EVE Online Ponzi Scheme Nets $50k Worth of In-Game Currency

Calidreth writes "EVE Online is famous for its stories of theft, underhanded dealings, criminal empires and general unscrupulous play. For EVE players, this is generally an accepted part of the game and part of the risk players run. The type of scheme might be old, but the profits were big in the latest EVE Online scam, which has broken records and is now being called the biggest scam in the game's history."

Comments

It's fun when it's fiction

[i kan reed]

regardless of how much real-world money the fraud was supposedly worth, it was all fictional money people basically invested for fun. Anyone treating a game as a serious investment has problems that the FEC can't fix.

I see this as a positive thing for EVE, because it underlies how the game is a kind of organized crime simulator all-the-more.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[JavaBear]

Not quite.

While the currency IS virtual, people are still spending a LOT of time playing in order to earn this kind of money.

That said, kudos to the people pulling it off. It fits well within the game.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

it was all fictional money

All money is.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Culture20]

In a game where you can pretend to be a vicious murdering pirate, is it okay to pretend to be a white collar criminal?

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Skuld-Chan]

What is the difference?

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[sheetsda]

people are still spending a LOT of time playing in order to earn this kind of money.

Not necessarily. If you have ISK to invest it doesn't take a lot of time to make more. I've made about 600 million ISK each of the last couple months by spending 15 minutes a day managing my investments. I guess you could argue for 7.5 hours invested per month this is not a very good pay rate but in the MMO scheme of things this is virtually no time at all.

I've come to a point where the game is actually boring because I have more cash than I need and nothing left to work for because skills take so long to train. I have the best gear I can buy for my skills, and my progression to bigger and better things is limited entirely by the flow of time rather than anything that gives me an incentive to play the game. I consider this an immense design flaw. Level 4 missions are boring. Mining is boring. Exploring is marginally interesting in the same way as a sudoku puzzle but ultimately futile because it just nets me more money. Switching to a PvP clone slows down skill training which is admittedly a tough decision in the face of mounting boredom. There is no reason for me to even log in besides managing investments and talking to corpmates. Needless to say I'm looking forward to Diablo3.

Cue some tool replying to this saying "If you can buy everything you need with under X bajillion ISK then you must not have faction module ABC which offers 0.0001% better stats than your meta-level 4 ABC module."

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[sheetsda]

whoops - There were suppose to be <Off-topic rant> tags around those last two paragraphs. Darn HTML stripping.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Nick Ives]

Actually, some people do treat Eve as a serious investment, like the real money traders ISK Bank. Using them violates the TOS; it's not something I would do even though their prices are far cheaper than selling PLEX purchased legitimately.

Having said that, ISK Bank apparently make enough money to keep the Russian that runs it in vodka and caviar.

For most people Eve is just a game though. There's no legitimate way to extract money from it, in fact the smart way to play Eve is to figure out how to generate enough revenue in-game for the minimum effort, so you don't have to spend any more money on it.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Nethemas the Great]

That's not a very nice portrayal of carebears... Unlike pirates, we make you feel good about yourself and your investments before we siphon off your holdings. Surely that's got to count for something.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[shentino]

The money may be fictional, but the guns the feds will point your way for not using them to pay your taxes, are very much real.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Scott Lockwood]

Rather than slowing things down, set up a real alt, not using one of your two spare character slots. If you're making that much, you can buy two plex's a month in game, right? Train the other one to do cool shit, but take your time. One of my corp mates has an alt that he's done _nothing_ with except train core cert to elite. Now that he has core at elite, all he has to do is train up whatever skills he wants for whatever ships and weapons. That doesn't take all that long.

Or, go whole hog and train up to fly a titan.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[KahabutDieDrake]

I want you to consider this a helpful post, not bashing on you.

The reason you are bored is because you aren't playing EVE yet. You are just playing in the baby area, with the toys we left there to keep the kids from pissing us off. I'm entirely serious. If you have been playing EVE for more than 6 months, and you haven't gotten involved in some form or another of PVP, then you are denying yourself the entire POINT of EVE. Not to whip out the old stereotypes, but carebearing has never really been the point of EVE, despite the fact that CCP recognizes it as a major contingent of the player base.

I've been playing EVE for a long time. (I'll spare you the self important listing of badassery). It seems to me that the reason EVE stands apart isn't its intricate market, or massive universe (although that helps), what really sets EVE apart is that you can actually BUILD something. I don't mean a space mining outpost attached to a moon like baby to a tit. I mean empires. I've seen more than a few come and go, and each one changed the landscape. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. There are entire periods of EVE history where massive portions of the player base were repressed by overly powerful empires. (Moo, for instance) But back to my point, EVE lets the players build an empire... and then, just like the real world, you have to defend it, expand it, make it righteous, or, if it should not stand, if it is not good enough you can tear it down.

That might sound overly romantic, because aren't we talking about spreadsheets in space? Maybe. I'm sure it's a matter of perspective. My perspective has been entertaining. I watched one man pull off a coupe and take down a 5k player alliance. Funny what putting the enemy jump scouts into your gang and opening a cyno can do. (and if you play eve and don't know what I mean, you are missing out)

I know not everyone wants to deal with the 'people' in EVE, and even less the alliance politics, but if you aren't involved, you'll never be intrigued, and you'll never have the fate of thousands resting on F1-F8. If you play the game, you should not deny yourself this experience.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[KahabutDieDrake]

The pirates can only take what you bring out into space with you. The white collar criminals take everything you left back at home.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[deains]

They'll never get the ISK out into real money now. If they were aiming to do that, the very last thing they would want is to draw attention to the whole deal, now the money's so notorious it's going to be painfully obvious to EVE's GMs if it starts turning into cash.

They've not broken any game rules so far. Basically, they're sitting on 1tn of in game money and are completely fireproof for their crimes (well, unless they wander out into null-sec and find some heavies waiting for them). If they wanted to make real money, they could've broken the rules a lot earlier, exploited the game, and turned the ISK over to real money a lot sooner before they got caught.

