EVE Online robbed; it is all part of the game

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 07:46

Your IT - Entertainment

The massive multiplayer sci-fi trading and battle game EVE Online has had its virtual bank skimmed clean by its own CEO.  The Australian CEO of EBank, stripped the 200 billion interstellar kredits to pay real world debts, but in doing so, he didn’t break any in-game rules.

The 300,000 subscribers to EVE Online know the score.  Players of the successful space based massive multiplayer trading game are well aware that this game relies heavily upon the people involved.

There are only  a few in-game ‘rules’ with the building of empires, the governing of financial dealing is kept to a minimum and much of what happens in game is driven by similar machinations as the real world.

So when a report emerges that the in-game CEO of EBank, the centralised virtual bank, had been tempted to embezzle virtual kredits, I imagine many of the games players were unsurprised, even as they rushed to protect their own virtual currency.

Identified only as Richard an Australian 27 year old father of two technical worker, as his online persona of Ricdic he had risen to the trusted position as CEO of EBank.

But with a new mortgage and young child with medical issues, the real world financial pressures added to the temptation of his position in charge of a virtual economy.

Ricdic nicked 200 billion interstellar kredits from EBank, a in-game crime that as it stood was not an issue.  But when Richard then on sold this virtual money for AU$6,300 he broke the real world boundaries of  EVE Online.

Ned Coker, of the Icelandic company CCP, which developed the game, told Reuters "Basically this character was one of the people that had been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money,"

"It was a very on the spot decision," Richard said "I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it. But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation," he said.

Richard has now been banned from the game.

The theft caused a run on EBank as word spread throughout the virtual world(s) of the game, players scrambled to ensure their kredits were not part of the CEO’s skimming.

But according to economics adviser to CCP, Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, this kind of situation is what makes a game such as EVE Online special "We have never seen ourselves as gods who make the rules of social interaction," he said. "You are able to lose the things you have created. That's what makes the world interesting."