Crime on a galactic scale

It’s not often you see gaming mentioned on the pages of the BBC News website, and even rarer that said games aren’t something to do with either Halo or World of Warcraft! However, cue the story of deception, lying and theft in Eve Online (here). It appears that, in a move which has outraged some players, and left others applauding loudly, large sums of money have been stolen by certain players from the corporations that they were members of. In one case, all the assets of the corporation, along with even the name, have been taken by one disgruntled director, and transferred to the corporation that he has joined. All fun and games you’d think. But some people disagree.

As a former player (and corporation director) of Eve, I have to say I’m not surprised this is happening. As in real life, it’s very easy to become disgruntled in an online game, especially when part of a player-run organisation such as a corporation. Again, as in real-life, there are then a number of things you can do. The most of extreme of which is to run off with everything you can get your hands on. To my mind it just adds to the realism that CCP (the company that runs the game) has tried to build their universe around. With this in mind, I can’t blame them for not stepping in to resolve things either. Yes a “crime” has been committed, but then let the law enforcers of the universe deal with it, not the “masters” of the universe (no He-Man gags please!).

But who are the law enforcers in the game? Well for crimes like this it has to be the players themselves. But who is going to take on the amassed wealth and power of this corporation to get to the man who stole everything in the first place? You’d need a massive amount of firepower to try and take them down. The kind of firepower that can only be gained by putting in the hours and hours of work needed to build a corporation up to such a level. The kind of firepower that might convince someone else to go and do exactly the same thing.

Moral of the story? Keep your friends close, and your disgruntled ex-employees even closer!