Having to grind for in-game currency in MMO games is quite normal. After all, these games want to keep you in the game for months and years, which is why you can expect to make a fortune in just a few weeks.
Ideally, a game should encourage you to come back for its joyful gameplay mechanics rather than for achieving a specific item, but we can’t deny that a significant amount of players accept all the grind to achieve a certain item, and in Star Citizen, that is a new ship, 90% of the times.
Earning in-game currency in Star Citizen, which is known as aUEC, is not too complicated. If you play in a crew or within an org, you can become rich within a few weeks after putting enough time and effort into activities that pay well.
However, things are different for lone wolves. If you are playing solo, you will find it pretty difficult to make tens of millions of aUEC in a short amount of time. Now, if you are not patient enough, or haven’t played many MMO games, you may actually fall for a boost in your in-game balance by spending some cash, but is it worth it?
Is Trading aUEC Illegal?
Sending aUEC to a player or receiving it is not illegal in Star Citizen, but if you charge or pay someone real-life money for sending or receiving aUEC, then you have acted against the game’s Terms of Service.
The ability to send or receive aUEC in the game is a feature to expand community-oriented activities. Such as when someone asks for help and offers to pay some amount of aUEC instead, or when you do mining with other players and want to pay everyone’s share of the profits.
However, when real-life money is involved in transferring aUEC, your account will be at risk of getting banned. If you are reported for trading aUEC, the developers will be able to see your record track of in-game aUEC transfers, which exposes if reports have been right or wrong.
Usually, transferring a big amount of aUEC to a single player will flag the accounts of both sender and receiver and if it gets repeated over and over again, then you might get banned or suspended.
Back in the Alpha 3.23 patch, Cloud Imperium Games showed that it would show no mercy to those who earn in-game currency off exploits. At the time, over 600 players were suspended for over two months, some of which not only earned aUEC from exploits but also traded it with other players. Then, CIG wiped all the aUEC gained from this exploit from the servers, no matter whose account the money ended up in.
So, this makes the aUEC trading business even riskier, as the aUEC you pay for with real-life money can be erased from your account when the seller is caught.
