
How Eve Players Pulled Off the Biggest Betrayal in Its History - bdr
https://kotaku.com/how-eve-players-pulled-off-the-biggest-betrayal-in-its-1806168400
======
hellofunk
I must be completely out of touch, because I could not make heads or tails of
nearly any word in this article. In fact, I'm so out of touch, I couldn't tell
if I was reading a real news item or a piece of short fiction. Damn there some
areas of the tech scene that are as foreign to me as, say, hitching a tent
along the Antarctic coast.

~~~
rkangel
Short version (from the point of view of an outsider to the events):

During the last big large scale conflict, an alliance called CO2 defected from
its parent coalition The Imperium to the other side. This was a big loss to
the Imperium - CO2 were one of their larger and better groups of fighters. It
turned the tide of the war and the Imperium were left with emnity towards CO2
due to their betrayal.

In the time since then, Gigx who runs CO2 has (among other things) been
annoying people inside and outside his alliance over various diplomatic
incidents. One of those was TheJudge who was a leader in CO2 (but subordinate
to gigx). Simultaneously TheJudge was being slowly talked into betraying CO2
by a couple members of the Imperium. This was significantly helped by the
three of them being on a player elected group of representatives to the
developers, that meets in person a few times a year.

TheJudge had enough power and control over the alliance and its assets that
when he eventually decided to actually jump ship, he could sell off ships,
space stations ('citadels') and other expensive things owned by the alliance.
The Imperium are taking credit for this betrayal - they consider it 'revenge'.

Up to now this is all classic Eve - betrayal by people you trust. The
postscript is less nice though: gigx in a moment of anger asked in in game
chat for real life contact details for TheJudge so that he could 'cut off his
hands'. This is obviously not OK and CCP banned gigx permanently. This has the
side-effect of putting the final nail in the CO2 coffin.

~~~
hellofunk
Who created this war, is it part of the initial game or are these "societies"
forming ad-hoc by the players and making wars between them?

~~~
dave_sullivan
They are all player formed.

Another interesting aspect is that almost every in-game item is "player
manufactured" by mining raw materials, refining those materials, using those
refined materials to make items from blueprints, then sell those items to
other players.

Each step in that cycle requires specialized skill trees, so it's usually not
one person that does it all.

They don't really have NPC shops and inventory is just what people are making
and selling. "What to make" is itself informed by buyer demand and everything
from raw material to finished items has a market set price.

Simply being a trader in Eve can be fun.

~~~
chii
> Simply being a trader in Eve can be fun.

yes. But it's eerily similar to having an actual day job...

~~~
ryanlol
You can even get paid real money!

------
mrdmnd
I don't play EVE because there are already enough demands on my time, but
damned if this commercial (entirely done with voice comms) hasn't come close
to pushing me over the edge:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0)

~~~
murderfs
This is a more realistic version, IMO:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmS9vcVNr5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmS9vcVNr5A)

~~~
corobo
GP "Oh man that looks so awesome!"

Parent: "I'll stick to solitaire"

The idea behind Eve is extremely appealing but damn if I'm not just done with
people screaming into a microphone. I'll stick to reading the postmortems
after interesting things happen

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _damn if I 'm not just done with people screaming into a microphone._

Aside from the huge time-sink that's involved in any MMO, I mostly don't want
to have to have a part-time job playing politics. That's what kills it for me;
I love that Eve Online exists, but I have zero interest whatsoever building a
whole other parallel set of friendships, alliances, etc. outside of my current
life. Even if they were the nicest antithesis of League of Legends chat, I
just don't have the emotional energy to put into it.

~~~
ethbro
I haven't played in years, but last I did there was a huge range in engagement
levels to have "fun".

With one or two friends, I'd say one could have a blast pirating for a couple
years. It's one of the higher doing_fun_things:total_time_playing ratios I've
found in a multiplayer game.

