead of 100; an expensive item in the picture and a cheap filler in the bundle; and courier contracts with collateral set below the cargo’s value — bait to get you to take the haul and then “lose” the goods for less than they’re worth.

A contract can’t be “undone” once accepted, so the rule is simple: read every line — direction, exact item and quantity, price, collateral and reward — before you hit accept. If anything is unclear or pushes urgency on you (“take it fast before it’s gone”), that pressure is the scam itself. An unclear contract is always better left alone.

Chat scams: ISK doubling, fake giveaways, impersonation

In Jita local and the ad channels runs a social layer of deception. “I’ll double your ISK — send it and I’ll return twice as much” (they won’t, ever). Fake giveaways and “official” holiday events. Bogus lotteries and investment schemes promising returns. And impersonation — doppelgängers: a name one letter off from a known trader or corp, so you send ISK or accept a contract from the “trusted” party.

A few base truths shut the whole layer down: CCP never asks for ISK or DMs you about a “prize”; no one in their right mind doubles other people’s money for free; and a character or corporation name must be checked character by character, not “by eye”. Anything that promises return without risk and rushes you is a scam by definition.

Market traps: not scams, but they ruin you the same way

Some losses come not from deception but from the market’s own traps — and you defend against them the same way. Order walls (a huge buy or sell parked at one level) create an illusion of demand or support that can be pulled at any moment. Bubbles on thin items: the price is pumped with a couple of trades so you enter at the top, then it’s dumped. And false “cheap” — a price below fair not because you got lucky, but because the item is oversupplied or nerfed and will stay there.

The same shelf holds the historical “margin scam”: the old Margin Trading skill once let you place a buy order while holding only part of the sum in escrow, and scammers posted giant orders they couldn’t pay for. CCP has since replaced that skill and largely closed the loophole — but the lesson stands: a huge buy order guarantees nothing by itself. What protects you from all these traps isn’t trust in a number but the metrics: “vs fair” against false cheap, turnover and volume against illiquidity, volatility against bubbles. More in the “Volatility and risk” and “Fair value” guides.

What to check before every trade to avoid scams?

Boil it all down to a habit: 1) look at the per-unit price, not the total, and check it against fair value and the neighbouring hubs; 2) open the item card — right type, BPO or BPC, right variant and quantity; 3) on a contract read every line — side, item, quantity, collateral; 4) ignore anything that promises return without risk and rushes you; 5) verify names character by character. Five moves, each a matter of seconds.

The main protective reflex is one: haste is the scammer’s ally, the pause is yours. Almost every scheme counts on you clicking faster than you think. So the best investment against losses isn’t a skill or a ship — it’s three seconds of checking before you confirm.