CCP has been investigating the circumstances surrounding a get-rich-quick scheme in EVE Online that gained trillions of ISK for a group of players after they discovered an exploit in the recent Inferno update revamping Factional Warfare. After weighing the options, the developer has finally come down hard on the wallets of the offenders.

The five players will have their accounts rolled back to remove the ill-gotten gains in ISK (in-game currency) and LP (loyalty points), according to CCP's dev blog. They will remain in good standing, however, since they did report the exploit (albeit two weeks late). The first player who reported the exploit will still be rewarded by the developer's PLEX for Snitches program.

The developer has always encouraged out-of-the-box thinking by its players and has rarely stepped in to interfere in the emergent game play of EVE. However, the developer said that, after a thorough investigation, the actions here were considered an exploit, in part based on a chart showing the spike in LP earned (and the underlying data that went with it) over the two-week period before the exploit was reported and closed.