This is a game, and the schemers are just in it for the evulz. They're just very good at what they do, so kudos to them for that. :)

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Nick Ives]

Yea, I think it's fairly clear these guys aren't thieves or RMT, they're just scammers. 1tn should be enough to keep them in PvP fits and PLEX for many years to come!

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[war4peace]

I've come to a point where the game is actually boring because I have more cash than I need and nothing left to work for because skills take so long to train. I have the best gear I can buy for my skills, and my progression to bigger and better things is limited entirely by the flow of time rather than anything that gives me an incentive to play the game. I consider this an immense design flaw. Level 4 missions are boring. Mining is boring. Exploring is marginally interesting in the same way as a sudoku puzzle but ultimately futile because it just nets me more money. Switching to a PvP clone slows down skill training which is admittedly a tough decision in the face of mounting boredom. There is no reason for me to even log in besides managing investments and talking to corpmates. Needless to say I'm looking forward to Diablo3.

Buy a PvP character and use it as money sink. No need to endlessly train a new character, especially if you bathe in ISK.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[56ker]

Yes it's fictional money, but people spend real money (each month) to play the game. Once people are spending real money, they expect certain safeguards. How much you can safeguard against human behaviour I don't know. However I do remember a story about the company that runs EVE Online employing an economist to deal with the ingame currency ISK. Most of what is described though is part of the game and learning not to get scammed etc.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[vlm]

Not quite.

While the currency IS virtual, people are still spending a LOT of time playing in order to earn this kind of money.

That said, kudos to the people pulling it off. It fits well within the game.

Isn't that kind of like declaring a loss of $X billion dollars when they cancelled Eureka because each fan burned at least an hour a week at an average hourly pay rate of ...

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[brkello]

Eve is best read about. Interesting stories come out of it. But pretty much everything, PvP included is dull. I mean...F1-F8 orbit...that's combat. Defend your territory! Oh, that's sitting at a gate in overwhelming numbers and blowing up someone who too a wrong turn. I'd rather just read about the cool stuff that happens in Eve. Because the stories are great, playing the game is like a root canal. Plus, reading the stories I don't have to deal with the playerbase and hear stupid terms like carebear thrown about.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[brkello]

Retarded. Yeah, it only has value because we give it value...but until money can't provide me with the stuff I need to survive: food, shelter, etc...then it isn't fictional.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Coren22]

I can see you have never defended a system then. That doesn't work for system defense. Titans can jump entire fleets in to system without a gate, capitals can jump in and demolish your gate camp. When you say things like this, it makes me see you are a low-sec pirate, not as a sov warfare person.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Coren22]

I can use isk to buy things I need in game, therefore it is real money.

Re:It's fun when it's fiction

[Coren22]

AUR. And everyone thinks it is the stupidest thing in game...

EVE players fell for that?

[Baloroth]

You'd think a bunch of accountants wouldn't fall for a Ponzi scheme.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[h4rr4r]

Looking at recent history it seems like they are very likely to fall for such a thing.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[i kan reed]

Actually, that seems to be the majority of people falling for Ponzi schemes lately. Just look at who invests in hedge funds.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[zget]

Why the word "fall" for it? I'm sure there are people who understand it fully, and took the risk to gain some easy profit. That's true in this Eve case and in real life. They can gain good profit easily, while understanding that there's also a risk of never seeing the money again.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[Stormthirst]

The thing is, *if* you know it's a Ponzi scheme, and *if* you know when it's going to collapse so you can pull out at the right time, it can net you quite a lot of money. Not realising either of these two things of course can be a way to loose a lot of money too.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[bistromath007]

Wake me when EVE has 419 scams.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[h4rr4r]

Because if you understood it fully then you are a scammer, not a victim. The only way to make money from a Ponzi scheme is to get in early, those who get in early are running the scam not victims.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[jdpars]

No, one of the worst things about a Ponzi scheme is being someone not screwed over by it, yet not knowing it's a scam. Are you supposed to give the money back? What happens if someone finds out you didn't lose everything? They'll be very angry with you, because usually that first line of early-adopters are the people attacked, not the folks who started it.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[djdanlib]

The victim mentality doesn't mix well with any kind of gambling.

You "profit from a venture" if it works in your advantage.

You "fall for a scam" if it doesn't work out in your advantage.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[causality]

Because if you understood it fully then you are a scammer, not a victim. The only way to make money from a Ponzi scheme is to get in early, those who get in early are running the scam not victims.

Someone who invests in a thing without knowing all about it, without fully evaluating exactly what risk they are taking, is not a victim. They are consciously making a poor, risky decision. When they do this and lose their shirts you call them "victims". That's some kind of emotional sensation that sounds somewhat reasonable but does not stand up to examination.

From the scammers themselves, as quoted in TFA:

We set up our financial planning to be able to grow as fast as possible, but with increments that would enable us to efficiently reach our goals; not too fast, not too slow. Both going too slow or too fast would have stopped us too soon. We adapted our advertising to the financial planning. We only advertised in local chatboxes in solar systems. We had several reasons for this method. (One was to stay in control of the amount of attention our services received.

We slowly increased the amount of ads dropped per day. We intentionally didn't go big on the forums. The forums, market discussions specifically, have always been the place to "bash" any new services. A big drawback to forums is - information stays on forums forever. Every potential investor would read all the negativism. With ads in local, we got some negative responses too, but they disappeared after a very short while. That's how a chatbox works.

Generally, honest investment plans are done in the open. They do not fear a permanent record. They are prepared to answer any negative complaints and, if valid, they are also prepared to make it right. Honest investments also tend not to promise exceedingly large returns for little or no work. What kind of person really needs to have this explained to them as though it were new, mysterious information?

Whether it is virtual currency or real currency, scams like this are merely implementing a stupidity tax. As Thomas Tusser said, "a fool and his money are soon parted." As I believe the network effects of rampant stupidity are doing immeasurable damage to the economy and the general quality of life on this planet, I consider anything that makes (the strictly opt-in kind of) stupidity more painful to be a public service.

Whether it offends anyone or not, the truth is that there is a definite correlation between a) not investing in shady operations that shy away from openness and transparency and b) not getting screwed over. That's a bit like saying there's a definite correlation between not punching a brick wall and not having a painful hand, only the brick wall doesn't gain anything from that transaction so there's much less room for misplaced sympathy and all the confusion of simple facts it causes in that particular example.

