It exists, but at such a small scale because of aggressive anti-cheat policies it hardly effects the game economy at all.
PD2 had ~15k concurrent users and 24k viewers on Twitch this past season launch. It maintained 10k concurrent online users for weeks into the season as well. Just as a comparison.
And that's great for PD2. Seriously. It's an impressive achievement for a mod project. But let's separate a few things...
First, 10-15k concurrent on a seasonal ARPG server is not the same ecosystem as a persistent MMORPG with an always-on economy, contested spawns, long-term character progression, and subscription revenue tied to account longevity. ARPG seasons reset - characters get wiped and the whole economy resets. The incentive window for large-scale, industrial RMT is different.
Second, PD2 is built on a 20+ year old game with a known codebase and a smaller attack surface. The mod team has the luxury of designing their anti-cheat posture specifically around one tightly scoped ruleset. They can aggressively police because the scale is limited, the monetization model isn't tied to recurring subscription metrics, the RMT upside isn't equivalent to a persistent MMO economy (because it wipes) and the team can swing the ban hammer without worrying about churn optics, investor optics, or long-term account value. That's a completely different pressure profile.
Also (and this matters) PD2's concurrent numbers during a season launch spike are not the same thing as sustained, year-round, monetized concurrency. ARPGs spike hard at season start and decay. That model is actually easier to police because the lifecycle is predictable and resets naturally clear economic inflation. An MMO doesn't reset.
If MnM somehow hits 10k+ sustained concurrent users for weeks, with visible loot scarcity and tradable value, you don't think that changes the bot calculus? Visibility + scarcity + monetization = incentive. I'm not saying aggressive anti-cheat can't
mitigate the problem. It absolutely can. I'm pushing back on the idea that "Blizzard chooses not to" while implying a small team can just enforce harder and solve it. It's not about caring more. It's about operating environment, scale, and incentive structures.
If MnM stays tiny and niche, sure...maybe botting stays relatively contained. But the second it grows into something even moderately successful, the pressure changes instantly. EQ TLPs pull numbers that are probably in the same ballpark MnM is realistically aiming for, and those servers are botted to absolute hell. Yes, some of that is Daybreak's gray-area enforcement and Krono incentives. But let's not pretend they're some massive enforcement juggernaut either - their live team is small. Likely not that different in scale from what MnM would be working with. So the question keeps coming back to the same thing:
How?
How does a tiny indie team that is still part-time (and telling you they need your $15/month to be full-time), still scaling, and still building core systems simultaneously police 24/7 automation, RMT farms, and camp lock-down behavior better than studios with more tooling and more experience? It's not me saying "it's impossible." It's me asking for the actual mechanism. What's the plan? What's the tech? What's the manpower? What's the enforcement philosophy? Because "we'll handle it" isn't a strategy. And history tells us games operating at the exact population scale being discussed suggests this problem doesn't magically solve itself by "caring more".
