Archive for August, 2009

Compared to other MMORPG’s out there, EVE Online is not necessarily a walk in the park. Like in the real world, money (unfortunately) is power. In this case we are talking about ISK, InterStellar Kredit. This is the currency you need in order to acquire, well, pretty much anything. Weapons, minerals, items, equipment, skills, ships, and everything else there is. Now there are a few ways to get your hands on the almighty ISK… there are safe and legal ways, and some not so safe ways but still within the game’s rules, and there are other methods.

The safest ways are: Mission running. You accept a mission from an agent in a station available to you, you complete it, get the reward. If you do this for a substantial amount of time you can get quite a steady income – but it gets boring after a while. Then there’s mining. You take a ship that’s specialized to mine minerals or a ship with a reasonable cargo hold and which can fit mining lasers. This is probably the safest but also the most boring way.

Not so safe ways are shooting pirates in less secure space, take the bounty on their head and the stuff from their ship (where is Spike and the Bebop when you need him?!). Keep in mind that mostly experienced players are out there in the low security areas – if you’re not good enough they will take you down and enrich themselves. As you might have guessed you could go down the pirate route too – but then also be ready to be hated by most and being shot at with no remorse and with little to no care who you are.

The DNA of power: healthy, infinite amounts of money – in this case ISK

Then, a while ago, people came up with the idea of running an in-game bank. There had been many ventures like this before in the game, but they didn’t last very long and most of which were scamming schemes. Not quite so with EVE Online Bank – or EBank. This bank was founded with the people in mind, and was meant to work as a real bank. And since it doesn’t cost very much to open a corporation in EVE, they did it. However – if you open a corporation, it is highly advisable to have your business plan ready – cause people wanna know what you’re up to – ESPECIALLY with a bank. But – they had one, and it actually sounded legitimate.

People put in their money and trusted the bank. They had interest rates, so over time their money would grow. In time, their customer base got very large – and thus the money involved. The bank had several hundred billion ISK in their virtual safe, a very substantial amount of money which is only matched by the daily trade volume in the most massive trade hub in the game, the Jita system. With this kind of money in your vault, you sure have a very large responsibility.

Once upon a time, there was a bank. And it was good. Times however, change

But then, a player named Ridcic hat some fancy ideas. He managed to slip some of the bank’s – and customer’s!! – money into his own personal account. And I’m not talking about pocket money here. He managed to magically re-route a whopping 250 billion ISK into his pocket. But instead of doing something with the money in-game (which is still sorta unbelievable, but within the game’s rules), he had some even fancier ideas about how to go with the money he just had in his wallet.

To put that into perspective, the most massive and powerful ships you could ever buy in-game are so-called Titan class ships. There are four classes of them, one for each race. And thus each one has its own advantages and weaknesses. Each of those ships is about 15km long. Thing is, not only does it take an eternity to be able to fly these doomsday machines, it also is kinda spendy. One of those alone is believed to have an estimated total cost of over 60-70 billion ISK, and takes about a real-time month to build.

Casting his sight on his realm, the Lord witnessed
The cascade of evil, the torrents of war.
Burning with wrath, He stepped
down from the Heavens
To judge the unworthy,
To redeem the pure.

-The Scriptures, Revelation Verses 2:12

That’s what they say about the Avatar, a Amarr Titan pictured above.

So this man beams 250 billion into his pocket, and then gets the ideas of selling the ISK for real money in the real world. Now THAT is in fact against the rules and is illegal. But what does he want to do with the money? Well pay the mortgage on his house. Wait, what?!

It has now emerged that Ricdic used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and to pay medical bills.

“I’m not proud of it at all, that’s why I didn’t brag about it,” Ricdic told Reuters. “But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would’ve chosen the same path based on the same situation.”

Now thanks to his actions, EBank is now in spiral to the end. They have filed for something that could equal as Chapter 11 Bankruptcy – and are in re-organization mode. The bank has made a statement regarding its status, and that all further transactions will be frozen with a few exceptions.

When asked how long it might take until normal service resumes, Ray McCormack commented: “we’re aiming for a year.” The magnitude of the task ahead can be seen in the bank’s financial statement, which reports their assets to be worth an estimated 884 billion ISK, while its liabilities exceed 1.9 trillion ISK. The reasons for the largest losses in ISK have been revealed in the statement as:

* 250 billion ISK – Embezzled by Ricdic
* 275 billion ISK – Default on loan arranged by Ricdic
* 75 billion ISK – EBANK Salaries
* 36 billion ISK – Share Default Freelancers Inc. Research Division
* 35.9 billion ISK – Loan Default

This is the biggest scandal and robbery EVE has ever seen.

So what’s the point of me writing of all this? Don’t trust banks.

Manage the money yourself. Regardless of ISK or Euro or Dollar.

BBC News: Billions stolen in online robbery
EVE News: EBank releases news regarding the crisis
Avatar Titan