It's not like the world has never seen a Ponzi scheme before, it's not like there are no definite signs when you are dealing with one, and it's not like you should invest funds you cannot afford to lose in shady operations. For those who refuse to see it that way, there is always what you call "victimhood".

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[h4rr4r]

This is not gambling. Gambling is where you are told there are two possible outcomes win/lose and there is some outside condition on which they are based.

This is a scam. You are not told how the game works, or that the table is rigged.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[jgtg32a]

With the amount of backstabbing that goes on in that game I'd think the 419s would be common.
First hit on EVE 419 Scam
http://www.eve-search.com/thread/1299045/page/1

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[h4rr4r]

Someone who invests in a thing without knowing all about it, without fully evaluating exactly what risk they are taking, is not a victim. They are consciously making a poor, risky decision. When they do this and lose their shirts you call them "victims". That's some kind of emotional sensation that sounds somewhat reasonable but does not stand up to examination.

They are victims if they no know better. Is it fair to steal candy from a baby? To rob the elderly because they are too weak to protect themselves?

Generally, honest investment plans are done in the open. They do not fear a permanent record. They are prepared to answer any negative complaints and, if valid, they are also prepared to make it right. Honest investments also tend not to promise exceedingly large returns for little or no work. What kind of person really needs to have this explained to them as though it were new, mysterious information?

Idiots, and guess what? The world is full of them.

I know this, you know this, but everyday people like this take the money of people who don't. In the real world they often exploit the old and uneducated. We can either say it is ok for you to cheat your fellow man or we can say that it is not. I know where I stand.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[causality]

No, one of the worst things about a Ponzi scheme is being someone not screwed over by it, yet not knowing it's a scam.

A scam that stands up to even a small amount of serious scrutiny is an exceedingly rare entity. If you didn't know, you definitely could have obtained a good idea. While proving that something like this is a scam is usually difficult, knowing it is not. It's just a matter of basic due diligence.

But maybe you're the trusting sort who wants to believe that every random stranger who comes up to you with an offer that sounds great is an honest person who is looking out for your best interests. This is truly unwise, and enables the evil things people will do for money and other forms of selfish gain, but it happens. So in spite of the odds against you, you actually profited.

Why should I blame you for that? Why should anyone? This isn't a "why not" question, it's properly a "why" question. The burden of proof on the person who says you should be blamed.

Are you supposed to give the money back?

Since it is yours, you are "supposed" to do with it as you see fit. If you want to give it back, no one should stop you. If you don't want to give it back, no one should take it by force. No one should fashion weapons out of your heart-strings and guilt-trip you into giving it back either.

You could give it back for the wrong reason, not from your real desire but from some sense that you have to, usually with a reason that sounds noble on the surface. The problem is, that reason won't stand up to examination. I'll explain with the next paragraph.

What happens if someone finds out you didn't lose everything? They'll be very angry with you, because usually that first line of early-adopters are the people attacked, not the folks who started it.

The term for this is jealousy. If the jealousy of others is something you want to legitimize, something you want to feed so that it may grow and prosper, something you want to reward by giving it what it demands so that next time it will be even more insistent and self-assured, then give the money back because of someone who says you shouldn't have it because they didn't get it. I will say that if you actually give a damn about that person, you wouldn't feed their character weaknesses, not even if they hate you for refusing to do it.

If they make this a condition of talking with you, being civil to you, being your friend, etc, then they are not a friend because they are manipulating you. That's something no real friend would do. It then boils down to a matter of your own selfish impulses, like whether you need people around you to think you're a swell, likable guy no matter how phony it is, no matter how much you're actually enabling what's wrong with them. In that case you'll have to put on a show to stay in the business of winning their approval, which they will no doubt reward by telling you how good you are, that way your notion of your own goodness and self-worth becomes something they can give to you and withhold from you.

I hope that speaks to the deeper reason, the real reason why you're worried about this.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[causality]

They are victims if they no know better. Is it fair to steal candy from a baby? To rob the elderly because they are too weak to protect themselves?

There's lots of things I don't know how to do. I either learn how to do them (that's education) or I don't attempt them at all if learning how isn't worth the effort to me. Either way, I understand when I do and don't know what I am dealing with. This is the kind of common sense you can't really teach someone, except by example. It's not "education" in the standard sense, not at all. Lots of very educated people are still naive and gullible.

It would be wrong ("unfair" if you must view it that way) to steal candy from a baby. But then, I don't see babies soliciting investment opportunities in candy Ponzi schemes. I don't see them being actively involved in their own scamming. So you'd have to actually rob the baby, that is take something away by force. Like your example dealing with the elderly, robbery is considered a violent crime for a reason. It does not depend on anyone falling for anything. It is brute force or threat of same. It works on the wise and the stupid alike.

You can try to conflate falling for a scam with the violent crime of robbery if you think that's the only way you have an objection, but it's weak. It makes you look like you either don't really know what you're talking about or are very desperate and clutching at straws to make a point because you have a weak position. It's exactly like the copyright cartels when they try to pretend like infringing copyright is the same thing as theft when they know (or should know) damned well that it isn't. In their case, they're simply being dishonest. Are you?

Idiots, and guess what? The world is full of them.

Yes, it is. The funny thing about idiots is that they don't like learning even though they almost never have any sort of learning disability. They have libraries, books, people willing to teach them, schools, the Internet, and many other resources at their disposal which are either free or low-cost and accessible. They choose not to use them. They decide they have higher priorities. So be it. But that does not make them victims.

I know this, you know this, but everyday people like this take the money of people who don't. In the real world they often exploit the old and uneducated. We can either say it is ok for you to cheat your fellow man or we can say that it is not. I know where I stand.

Once again you're trying to twist what I said and once again I wonder if you are just emotionally reactive or if you are deliberately dishonest.

