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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?"
It's interesting to watch all the scams that go on in Eve, I consider it a great social experiment.
There are three main features of Eve that create this situation.
1. Easy-to-use player run capitalist system. (It's easy for anyone to start up and manage a business)
2. Zero laws against corporate fraud (As pure as capitalism gets)
3. Anonymity from victims. (It's a lot easier to rationalize ripping off people in a virtual world.)
Combined together these factors have lead to some amazing corporate frauds and espionage.
I don't have time/effort myself to invest in Eve, but it's still fun to read what determined Eve players go to lengths to achieve.
(A thought occured to me while typing this. Someone should offer some sort of contract in Eve. Either it can be done through CCP with GMs backing it and they could even charge for it, or a sufficiently large and militarized corporation could sell contract enforcement. Maybe this has already been done, otherwise feel free to steal this idea and try to make some isk with it.)
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
How?
1. There's no guarantee that the dude's going to sell it on eBay. Assuming he doesn't attempt to ditch it through TOS-violating activities such as selling it for real life money, he's not doing anything wrong. See:
2. EVE isn't every other MMOG. There's no handholding, and short of scamming on activities that involve real life money (character transfers, game timecard purchases) or violate game mechanics, caveat emptor is the rule. That said, it's not as horrible as some make it out to be - day to day trading is very safe. 99% of everything is sold on the 'normal' market, where the only thing to worry about is not understanding the difference between a comma and a period. The 'escrow' system is a bit less safe, but unless you're a moron and buy things without looking at them (would you bid on an eBay auction on the title of the auction alone? no?), you're perfectly safe. (Indeed, they're presently banning people exploiting a bug that makes blueprint copies (not so valuable) appear as originals (valuable)).
3. It's a game. The fact of the matter is, virtual items are not dealt with via modern law. In the future, they very well might be, but presently, as far as the law is concerned, there is no scam, no theft, no anything. Go before a judge complaining about your loss of a few million ISK while saying, 'actual real cash value' and you'd be laughed out of court.
One of the interesting aspects is that the person who pulled the scam said so, publicly. And said who his main character is. One of the flaws in the game is that in theory, he could have transferred this money to another character he owned and been utterly untracable. But he came out and said 'I did it, these were the handful of characters I used, this is my main who I always play with'.
More interesting, he's set a bounty on himself of 1.2 bil and gone out looking for fights. (You collect the bounty if you blow up his ship, then catch his pod and blow that up too. A little tricky, but not impossible.) With 700bil in the bank, he can afford pimpin' ships and the best gear, and not worry about when he loses them. He's already been found and podded once (by some members of the Mercenary Coalition, if anyone's curious), not sure if he's going to keep bountying himself. Given his attitude, I suspect he will, since he's looking for a fight and pvp experience.
Except US government treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the citizens. They are obligated to tax us in order to repay them.
Thats one thing that makes municiple bonds attractive to some. Especialy if they are from a different country.
This occurs regularly in Eve, this just happens to be the latest incarnation (the title of "rocks" is way overblown, 99.9% of players in Eve won't even know or care). The basic "problem" in Eve is that there are no enforced laws on corporate behavior. No SEC or FTC. Therefore, it's almost a certainty that any venture that requires joint ownership and capital will ultimately end up in fraud. It's a great study for both libertarian and regulatory economists alike. Although some people may relish the prospect of no government regulation, the problem is that no grand projects of joint capital are possible (they do happen, but they are always under a cloud of suspicion and will ultimately fall to greed in most cases). This means there are no truly reliable avenues of investment (there is also no FDIC for joint ventures). For those who are going to point out that you can buy shares in X venture currently in game, wait awhile.
Also, imagine the work it takes for one person to run a scheme of this size, dealing constantly with investments, withdrawals, and dividends. Sure, it racks up a lot of cash, but the perpetrator probably had to "play" 23/7 for six months to pull it off, constantly dealing with minutiae. So, yes, well done in terms of a scam, but it takes a hell of a lot of work. Is 700 billion units of virtual cash worth it? Maybe, when you consider how much it could be transferred into real currency if he bought time cards with ISK and sold them.
However, here another economic curiosity comes into play - the number of people selling time cards is a limited number (you cannot buy time cards from CCP with ISK, someone has to pay CCP real money and then put them up for sale in ISK). Cashing out would spike the sell price of time cards in *ISK* through the roof. He would have to deal both the minutiae of buying and with selling hundreds if not thousands of time cards, which would also drive the cost of time cards down *in real currency*.
Basically, when you figure it all out and divide the final take in real currency by time spent to do the scam and then transfer it all, I doubt the hourly pay is impressive. So, sorry folks, no get rich quick scheme here.
Thats part of the joy of eve :)
:)
:)
They even talk about this sort of thing in the glossies
Spies, cheats, scams it make the game just that little bit more interesting
Anyone can set up a corporation or alliance.
A while back during one war, a spy infiltrated our Corp.
He flew with us for over 6 months, He became a close and trusted friend to many of us
before cleaning out the Corporation lockers.
Ahh well such is life
Betrayal, Intrigue, injustice, Loyalty, Nobility
These are things that the game mechanic pretty much leaves alone
and good on them too... Make the game that much richer in terms
of content, risks and rewards
Maybe thats why most of the people I've meet in game tend to be older
that what I suspect would the norm in most MMO's
youngest pup I've met is 25, most of the people in our Corp are 30-40 years old
There is a fair bit of CCP generated content...
Missions, Mining, Research & development, Manufacturing and Complexes
But by far the most interesting content us player generated
There is plenty of scope for Traders, Mercs and Piracy
The player generated 'content' is IMHO the more interesting side
The wars, the pirates, the spies, the intrigue
Every region outside of empire space has it's own history of alliances
betrails, victories and defeats. This is history generated by players not CCP
It helps that the eve universe is played on one game instance
(Actually I believe there is Chinese server cluster now too)
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
Just because there's a contractual constraint on selling something doesn't mean it isn't income. In fact, one of the common tax miseries is receiving something you can't sell, like restricted stock, and having to pay taxes on it before you can sell it.