The balance is really well done. Two specialized smaller ships > one general
larger ship. And coordinating on voicecoms after you've got the normal
sequence of actions down doesn't sound that different than a sci-fi series.

"Jumping. Two contacts. Found them on the belt 5. Miners, no escort. In
position to warp disrupt. Popping bubble and web. Tackled. Jump, jump, jump."
(Plan comes together, fireworks ensue)

And in general, most people keep it in perspective. Hence "it's just internet
spaceships" jokes.

------
rl3
It's nice to see treachery is alive and well in EVE.

I started playing EVE just prior to the Trinity expansion release in 2008, and
played up until 2013. During that time I was fortunate to watch the game
evolve in so many fantastic ways (walking in stations aside). I owe an
unbelievable amount of fond memories to the game, most of which involved
treachery (albiet on a somewhat smaller scale).

That said, many of the changes in recent years have left a bad taste in my
mouth. For example: Aurum, an in-game currency used to purchase items from the
"New Eden Store", such as ship skins and clothing. Radical changes to
character progression in the form of skill injectors. Radical changes to the
PLEX system, as well as F2P. Innumerable changes to core game mechanics.

Not all of these changes are necessarily bad, but they do tend to foster
almost a weird sense of alienation among long-time players, especially
inactives. Nobody I know really plays anymore, and it's not because they lack
the time. There's this mutual feeling that the game kind of lost its way some
years back, and that the golden age is over. That its soul is gone, or at
least waning.

I don't know how true that sentiment is, but it certainly feels that way. Of
course, it's always possible we're just a bunch of really biased bittervets.

It is true that CCP has had an incredible amount of missteps in the past
(walking in stations, Dust 514, vampire game), and that they've inevitably had
a lot of turnover in their core talent. Despite all that, EVE is still alive,
which in and of itself is impressive.

From a technology and art standpoint, the game is arguably better than ever
right now. I just can't shake the feeling that it's stuck in an evolutionary
treadmill of sorts, where things are changed just for the sake of change, and
not pursuant to a strong overarching ideal or vision that was present in the
earlier days of CCP.

On the bright side, at least Star Citizen has no hope of killing EVE. Things
such as lifetime insurance are wholly antithetical to the ideal that EVE
represents. Namely: you don't get an adrenaline rush flying something
expensive if you know there's zero risk involved.

Elite: Dangerous (in my opinion) had the opportunity to kill both games, and
failed only due to its unfortunate choice of core gameplay mechanics and P2P
networking model. Four years ago it had the most advanced UI/UX of any game in
existence, and arguably it still does today. Incredible artistic and technical
production values unfortunately can't save a game if it has no soul.

~~~
thg
> I don't know how true that sentiment is, but it certainly feels that way. Of
> course, it's always possible we're just a bunch of really biased bittervets.

I'm a very bitter vet myself, so take it with a grain of salt, but you're
essentially correct. Space hasn't been as empty as it is today in over a
decade, if ever before. Active player numbers are in the basement and falling
and CCP is now even advertising starter packs with "More weapon slots, More
damage, More tank". They are removing valid complexity and gameplay options
left and right to "remove developer burden" (they removed the granular sound
options a while ago because "almost nobody was using them" and made the game
unplayable for me and many others unless we turn sound off completely).

The EVE of today is not the EVE you once knew. It's lost its soul in favor of
making as much money as possible out of an ever shrinking player base.

~~~
rl3
Well, that's an incredibly grim assessment. I can't imagine playing without
granular sound settings.

At least the game's IP should be dirt cheap on firesale after it runs aground.

------
tudorw
If I had a life to spare, I'd play EVE... I'd love to watch some kind of
weekly news round up, is there anything like that?

~~~
thg
[http://evenews24.com/](http://evenews24.com/)

EVE is a lot more fun to read about than it is to play it. You aren't missing
all that much by not playing it...

~~~
cellover
I do not agree. To me it sounds a little bit like saying 'life is not so much
fun'. You can enjoy it if you decide to make it enjoyable. EVE online allows
that kind of behavior which makes it a unique game in my opinion.

