http://community.eveonline.com/news/...ount-security/

As we receive questions about overlays and EVE Online every now and then we want to use this opportunity to further clarify our Third Party Policy on the topic (http://community.eveonline.com/suppo...arty-policies/).

“We do not endorse or condone the use of any third party applications or other software that modifies the client or otherwise confers an unfair benefit to players. We may, in our discretion, tolerate the use of applications or other software that simply enhance player enjoyment in a way that maintains fair gameplay. For instance, the use of programs that provide in-game overlays (Mumble, Teamspeak) is not something we plan to actively police at this time. However, if any third party application or other software is used to gain any unfair advantage, or for purposes beyond its intended use, or if the application or other software violates other parts of the EULA, we may fully enforce our rights to prohibit such use, including player bans. Please use such third party applications or other software at your own risk.”

Let’s go over this paragraph and have a look at the meaning of the important sentences:


  1. We do not endorse or condone the use of any third party applications or other software that modifies the client or otherwise confers an unfair benefit to players.
    1. ​​​In short: Do NOT use any tools/applications/modifications which either modify the client in any way OR provide you any kind of unfair benefit/advantage.

  2. We may, in our discretion, tolerate the use of applications or other software that simply enhance player enjoyment in a way that maintains fair gameplay.
    1. AS LONG AS it’s fair to everybody - neither you nor anybody else gets any unfair advantage – we are fine with it.

  3. For instance, the use of programs that provide in-game overlays (Mumble, Teamspeak) is not something we plan to actively police at this time.
    1. This is an example of something we do NOT consider unfair, for now. This also includes other in-game overlays which do NOT grant you any unfair advantage. We do not consider it an unfair advantage if you can see who is currently talking in your voice communication tool via the means of an in-game overlay. We also do NOT consider it unfair if you use other comfort overlays which do not affect how the game is played. This includes overlays for chat and IM applications, the Steam overlay, and Web-Browser overlays for example.

  4. However, if any third party application or other software is used to gain any unfair advantage, or for purposes beyond its intended use, or if the application or other software violates other parts of the EULA, we may fully enforce our rights to prohibit such use, including player bans.
    1. We do consider overlays using elements of a second or multiple other EVE clients to be against the rules. It changes the way the game is played and grants the player unfair advantages over other players. For example, having overviews from other EVE clients as overlays on one EVE client would allow a player to get real time intel from all those other game instances without having to switch to the other windows. Similarly, overlays using elements from a second or multiple other EVE clients to allow the player to activate modules etc. on those other game instances without switching to the other client windows are clearly in violation of our rules.

  5. Please use such third party applications or other software at your own risk.
    1. Please be aware of the fact that we do a lot of data analysis which grants us insight into behavior patterns and allows us to detect anomalies. In a lot of cases we do not need to know what you do on the client side because looking at the behavior in our very detailed event logs on the server side allows us to see if you have/had an unfair advantage over anybody else including the game environment. We don’t know all the tools out there and what they do exactly - and frankly we don’t care. If you get banned, then this is because the results of what you did and how you potentially gained from it manifested in our server-side logs.