Not once did I say it's okay to scam and cheat others. I said it amounted to a stupidity tax. I said something that makes stupidity more difficult, more painful, and less sustainable amounts to a public service. I never once made a moral judgment on the matter. You can proudly proclaim your condemnation of the scammers and pretend like I celebrate what they do, if that makes you feel better and lets you dream of being superior to something. The tactics you are using in this discussion suggest a deep-seated need to do that. After all it's not good enough that you are right; someone else must also be wrong, right?

But now that you mention it, no I don't particularly like scammers. I just recognize widespread, rampant stupidity and an anti-intellectual culture of impulsiveness among adult people to be a far greater problem in the scheme of things. If you got rid of that, you'd also eliminate scammers simply because such scams would no longer be profitable. So, as I always advocate, I focus on the cause and not the myriad effects of that cause when I want to eliminate something. It has never mattered to me if every single other person insists on being distracted by the branches and twigs; I go for the root.

I would much rather people get a clue and st

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[Nethemas the Great]

What I don't get is why anyone would bother with such "investments" in the first place. The ROI promised by investing in Eddie's company was really peanuts. It was rather like sitting on your hands while you watched interest accrue (and your money de-value) on a RL certificate of deposit. A couple basic trade runs would have netted better.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[shentino]

Pirates are like robbers, whereas scammers are like crooks.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[shentino]

The reason is that if you win you're not going to care if it was by fair or foul means. Most people are just greedy enough to leave it as "I win" and not give a shit if they cheated.

If you lose you're going to throw a fit and find out if you got cheated or lost fair and square, but if you win you're not going to care.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[Majik Sheff]

Or Social Security.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[HornWumpus]

He didn't say it, I will:

'it is an immoral act to let a sucker keep his money.'
'a fool and his/her money were lucky to get together in the first place.'

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[madmayr]

well, the roi wasn't too bad actually - 50% after 9 weeks is a nice interest, where you don't have to do anything for it you could focus on the stuff you really like to do, and not boring trading (yes, i might be biased on this one) and if you got your money out in time, it was actually a nice thing

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[Coren22]

Um, noone in the US that makes money can fail to "invest" in social security. It is called the Social Security Tax.

Re:EVE players fell for that?

[Coren22]

Haven't seen 419 scams, but have seen plenty of the eBay style scams on the contracts.

na na na na na na na na

[Thud457]

BITCOIN!1one!11

Don't understand spending time/money on game asset

[syousef]

I'm not a luddite by any means but I still don't understand people's will spend money on virtual property. I understand buying a game outright to play it. I understand renting one. I don't understand the willingness to pay real money for fictional in game articles. I think it's a form of insanity. In fact after contributing in game content for free in my younger days and watching games fade out of existence - even games with a rock solid user base like Microsoft Flight Simulator - I'm less willing to spend my limited time creating free content. Gaming is suppose to be fun. It shouldn't require substantial spends in time and effort. Same goes for simulation, unless you're training for a real world job.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[kalirion]

How is spending substantial sums of money on in-game items of no practical real-world value any different from spending substantial sums of money on real-world items of no practical real-world value?

Some people get as much enjoyment out of EVE as you might out of a month in the Bahamas. What makes them insane and you perfectly normal?

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[oneplus999]

It makes as much sense as someone paying thousands of dollars for a single club instead of buying a $100 set of clubs off ebay. They're playing the same game as everyone else either way, but some people are very competitive and willing to pay for an advantage.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Nick Ives]

Just FYI, the dollar figure quoted is how much it'd cost to buy that much ISK if you were converting Eve Game Time Cards at today's prices.

It's entirely possible, with a little skill and effort, to play Eve essentially for free. Spending money upfront to turn a GTC into ISK is actually pretty sensible. I did it to generate some operating capital and now I'm the situation of having a trade / industry alt that I log into every few days to update orders, move stock around and whatnot (pretty much the trading part of Elite) and a main PvP / PvE.

Eve is actually really casual friendly if you're a little smart about it!

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Relic of the Future]

Social signaling.

Why do you buy $30 t-shirts with hilarious geeky in-jokes, when the 3-for-$5 pack of t-shirts are, functionally, identical?

Social signaling.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[bistromath007]

The fact that EVE players enjoy making themselves vulnerable to theft in the same way others would enjoy getting some sun and a nap?

ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[WarlockD]

The story is awesome but I hate gamergaia.com, they just re-post crap from forms and put it on their site.

You get isk by selling these tokens. You buy a token using your credit card and the token represents one month of playtime. Then you can sell this token to another player for ISK. (At-least that's how it was a few years ago. Id figure they have a more direct method by now.)

In the article "The amount of ISK stolen was enough to buy 2,953 30-day time codes which is worth a whopping $51,577.50" This is 246 YEARS of play time here. There is no way of ever recouping this money either so it even makes that 50k worthless as any kind of measure.

1.8 trillion isk? Now thats much more scary number. Even if it did get to 1.0 trillion, that could supply pirates for a long time to come:P

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[jdpars]

Not legitimately. There is no conversion from in-game money or game-time tokens to real cash.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[pz]

Is it not possible to sell 30-day time codes on the open market, say through some well-known auction site?

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[ZankerH]

You can sell them on the in-game market for in-game currency. You can't (legitimately) sell them for real money.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[sourcerror]

You mean like WOW gold?

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Yvanhoe]

Of course you can. That is a loophole voluntarily left open.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nick Ives]

You can't turn the 30 Day Pilot License Extension back into a Game Time Card. It's not possible to legitimately sell PLEX for real money, although there are third party sites that will sell PLEX for real money at slightly below market rates and deliver then in-game via Jita contract.

That's a ToS violation though, so it's not legitimate.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nick Ives]

Black market RMT PLEX sells for almost half the price of PLEX acquired via GTC. The RMT seller must have a margin in there too, so in pure RMT terms if 1tn ISK is $51k in GTC PLEX it's worth more like $20k in RMT.

That's not that big a haul considering how long it took. Eddie really went to town spamming the trade hubs, I even remember seeing him in outlying systems round Amarr a few months back.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nethemas the Great]

I'd seen him around Amarr as well. To be honest the only really shocking thing to hear about this guy was that he was actually that successful. I had taken him for a small peanuts type newb operation. He certainly didn't portray his corp as anything else. The fact that people are so easily exploited is baffling.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nick Ives]

Yea I know, look at Spaceship Barbie's contract history! I figured out the 1 trit mineral scam the first time I ever hit the grid in Jita, it amazes me that people with billions of ISK don't twig.