That's how I try to play the game and have had so many thrilling moments. I'm
not even in a corp, I play solo but have so much fun with the game!

~~~
thg
It depends on what you find enjoyable. If you find mining asteroids or mission
running enjoyable, all the power to you. But that's not the way EVE is
portrayed in news articles. Articles are about the betrayals, the massive
battles, the wars. Few people will ever reach that level of meta-gaming and
those massive battles don't happen on a daily basis but several months apart,
neither are they very fun to participate in. Unless, of course, you consider
listening to your fleet commander and pressing a button every few minutes fun.

For the non-EVE players: EVE has a system called Time Dilation, TiDi in short,
that slows down the gameplay to give the server more time to process. It gets
as slow as 10% of normal speed, which doesn't sound all that bad at first,
except that stuff tends to no longer work as expected when the server load
increases beyond what is manageable on that level. New commands are thrown on
a stack and get worked down in order, which causes massive lags between giving
a command and the game executing it, if it doesn't get lost somewhere along
the way.

Those massive battles with thousands of players sound awesome in writing.
They're very boring in reality.

~~~
chii
> If you find mining asteroids or mission running enjoyable, all the power to
> you.

most new players only find out about this aspect of EVE - running grinding
missions for petty coin etc - because they've been conditioned by the
stereotype of World of Warcraft (and its myriad of copycats).

If you have a few minutes, have a watch of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64)
\- it's one of the best videos explaining this concept.

------
technofiend
Eve is an excellent example of a game with mostly user-supplied content in a
loose framework. The game supplies a physics engine and basic rules for game
components, but beyond that it is an open world.

This is both a strength and a weakness: the game itself isn't that interesting
or challenging without interacting with other people. But you can't really see
all the game's content because so much territory is controlled by hostile
teams. So unless you have nerves of steel and great skills to fly stealthed,
you'll probably never see Russian-controlled Drone Regions, for example.

It would be cool to have a second shard of this universe in "care bear" mode
that didn't allow player-vs-player (PVP) so that people could appreciate all
the content that CCP created. It might also create pressure on CCP to create
more interesting non-player-dependent mechanics and content in the game.

~~~
chii
> "care bear" mode that didn't allow player-vs-player (PVP)

that would not be a game of EVE. It would be World of Warcraft, but in space.
And not a particularly good one either.

The uniqueness of EVE _is_ the free-form, non-consensual PVP. Just like in
real life, you cannot say no to being mugged, or ganged upon. When making
friends, you cannot really know to trust them, and if you do find trust worthy
friends, you friend them for life.

~~~
technofiend
>The uniqueness of EVE _is_ the free-form, non-consensual PVP.

It's just another bit in a database and only one aspect of the game. Sure,
there are 1,000 experiences in Eve you'll never get anywhere else - from
spinning wormholes trying to find a dread enemy, to station spinning out of
utter boredom because your station is bubbled to hell and back.

However it's simply not possible to see all the content on-offer in the game
because PVP precludes it. I realize for some people the idea of EVE without
PVP is inconceivable and that's fine, I'm just saying it's too bad because it
would be fun to be able to see all of the game and enjoy other aspects of it
that are suppressed by the ever present threat of PVP.

~~~
greymeister
You can go anywhere in Eve with the right ship and an understanding of the
mechanics with different regions of space. In fact, explorers do just this as
a form of PVE in hostile space. Creating Trammel for Eve doesn't add anything.

------
torgoguys
I've never played EVE but have read a bit here and there about it, and while I
have no interest in playing, the epic stories that come out of it fascinate
me. Is there a good place to go to find more?

~~~
lagadu
There's an excellent book that covers some of the larger conflicts between
~2004 and 2009 called Empires of Eve[0]. As someone who was intimately
involved with nearly everything the book describes, I recommend it.

