I haven’t played it, but I have a special place in my heart for Eve Online. It has the type of cartoonishly evil scams you just don’t see anymore. For example, centuries past, a common scam was for people to set up fake banks. Get people to deposit money at your fake bank, then disappear into the night one day. Today, an era where it’s a lot harder to just up and disappear, this type of scam is far less common.
But not in Eve! A few years ago there was a massive scammer who got a bunch of people to put all their money in his bank offering suspiciously high interest rates. The bank collected a huge amount of money. Then one day the bank operator just loaded all the cash into his spaceship and flew off into space! It would be like if Wells Fargo went bankrupt because the CEO just absconded to Switzerland with all the bank’s holdings one night.
Unless the rules have changed, scamming players wasn’t only allowed but actively encouraged. The theme of the game is unregulated hyper space capitalism where players have little to no built-in protection from each other.
Groups can hide bases in space and players from rival groups would attempt to join up in order to find the coordinates and the best times to attack. Sometimes going as far as hanging out with the other players irl to gain their trust.
Market traders would claim to be running mutual funds that you could buy into and receive huge returns when in reality it was a Ponzi scheme.
Players would offer high paying contracts to ship an item to a player owned base. Once another player accepted the contract they’d be denied entry to the base forcing them to fail the contract and pay a cancellation fee.
Is that an irony? I really can’t tell…
I haven’t played it, but I have a special place in my heart for Eve Online. It has the type of cartoonishly evil scams you just don’t see anymore. For example, centuries past, a common scam was for people to set up fake banks. Get people to deposit money at your fake bank, then disappear into the night one day. Today, an era where it’s a lot harder to just up and disappear, this type of scam is far less common.
But not in Eve! A few years ago there was a massive scammer who got a bunch of people to put all their money in his bank offering suspiciously high interest rates. The bank collected a huge amount of money. Then one day the bank operator just loaded all the cash into his spaceship and flew off into space! It would be like if Wells Fargo went bankrupt because the CEO just absconded to Switzerland with all the bank’s holdings one night.
There’s a great Down the Rabbit Hole on EVE drama!
lol wasn’t Eve online one of the biggest takeovers in a game ever? Not to mention people scammed the shit out of other players.
Unless the rules have changed, scamming players wasn’t only allowed but actively encouraged. The theme of the game is unregulated hyper space capitalism where players have little to no built-in protection from each other.
Groups can hide bases in space and players from rival groups would attempt to join up in order to find the coordinates and the best times to attack. Sometimes going as far as hanging out with the other players irl to gain their trust.
Market traders would claim to be running mutual funds that you could buy into and receive huge returns when in reality it was a Ponzi scheme.
Players would offer high paying contracts to ship an item to a player owned base. Once another player accepted the contract they’d be denied entry to the base forcing them to fail the contract and pay a cancellation fee.