Although having said that, you do get players who somehow manage to amass large amounts of ISK despite having no skill, like this killmail.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Yvanhoe]

Has anyone been prosecuted for that ?

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[shentino]

That discount reflects the following risks:

* It being against the rules, so the seller might be just ripping you off, since you have no recourse if you're cheated
* Getting caught and either banned or having the PLEX confiscated by a GM
* the buyer possibly being an undercover GM doing a sting.

It's black market for a reason. The guy selling it has no incentive except his reputation not to take your money and run. Since it's a TOS violation, you can't sue, and you can't complain to a GM.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Luckyo]

It's a contract violation, not a law violation. Contract violators don't get prosecuted - they simply suffer the penalties specified in contract (in this case, account termination).

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nick Ives]

As other people have pointed out RMT isn't illegal, it's just a breach of contract.

CCP have recently started to take a firmer line on RMT and have mass banned accounts suspected to be engaged in botting activity and RMT.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Nick Ives]

Actually, ISK Bank uses PayPal. If they fail to deliver, you can always use PayPal to get your money back.

If you get found out and banned though, well, that's always a risk.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[residieu]

And if I had the opportunity to sell my in game currency for $50k, I'd do it and not worry about my account being terminated.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[fishbowl]

No, not like WoW gold. There is no legitimate currency exchange for in-game currency in WoW. There may be a black market but that's irrelevant.

Look at the Linden Dollar from Second Life. It is independently traded for real currency on an open market. The thing that jumps out at me from the Linden Exchange is that I have seen it outperform the Dow several quarters running. What's really interesting is that it has volatility that doesn't track the exchange rates between the currencies that it's traded in. So it's not uncommon to see the SLL down against the Dollar and up against the Euro even when that's upside down with respect to just the Dollar versus the Euro.

The only things that stop it from being a "real investment" is that it's tied to a game company whose future is uncertain, and that there are trading limits (US$2,500/month, probably more if you actually have a subscription to the game). I think the main point is that you can trade the currency on a legitimate exchange market and that playing or even having a paid subscription to the game is not a requirement at all.
 

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[sourcerror]

"No, not like WoW gold. There is no legitimate currency exchange for in-game currency in WoW. "

Just like for EVE.

The point is for 99% of people it doesn't matter whether a market is black or white (as long it has a good reputation), as they don't intend to mention it in their tax forms anyway.

Re:ITS NOT REAL-WORLD MONEY!

[Coren22]

That killmail doesn't surprise me so much. I would bet he had just bought the carrier and was moving in order to get it fit. Capital mods are quite large and difficult to move around. Though if it was me, I would have at least fit shield hardeners and capacitor mods to recharge faster as they wouldn't be large and would be easy to move.

It also could have been "insurance fraud" and he forgot to remove the fighters.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Dominare]

Is Microsoft Office "real" or not? People pay a fee to use code. Whether that code produces a word processing application or the sword of 1,000 truths doesn't really make much difference at the end of the day, does it? You can argue that the word processor is more "useful" than the sword, but then you're basically arguing against anyone spending their money on things that are fun instead of useful.

Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[harl]

Every money making venture in Eve is scam. If it doesn't start out as one it turns into one when the pile of cash crosses a certain threshold.

There is no safe investment in Eve. We are all crooks.

I think the only reason these things continue to work is player churn.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[Rigrig]

FTFA:

Along the way, 345.18 billion ISK was paid out to investors as interest to make sure the scheme kept going. Another 452.72 billion was withdrawn by worried investors before the company shut down; that left 1,034 billion ISK in the hands of the company's owners.

I always wonder how many of these worried investors recognized the scheme for what it was right away, and decided to try and make some profit out of it themselves.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[harl]

A very small number would be my guess but I totally agree that there are some.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[MacGyver2210]

There's always PVP, using the scams only as a funding method for said PVP. Then it's still fun.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[gl4ss]

isn't eve just an excel sheet filling game in the end anyways? so these scams are the game.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[harl]

You're just repeating an often told but completely inaccurate joke.

The game is more social and politics than spreadsheets or even combat.

Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam.

[harl]

How is this scam not PvP all by its self?

Scammer's writeup

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to hear it from the people who created the Ponzi Scam

http://www.evenews24.com/2011/08/14/the-1-trillion-isk-ponzi-phaser-inc-speaks/

They did a write up for this eve centric news site.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[OttoErotic]

My thousand dollar club was worth every penny. With it I shattered the skulls of my foes and defended the realm against the white walkers. Or were you talking about some other type of club?

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[GodfatherofSoul]

People pay for game hacks. It's all about delivery of a service. Paying someone to read to you for an hour a day doesn't produce a tangible product either.

In other news...

[operagost]

Someone pilfered a bastard sword, golden dwarven ring, and 150,000 gold coins from another player on my DikuMUD yesterday.

redux

[theghost]

I read the same stories over and over again about EVE it really shouldn't be considered news anymore. It's Monday: babies were born, people died, people got scammed in EVE - business as usual.

The people who are serious about that game are there precisely to play with exactly those sorts of behavior. I feel a little sorry for new players who don't know that yet, but even the most basic research about the game would clue you in. What other games would call griefing and fraud are the real game of EVE - all that crap about spaceships is just to keep the marks distracted while the sharks nibble away at them.

Re:redux

[theghost]

There's about as much role-playing going on here as there is in a typical shooter. This is competitive economics, not role-playing.

And for the record, i'm not complaining about it. I'm saying essentially the same thing you are. This sort of thing is what the game is about. To borrow terminology from other MMOs, PvP happened on a PvP server.

And

[Dunbal]

If you send that ISK to me, I promise I will send you back three times as much!

Re:And

[Coren22]

And I will return 4 times as much over the course of a month. Trust me, I have all these happy customer testimonials!

