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

Posted by Soulskill on from the almost-enough-for-a-monocle dept.

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."

10 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. It's fun when it's fiction by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It's fun when it's fiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it was all fictional money

      All money is.

    2. Re:It's fun when it's fiction by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    3. Re:It's fun when it's fiction by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 3, Funny

      What is the difference?

    4. Re:It's fun when it's fiction by sheetsda · · Score: 3

      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."

  2. Re:EVE players fell for that? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  3. Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as by kalirion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  4. Re:Don't understand spending time/money on game as by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  5. Every "investment" in EVE is a scam. by harl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I find being offended by me offensive.
    1. Re:Every "investment" in EVE is a scam. by Rigrig · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

      --
      **TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.