As you may know, EVE Online has an economy that’s entirely player-run: banks, trading, the whole nine yards. Stealing and fraud are not banning offenses, so people can go hog wild. Which they do, to varying degrees. This is a game where one guild infiltrated another guild, then literally killed all the leaders and stole all their assets.
Still, this latest fraud is impressive even by those standards: a Ponzi scheme that netted them over a trillion ISK, or $50,000 in real money, if you could sell ISK, which you can’t under the rules of the game.
So were these guys griefers? Con men? Jerks? No, they just wanted to beat the game in a different way, and demonstrate that it was possible to do so within the rules established. They even feel kind of bad about ripping people off. They’re not in legal trouble because no real money ever changed hands, and the rules are pretty clear that in-game fraud is allowed.
In other words, they’re just very good at the game. Of course, now they’ve got thousands of players gunning for them to get some revenge, so we’re sure that’ll add a little spice.
[ via the pyramid schemers at Boing Boing ]