EVE IRL

[Fuzzums]

I don't know anything about EVE, but it sounds like life and Wall street.
Everybody gets fucked and and robbed by a few bad guys and after 2 weeks we continue playing...

Re:EVE IRL

[gatkinso]

Except for in EVE... everyone is a bad guy.

Re:EVE IRL

[Jedi Alec]

And in EVE, even a couple of complete nobodies can actually accomplish things...like hiring some nasty people to shoot said wall street trader and perform unspeakable acts on his frozen corpse...

Why did I let my account expire again?

Re:EVE IRL

[war4peace]

You are right. It's why I quit EVE after some (I'd say too much) time.

Actually I never got scammed (despite a few close calls), but I kind of hated the virtual world.

You couldn't join a corporation without "background checks" and people were, simply put, paranoid to the bone. All I ever wanted is to shoot some NPCs and explore. My goals in EVE were fairly simple: Kill NPCs, get nice loot, use that loot to kill NPCs, ad nauseam. With friends.

But EVE is about people mindlessly killing each others' ships, blobbing their way into "enemy" territory, struggle for power and scam each other like there's no tomorrow.

Truth be told, I've had enough of this shit in RL to make it appealing to any extent in a virtual world. EVE is a nice universe, but it's pestered with scum. As my grandpa used to say (about the world in general): "It's very good looking. Too bad it's populated".

Re:EVE IRL

[war4peace]

You, friend, are one of the lucky few.
Don't get me wrong, I believe your story. But what if this sort of "background check" negatively affects honest people?
I never stole anything from anyone, not would I ever intend to. But I failed some so-called "background checks" for stupid reasons:
1. "You were part of a carebear corporation a year and a half ago". Damn, dudes, I was playing EVE for 2 months back then. Little did I know what's what. Doh!
2. "You were part of a corporation which was red to another corporation which was blue to an alliance which is now blue to us". Say WHAT? No, please, you gotta repeat that 'cause I haven't heard you. Who are you again? What?
3. "You don't have the skills we need". No shit. What skills DO you need? needless to say I got no reply whatsoever.
4. "Do you have more than one account?" "Yes." "Application Rejected". WTF!

My PvP sucked but I was very good at exploration and evading blockades. I was also a pretty good scout. I had literally thousands of bookmarks for most nullsec regions, especially NPC-owned ones. I could roam for weeks and not get shot. So my "lack of skill" would still bring value to many corporations.
I was part of a corporation for 4 months, all I did all day was guard them while they were endlessly mining in 0.0. At some point I got bored and told them "guys, I intend to leave, I'm bored here". I thought they would understand and my act of honesty would be appreciated. They were all "oh man, so sorry you are leaving us" but next day I logged on to find myself KICKED from the corp and marked with RED standings. I had to bribe a mate who was thinking of leaving as well to smuggle my stuff out of their 0.0 outpost.
Now a couple more things:
1. That guy who stole from you... he did that because he was granted access to that stuff.
2. EVE is not a harsh place. it's a place full of douchebags and corporations that require you to dedicate your life to EVE. Well screw that. Screw the mentality represented by: "That guy, man, he old, he from 2004, he must be uber-imba! This new guy, he new, he only from 2009, he must suxx0rz!".

Yes, Eve disappointed me. I am not thinking of returning anywhere in the near future. My money go now somewhere else.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[JaredOfEuropa]

Why is that dumb? Most subscription-based MMOs charge $15 / €12 or so a month. That is less than one visit to the cinema. For that price you get a hell of a lot of entertainment out of an MMO, if you're into that sort of thing. Even if you sometimes buy a few gewgaws for real money from other players or an in-game store, it's still one of the cheaper pastimes in €/hour.

By the way, some MMOs are great vehicles for player-run RP scenarios, and you'll find plenty of roleplaying going on in there. You're still bound to certain conditions set by the game, but on the other hand, an MMO gives you access to a vast pool of potential roleplayers to adventure with. It is different from tabletop RPGs but not necessarily a poorer experience.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Fallen Kell]

I and many EVE players will agree 100% with what you said. However, the reason there is an in-game to real life money conversion in EVE is because you can buy game time with real money, convert that game time into an in-game item which can then be sold for in-game money to another player, who can then convert that item back to game time on his account (or a few other services such as character transfers/portrait changes, etc). But the overall idea is simply that some people will have real money but not time, and others have time but no real money. This allows both those groups to enjoy EVE as many people will happily buy game time for the current rate of in-game money since they have good in-game income sources and/or play time dedicated to earning it.

There was recently (end of July) a pretty large revolt in the game based on leaked emails and internal communications from the developers/management at CCP (the makers/runners of EVE) about allowing other items to be purchased with "micro-transactions". That was all about what you are talking about. Most a perfectly fine about the current system of simply trading items which can be redeemed for game time. It is when you can start buying ships, equipment, stat boosts, etc., ( and in this case "gold ammo") that everyone has a problem. CCP is in a bad spot financially right now because they have bitten off more than they can chew. They are developing 2 other games at the moment in conjunction with continuing to run EVE, with their only income stream being EVE. And they took out a lot of loans to develop these 2 other games which are due up in September/October, but those games are not out yet, and are not generating income. Thus their only income stream is EVE, so they were trying to find ways to take advantage of the whole free-2-play model that some new games are using by introducing micro-transactions. The problem is the game isn't free-2-play and the player base didn't like the fact that they were seeing a their in-game market possibly get destroyed by having CCP add an additional way to buy items (i.e. direct purchase and not thru the current in-game systems which are controlled by the players themselves, who mine the minerals, refine the minerals, research the blue-prints, manufacturer the components, manufacture the item, haul the items to market hubs, and sell the items on the market, all of which takes time, required significant investment in both skills and assets to perform. And now CCP was just going to update the database and "poof" add magic items into the game). This would destroy the game market as there multiple prices for the same item would not be tolerated, and would get correct via market forces, but the only market force that is able to change is the one run by players, as CCP's prices would be whatever they decide worked best for their quarterly statements, which means that it would drive a lot of players out of the market, people who have invested billions and even trillions of in game money to make the items they are selling and have certain fixed in-game costs in creating the item, while CCP just updates a database.... Thus the revolt.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[White Flame]

Traveling to tourist destinations makes you vulnerable to theft, too.

