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Massive Bank Fraud In EVE Online
djconrad was one of several readers to point out the latest major scandal in EVE Online, the space MMO notable for its large, player-driven economy and the entertaining stories it often generates. A player named Ricdic, chairman of a large in-game bank, decided to embezzle roughly 200 billion ISK (the game's currency). Ricdic exchanged the ISK for about $5,000 to pay off real-life debts. Massively has an in-depth write-up about how the theft affects the game and its players. Since the scandal became public, there's been a run on the virtual bank, and its executives are doing what they can to reassure people that it will continue to exist. Ricdic was banned, not for the embezzlement, but for trading 200 billion ISK for real currency, which is forbidden by EVE's EULA.
Either way, I don't know why this is surprising except for one fact: That it didn't happen much, much sooner. That's what happens when there's no real world consequences for your behavior (or you think you can avoid them).
EVE continues to be an interesting study in politics and intrigue but I will forever fail to understand its appeal as an MMO. I've tried playing it - it totally does not appeal to me in any way, what-so-ever. It was about as dreadfully boring as a game could possibly be without being nothing at all. In my opinion. But, its political backstabbings and manipulations of its systems sure as hell generate some interesting stories... Intensely interesting and dreadfully boring at the same time.
You might think I'm being sarcastic but really. Each time I read one of these stories about an Eve problem I only want to play the game more. I've played other MMOs and having full banking institutions, investments, and companies exist is within its self very rare.
I mean all games have some kind of monetary system and by extension a way to trade money for goods. But very few are able to recreate the real world so closely.
Take for example World of Warcraft, you have gold, and you can trade. But you'd never have real businesses exist because the game just doesn't work that way, let alone banks.
Both. He works for Goldman Sachs...
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Because for EVE veterans a scam hardly qualifies as "news". ;)
There are already games that let you do that. They're called NYSE, NASDAQ and FOREX.
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Either way, I don't know why this is surprising except for one fact: That it didn't happen much, much sooner. That's what happens when there's no real world consequences for your behavior (or you think you can avoid them).
That's not surprising. It happened before and it will happen again.
EVE has a very rich history of large scale scams, reaching from investment scams like this one to long-planned infiltrations of alliances like the infamous heist by GHSC (who incidentally ripped assets to the tune of 200ish billion ISK off one of the major alliances again just recently).
The only "surprising" and novel bit about this story is that he apparently/supposedly didn't do it for the e-fame or e-gain, but for RMTing the scammed ISK because of real life troubles, which was the reason for his subsequent banning.
I don't know why this is surprising except for one fact: That it didn't happen much, much sooner.
Because people are inherently honest. Dishonesty is an abnormality. Even in this case, it took $5,000 in immediate real life needs for this person to cause harm in a video game to a fictional economy, and the only punishment is that a few ones and zeroes got flipped around so they didn't like a few other ones and zeroes anymore. It's this very fact that pisses game theorists off to no end -- agents in the system continue to act completely irrationally (ie, to trust) when the rules clearly indicate every advantage for the "cheater" and next to no consequences.
Trust is inherently illogical and irrational and yet it works. Society is built on networks of trust -- most of our institutions and infrastructure that allow life to go on the way it does right now depends on the vast majority of people playing by the rules. Rules which, for the most part, are arbitrary. There are very few rules that are "naturally derived" -- For example, not murdering people is a naturally derived rule because we can't exactly make going extinct legal. O.o Traffic laws are, for the most part, arbitrary -- red means stop, green means go, drive on the left (or right), etc. But we'd never be able to use the shared public resource (the highway) without them.
Human beings are social creatures. In order to survive, we have to trust one another. Every social organizational structure is derived from this basic concept -- it simply varies in how we trust, to what degree, and to whom.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Eve is by far both my favorite MMO and my favorite game I don't play. Anytime the world is getting boring, you can count on some major scandal or event in Eve to pep things up.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Trust is inherently illogical and irrational and yet it works. Society is built on networks of trust -- most of our institutions and infrastructure that allow life to go on the way it does right now depends on the vast majority of people playing by the rules. Rules which, for the most part, are arbitrary. There are very few rules that are "naturally derived" -- For example, not murdering people is a naturally derived rule because we can't exactly make going extinct legal. O.o Traffic laws are, for the most part, arbitrary -- red means stop, green means go, drive on the left (or right), etc. But we'd never be able to use the shared public resource (the highway) without them.
Human beings are social creatures. In order to survive, we have to trust one another. Every social organizational structure is derived from this basic concept -- it simply varies in how we trust, to what degree, and to whom.
If you think about it from an evolutionary point of view, trust is an excellent adaptation for a social species. Being trusting is the sort of thing that might not work so well for a given individual but works out for the species in the long run. It's like cuteness. What's the evolutionary purpose of finding creatures with infantile features and proportions cute? Easy: it's so we don't murder our young. If those little darlings didn't worm their way into our hearts at first sight, it's for damn sure they wouldn't make it through the third night of random crying, feeding, and diaper changes.
Of course, it's always possible to push the boundaries of society to the point where people stop trusting. We're in danger of this very thing right now. I mean shit, there's a lot of trust involved in working for two weeks with the understanding that there will be a paycheck on payday! I've seen smaller companies so fucked up that the boss has to pay on a weekly, sometimes daily schedule because people don't trust him. We're seeing that in the economy at large as the expectations of the common citizen have become more and more cynical through time. Republicans exist to fuck the poor to death. Democrats exist to pretend to be an alternative to getting fucked to death and while they're taking no direct part in the rape, they're standing in the corner stroking their puds while the Republicans go to town.
Once that social contract is broken, all the scotch tape in the world won't put it back together again.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yeah, but their graphics sure sucks and blows at the same time. At best you get some vector graphics... pfff, get with the times, morons!
'sides, last time I went for PvP I got pummeled by GMs and locked outta the server. Effing carebears.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Banning Ricdic for making $5,000 in real money from the game will probably result in him making more real money, from real work, in the real world. He might even meet a real girl and have a real relationship and real children. Hardly seems like much of a punishment, if you ask me. If the developers of EVE wanted to punish Ricdic, they'd have given him two more accounts....for free.
CCP warns consistently that they track all ISK transfers and once they come down on an ISK-seller, all the money he ever traded is not only gone, but replaced by the same figure with a "minus" in front of it. If you bought a lot of cash it could mean you'd be bankrupt on that character.
I'm not sure how often CCP exactly does that kind of thing, but in this case they have a pretty good incentive to come down hard on the sellers and buyers.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)