EVE Online Rocked by 700 Billon ISK Scam

Martin Spamer writes "The space MMOG EVE Online, where mining rock plays a big part of the economy, has recently been hit by a huge in-game scam. The aftermath of the EIB scam... was 700 Billion ISK, which might raise some $119,000 USD if sold on Ebay. (The current conversion rate is 100M ISK to 18 USD.) These events have prompted claims of player deaths, death threats, and speculation about What Would You Do With 700 Billion ISK?"

Er...

[rscoggin]

Can someone explain the scam? The forum link has very little information and presumes the reader has background...

Apparently....

[kinglink]

There's like 30 forum posts I can find googling about the EIB scam. but I can't find anyone talking about what it is. Just some dude named Cally screwed a lot of people, and apparently it was legit because of voting or something?

All I have to say is kudos for getting this story on slashdot since I don't even believe we can call it news. Let's try to at least explain the random stuff we are putting together, or at least keep the topics on stuff a little more mainstream then Eve if we don't want to spend the time actually putting an explination of the facts together.

Wow, people still play this game?

[Anonymous Coward]

The damn thing is just a treadmill. You mine stuff, get money, mine stuff, get money, buy some mining stuff, mine stuff, get money...

Boring as hell. Space is an empty wasteland and so is this game.

Re:big $, small thrill

[aafiske]

Because it's refreshing to play in a world that has base rules set, and then you win or lose by your own cleverness or stupidity. Your reputation matters and you can get blown up for being a big-mouthed jackass.

In a real world where everyone sues everyone for every imagined injustice, where games are full of people whining about others robbing them and complaining to the GM, it's a relief to play a game where the response to a whine is 'you learned your lesson, don't be so stupid in the future.'

Re:I love it

[timeOday]

If you are smart enough to scam people and you do it using the ingame restrictions (eg not using any bugs) CCP will not step in and crush you

What's "smart" about it? Free marketeers think they hate laws, what they forget is that the market is a system of laws, without which there is no market. If there is no contract law in this game, then constructs like banks will simply be untenable, since there's no reason to think the other guy will hold up his end of the bargain. End result, no economy of interest. How is that good?

Meh

[StarKruzr]

The appalling dearth of PvE and story-driven content in EVE bores me. Plus it seems that "you learned your lesson, don't be so stupid in the future" is kind of a worthless thing to say to someone when you can potentially be busted down to next-to-nothing for making one little mistake, making it next to impossible to get back to where you used to be in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Pyramid Scheme

[Peter Cooper]

There's nothing really in real life that inherently 'supports banking'. Putting your money in the bank is, for all intents and purposes, like handing over unsecured amounts of money. Of course, laws and institutions have built up around this to provide a more secure framework, but at the end of the day.. you're putting something at risk.

Re:Meh

[WilliamSChips]

So does mommy hold your hand, wipe your butt, and tell you that you have been a good widdle boy when your sheets are dry in the morning?

I'm going to assume you have no insurance whatsoever?

Re:Perpetrator confessed to it

[DDLKermit007]

Man thats just the kind of content developers couldn't hope to create themselves. Theres no way they can touch the guy doing that. This is an example of an MMORPG truley succeding.

Re:Wow, people still play this game?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a lack of balls, then you are destined to perform menial tasks. If you are a risk-taker, then there are a multitude of options available.

Re:Meh

[jandrese]

The thing that worries me is games that are set up such that whoever invests the most time in it is the most powerful (Ok, this isn't too bad in itself, and is sort of natural, but it guarentees that the crazy people with no life are the strongest in the game), and has little to no consequences for PK.

If you're playing the game, you're playing a fantasy. Eventually one of the stronger players will find you at just the right moment and wipe you out. Everyone who isn't the strongest is just bait. At some point the hundreds of hours you've invested in the game are going to be flushed away by one guy who just loves being an asshole, and there's nothing you can do about it.

On the other hand, that would create a good in-game limitation against getting too addicted. Nothing breaks the addiction like being dumped back on square 1. Heck, even if you are the strongest with the biggest guild, there's always the chance that a bunch of other guilds will band together and take you down, or they'll send in spies to destroy you from the inside. A wild west atmosphere means occasionally getting shot and dying.

Re:Perpetrator confessed to it

[Winterblink]

What's most interesting about it is, EVE is typically cut up by some people for not having a lot of the "traditional" style of content (ongoing plot type of things). They fail to see the overarching idea behind what the game is.

Provide the setting, the worlds, the tools, and the toys to the players, and let the content manifest itself. In essence, the players make the plot.

You're right in your statements, this kind of thing is the perfect justification of that concept.

For tons of EVE-related ongoing drama, their Corporation, Alliance and Organization Discussions [eve-online.com] forum is all about the movers and shakers in the game, from the large ones to the small ones.