Wow, that's terrible

[Lazy Jones]

$50K is like ... what real scammers make in a day, or in an hour. The actual tragedy is that ingame currency actually has an OOG value because like most MMO's, EVE has succumbed to the temptation of RMT.

Re:Wow, that's terrible

[MacGyver2210]

There is no real conversion between EVE I$K and real money other than the one players put on it, just like any other MMO game. It is against the TOS to actually buy or sell I$K for real money, though they give you a way to legitimately do it by buying game time cards and 'selling' those for in-game currency.

A 30-day time code will net you between 200Million I$K and 600Million I$K depending on where and when you sell it in the game. Like everything in EVE, there are wide market fluctuations for even the game time items.

50k?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that in Monocles?

How many Monocles per Library of Congress, even?

Re:50k?

[ozbird]

700.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[vux984]

Your somewhat vulnerable to theft anywhere. Whether going on vacation makes you more vulnerable depends where you are travelling FROM ;) and how much brought with you to lose.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[tsotha]

It wasn't theft. It's not like the scammers broke into their account and transferred ISK to another account. It was a scam, and scams are part of the game.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[tsotha]

It's entertainment. If you're getting your entertainment value for the money it's worth it. Otherwise not.

You can buy two months worth of EVE game time for the price of taking someone to the movies, so we're not talking a lot of money here.

Correct me if im wrong but...

[Jibekn]

Didn't the last 'big' scam in EVE go well past the 100,000 USD mark? This is not the biggest...

Re:Correct me if im wrong but...

[Majkow]

no that was how much RL $ the RMT site that got hacked was making. last few corp thefts were in the 800+ billion isk range

Re:Correct me if im wrong but...

[Jibekn]

Ahh, you're right, I thought the EIB was into the trillions, but they only pulled off about 800 billion. However, looking at old news storys they seem to value the 800 billion around 170,000 USD mark, has the ISK to USD market got way down in the last few years, or was that just a sensationalist claim?

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[bigstrat2003]

a) play the Elder Scrolls games. b) the inability to do what the fuck you want at any given time does not make it less of an RPG.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[zget]

Counter-strike players also make themselves vulnerable to death.. Come on, it's a fucking game.

Re:Banks in EVE are a sucker's bet

[Anonymous Coward]

In the real world, you can only confiscate anything if you have more guns, or if you have someone with more guns on your side. There are a class of heavily armed groups who exist principally to settle disputes between parties of disparate strengths along more "fair" lines than simple stronger-wins, by allowing either party to appeal to the group, which will then decide and enforce the "correct" outcome. These groups go by various names, such as "government", "mafia", or "yakuza", and share a universal intolerance for other such groups operating within their territory.

Why do you take one of these groups for granted in real life, but assume there aren't any number of such groups in-game?

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Herkum01]

Some players are not going to be able to compete against CCP, but there is no game without CCP.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[MacGyver2210]

You don't spend real-world money on in-game items. The only thing you have to pay for is the monthly subscription.

This is talking about someone who accrued a shitload of in-game currency, completely in-game. There was no real-world currency involved, except the article's comparison to $50,000 in subscription fees(because you can trade in-game currency for game time).

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[DrVxD]

Paying someone to read to you for an hour a day doesn't produce a tangible product either.

That rather depends on what you have them read; pick the right text and you may learn something. (or, even better, do what I did and learn how to read for yourself)

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[0137]

Interestingly enough these considerations apply precisely to EVE as well.

Re:Banks in EVE are a sucker's bet

[gatkinso]

Because.... the bankers simply transfer the funds to an anonymous alt... and then simply don't undock their banker toon for a few weeks.

Silly fool.

Scamming is the only true fun in EVE.

[gatkinso]

PVP: a slugflest the outcome of which is basically predetermined from the beginning of the engagement.

No Captain Kirk ramming the crippled ship down the giant evil reefer's maw, no Adama jumping the battlestar into the atmosphere underneath the Cylon over watch, no hiding behind an asteroid, no jamming their comms, no collision damage... no skill or cunning at all. Once someone with a better fit scrams you, you can take your hands of the keyboard and the outcome will be the same.

I should be able to punch a hole in a faction BS in my Velator when entering warp. At 3 AU/sec that BS should vaporize.

So instead of addressing this complete lack of playability, what does CCP do? On no, not fixing the game mechanics. We get walking in stations.

Bearparts

Re:Scamming is the only true fun in EVE.

[19thNervousBreakdown]

And yet, you still play. Get out while you can. It's never going to get better. If you stay, you're just one of the suckers.

Re:Scamming is the only true fun in EVE.

[gatkinso]

Actually I am a mid 2009 primary character and I shut my account down back in February. I bought 30 day PLEX out of curiosity over the whole NX thing a month ago, let it lapse again.

The game frankly sucks. It stovepipes you into one way of doing things: notice that all the successful players are virtually clones of one another.

Hell I sucked at it anyway.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[dlingman]

It also depends on whom you've told, and how much you didn't bring with you, but left behind to be pillaged.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Nick Ives]

Sure, reply with a character name for me to Eve mail. I'll be happy to give you a few hints upon receipt of 100m ISK :)

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[gmhowell]

My thousand dollar club was worth every penny. With it I shattered the skulls of my foes and defended the realm against the white walkers. Or were you talking about some other type of club?

I call shenanigans. Everyone knows you need to use obsidian to kill white walkers.

Marginal cost of virtual goods = $0

[Fred Ferrigno]

You can't make another Bahamas just by hitting a button on your keyboard.

Re:Marginal cost of virtual goods = $0

[KahabutDieDrake]

Unless you are a GM, you can't make another anything by just hitting a key on your keyboard. Due to abuse, even those powers are carefully monitored.

