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Virtual Bank Woes
bobmorning writes "EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of virtual cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized, leading to an in-game freezing of accounts for any individual or organization that happened to have invested any InterStellar Kredits (ISK) with the bank. Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as 'Ricdic') had embezzled — and then sold in the real world — over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently-installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is."
We clearly need a virtual federal reserve and a bernanke-borg.
I used to play Eve-Online, and the only rule that was absolute, was that you should NEVER trust people that you are not in real life friends with. Almost every person in the game would rob you at a moment's notice with no remorse, and brag about it afterwards. There's stories where people joined companies and rose to the ranks of massive alliances, just so they could close the alliance and screw everyone ever. To top it off, there's not a single thing you could do about it. That's why the banks have always baffled me. I've never been able to understand how giving your isk to somebody else could ever possibly turn out to be good. One other major example of this was the lotteries they used to run, somebody ran a lottery giving out massive prizes for weeks, until he was trusted enough to get a few billion isk in lottery ticket purchases. Then he ran off with the entire thing and vanished.
This seems very cynical, and I'm sure many of you are members of successful corporations where you trust the random people you meet on the Internet. However, I was in the Phoenix Alliance, and I remember the first Dreadnought stolen because somebody has the password to the damn space station and gave it out.
So yeah. In summary, trust nobody that you can't go beat up in person.
Well if he sold it for the going standard rate, which is unlikely... about 4 thousand USD. Though if he bided his time he could get 6k in afew months at his own isk selling site.
Every time someone posts a story about an MMO, people always make comments about players needing a life. It sounds a lot like there is real drama with real people happening in Eve, and the players get a chance to do things they would never do in real life (such as run a bank).
It doesn't seem that bad. It's real human interaction, real relationships and drama. It's not the sort of thing I'd want to do, but I can see why people get a lot out of it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... I find these stories interesting. How is the online world coping with the new institutions it must create with the added complexities of fast growing virtual worlds? Will it find a new way of doing things, or just repeat the same mistakes (this looks like repeating the same mistakes that were made a few hundred years ago). I have no idea how much a billion ISK is, but this is pretty big news to those that had their "money" in these institutions, even if it was just for play.
In a world of massive real world bailouts and ~10% unemployment, this may not "matter" much, but it's definitely news for nerds.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I've been playing EVE since 2004 and the current going rate for 1(one) billion ISK is around $50, although if you purchase 10 billion or more there are discounts to be had. So, all in all 200 billion ISK is around $10,000 in real US currency.
No, it's a giant economic sandbox with spaceship fights. Eve's economy is almost entirely player-driven, so the layers of complexity are almost impossible to measure.
That things like this don't happen more often is the real surprise. The most successful organizations in the game are either pathologically paranoid, real-life friends, or sociopaths like goonfleet.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
at least everyone's accounts are eFDIC insured up to $100k fake dollars.
Good thing, too... this sort of thing could spark an virtual bank run resulting in an imaginary depression. Next thing you know, everyone would be forced to ride the rails as hoboes in Railroad Tycoon.
This space available.
Because you'd think a virtual bank would be managed better than a real life bank. Apparently, they're managed the same way.
Would you?
The only reason real bankers aren't stealing billions is because they don't want to go to pound-you-in-the-ass federal prison.
Take that away and bingo, everyone's a Christopher Skase.
Yeah the economic crisis is pretty bad here in virtual world. I can no longer afford my second life prostitutes. I even lost my job as a store owner in WoW -- they outsourced it to AI where all the bots do the work. I can't even afford my mana potions, I have to connect to a Canadian server just to buy them on the cheap...
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
No but it is a violation of the TOS, and can result in both the seller and buyer's acounts getting banned and the isk deleted.
There are legit (ccp allowed) methods to turn $$$ into isk. you buy game time, eigther as code or an ingame item (plex) and sell that for isk.
Mycroft.
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I'd like to posit that the money in Eve Online is just as real as a dollar bill. I mean, you can buy ISK on Ebay, so there's an exchange rate of about 12 cents per million ISK. It's measurable, it's real, because ISK can be purchased for real money. What makes ISK less real than the Hungarian Forint, or the Chilean Peso, or even the US dollar? Currency very simply is people placing value in something that is not really intrinsically valuable. IE. paper dollars, little metal coins, huge stone wheels, bits of code relating to ISK, etc. So b/c it's valuable to these people we have a situation where the currency is very real. At least as real as any other form of currency has been.
The most successful organizations in the game are either pathologically paranoid, real-life friends, or sociopaths like goonfleet.
What a shock; the most successful organizations in the real world are the same way(s). Sadly, our government is all three - pathologically paranoid cronies bent on controlling society to their own ends. Thank goodness there are competing factions within! (Just like Eve)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My understanding of EVE is not perfect. But what I managed to piece together from years of coverage on slashdot, it appears to be a virtual recreation of the country of Nigeria.... with lasers...