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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.
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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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...