The marginal cost of any single item in the EVE universe... is roughly 1 super computer cluster, and 10 years of pay for a development team. Because that's what it took to get here. If you have the ability to bang out a new EVE cluster, populate it, breath life into that population, and then just pop new ships and items into being... well you go right on ahead and do so. You can reduce the ongoing costs to a trifle and pretend that makes the marginal cost of any (virtual) item zero, but that is a logically fallacy, because it assumes the existence of EVE and the player base and history, all of which had a cost and still does. If you want to debate real world versus "fake" money... head on over to congress or the house of commons, they have been debating fake money for weeks.

Did you know that the currency in EVE is backed by the EXACT same thing the currency in the united states is backed by? That's right, nothing what so ever. The promise of a government, that's it. It has value because a significant group of people say it does. Is this starting to sound familiar yet?

Re:Marginal cost of virtual goods = $0

[Yamioni]

Um... How do you think God did it? By crossing his arms and squinting really hard while nodding his head? No, he did it the hard way, by programming it from scratch directly in binary. You should have seen how fast His tentacles moved typing out those ones and zeroes! You also should see the pile of burned out keyboards he has in his garage. Designing an entire universe in six days directly in binary is no small feat for any deity.

Re:Marginal cost of virtual goods = $0

[Fred Ferrigno]

You can reduce the ongoing costs to a trifle and pretend that makes the marginal cost of any (virtual) item zero, but that is a logically fallacy, because it assumes the existence of EVE and the player

What you call a fallacy is just the definition of the term "marginal cost". The marginal cost of any good assumes the existence of the infrastructure required to produce it. Those are sunk costs or fixed costs, precisely because they do not vary with the quantity of the transaction.

"Real" goods also have fixed costs. Designing an automobile requires powerful computers and a team of engineers working for years too. It's just that when you go to actually build an automobile, each unit sold adds to your cost in addition to your fixed costs. Virtual goods don't have those additional costs, which makes them different than automobiles and everything else. The poster I was responding to asked what the difference is and that's it. You don't have to like it, but you can't force virtual and real goods to stop being different just because you don't like it.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[shentino]

I guess then that the best defense to being robbed is to have nothing worth stealing?

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[shentino]

It's conspicuous consumption.

You expend resources to prove that you have them.

And more importantly, because *other people* will judge you based on your tastes. Even though you might (and with good reason) not personally value a high cost brand over a cheap one, you have to accept the fact that other people will be watching your price tags, and it will control whose shoulders and elbows you'll get to rub with.

Bitcoin?

[Animats]

"stories of theft, underhanded dealings, criminal empires and general unscrupulous play." That's Bitcoin. The Bitcoin world has a story like that about once a week. The entire Bitcoin economy does about the volume of one supermarket.

Re:Bitcoin?

[stillnotelf]

BITCOIN!1one!11

The entire Bitcoin economy does about the volume of one supermarket.

Did you see the number of exclamation points up there? Not to mention how much Slashdot covers Bitcoin? It's WAY louder than a supermarket. Maybe not as loud as an outdoor auction place like Tsukiji in Tokyo.

Colorado Department of Internet Money

[Torvac]

would be interested in this i guess

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[xhrit]

>Gaming is suppose to be fun. It shouldn't require substantial spends in time and effort. Same goes for simulation, unless you're training for a real world job.

I am pretty sure no game would ever exist without a large number of people's substantial spends in time and effort.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Walkingshark]

Technically, buying a video game is "spending money on virtual property." It's just that normally you get a whole lot of it for 20-60 bucks, but companies like Blizzard have realized that once they make that initial sale, they can sell you vastly less content for hyperinflated prices. Valve is also doing this with Team Fortress 2, where you can purchase hats and guns for real world money. Luckily you can also just make them or trade for them if you really want them.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Walkingshark]

Honestly, when you do this in RL most of the time it isn't your shoulders and elbows you're ultimately looking to have rubbed.

That said, I could go for a back rub right now. Too bad I didn't spend enough money on her and I lost my last gf.

new players?

[Gripp]

I played eve for about a year, and these types of scams were advertised constantly.... and nearly NO ONE bought into them - mostly for the simple reason that everyone knows everything in the game is a scam.... (and there are much better scams too) so how in the world did this one become successful? only thing i can think is from the influx of newer players who don't know any better.

Re:Is anyone actually cashing out?

[Gripp]

yes. its against the EULA, but there is a LOT of RMT in eve. e.g. a Russian RMT site got hacked and it was found they made something like $250,000 over the previous 8 or so months... and i would imagine most of the goods sold were generated by macro's

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[jeff4747]

I don't get it either. I was unconvinced by MMORPGs[1] like World of Warcraft where you have to pay to keep playing.

An MMO costs $15/mo, and has enough content to keep me busy for several months (if not years).

A single-player game costs $50, and I can exhaust their content in 2-4 weeks.

So my choices are to pay $15/mo, or $100/mo. Doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out where the better deal is.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[brkello]

I agree with you in the sense that people should spend time however they see fit. If they want to spend a ton of money and time on Eve, that's great. But in another sense, I have played Eve and know what a horrible game it is. I think for a lot of people it is more of an addiction then something fun. I imagine people ripped off by this scheme...many will quit and wonder why they spent so much of their life on something that ended so poorly when they could have played games designed to be fun (instead of addictive) or forged real life friendships.

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Yamioni]

Too bad I didn't spend enough money on her and I lost my last gf.

How many times must I remind you people? Hookers only continue rendering services if you keep paying them... Sheesh

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Yamioni]

Please bear in mind that your $15 a month pays for server maintenance and the development of additional content which is provided to you at no charge. If I had the choice between paying WoW with low ping and regular content updates, versus getting it for free with shitty server reliability and content I can exhaust in a month, I'll take the pay option. As long as the product has a good quality to price ratio, I have no problem supporting it monthly.

Also, the bit about the virtual goods you can't keep if you stop playing isn't completely true. I have acquired many items in WoW that I would be saddened to lose access to, if only for posterity's sake. I fully intend to 'export' my character(s) from WoW once Blizzard announces the imminent EOL of their servers, and set up my own private server. Then I can just fire it up and log in to remember the good ol' days whenever I wish. No money required. :-)

Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as

[Yamioni]

In the GP's defense, knowledge isn't tangible either. Though it is an arguably more productive outcome than many other choices for spending one's time.