[0] [http://empiresofeve.com/](http://empiresofeve.com/)

~~~
FreezerburnV
Even as someone who wasn't intimately involved in everything, and was only
around to see some of those things from a distance, that book is still
FASCINATING. I also highly recommend it.

------
j_s
This event was discussed yesterday though the article focused on a completely
different aspect of the story, with much less detail:

Eve Online alliance leader banned after threatening to cut off betrayer's
hands |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232168)

> thg: _Classic gigX.. Not the first time he 's got a "permanent" ban for
> making real life threats._

> xiaodown's personal account: _I was sitting on coms when this all went down_
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15232910)

> xiaodown: _He ... has a history. Plus, I mean, trying to get out-of-game
> details like address /name is a big no-no in Eve_

------
dagenleg
It seems to me that the game turned out to be most famous Icelandic export
product by far. That's pretty cute.

~~~
lagadu
Well Bjork is more well known but Eve is worth more, income-wise :)

IIRC Iceland's largest export is aluminum.

~~~
philsnow
IIRC this is not because Iceland has particularly rich stores of aluminum ore,
but rather because refining aluminum ore into usable aluminum metal is energy-
intensive and Iceland has abundant geothermal energy resources. So they import
ore and export metal.

------
forgingahead
For current and past Eve players: How does Eve compare to the glory days of
Ultima Online (1997-1998)? I've always wanted to try another MMO with the same
level of freedom and consequence as early UO. Is Eve worth a try or are they
just too different to compare?

~~~
forsakenkraken
I've never played UO, but if it's freedom and consequence you want then EvE is
what you want to try.

------
mm4
maybe the top 1%is having meta fun, but from what I seen the rest might as
well be playing Excell spreadsheets

~~~
Cthulhu_
Depends. The top 1% are playing political games, beyond even spreadsheets. A
percentage finds the logistics part fun, handling excel sheets and resources
and production, either for their own gains or that of their corporation or
alliance. Another percentage goes for the pvp, dealing with control of their
spaceship, tactics, the meta of their ship and equipment vs that of their
opponents.

There's a lot to this game and it's not just spreadsheets, that's only a
percentage of the game.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
> The top 1% are playing political games

This is the thing that absolutely flummoxes me about the "game." Most gamers
are geeks, but most geeks I've known into have little patience for political
games. Yet, here's one of the most-successful and longest-running MMOPG's, and
it's -- from what I can gather -- almost entirely political. I just can't wrap
my head around it. I even have a hard time reading these post-mortems. The
whole business seems to cater to some sub-sub-sub category of geek that
doesn't lie in the direction of Myers-Briggs IN?? types. Does anyone know what
those types might be? (All discussion of the usefulness or accuracy of these
categories aside.)

~~~
dmoy
MMOs often have alliances and political intrigue. It's not just Eve, though
Eve definitely takes the cake. I've played n>2 different MMOs where there's a
large cohort of politically savvy players pulling the strings. Sometimes it's
just out of necessity - if you want the coolest stuff in the game you have to
organize groups because that's how the game is set up. So by definition it
filters success towards those that organize bigger and better alliances.

------
cellover
This article is more immersive listening to the latest EVE track posted on
Soundcloud:

[https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames/eve-online-redesigned-
stars](https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames/eve-online-redesigned-stars)

------
_e
I hope that someone who knows "gigx" in real life checks in on him. It is safe
to assume that he spent a significant amount of time playing Eve to reach the
level that he did. Yes, he got drunk on power and it pissed people off. I
would bet that if a neurologist were monitoring his brain activity before the
coup and during the coup it would be very similar to a person going through a
really bad breakup, a very disturbing event or going cold turkey on a bad
addiction. Hopefully what happened in Eve doesn't spill over into gigx's
personal life for the worse.

------
KON_Air
I every time I heard about EvE the image of it being "a mass of bickering old
couples locked inside a large room with alliances forming and dissolving
constantly" strengthens.

------
vadansky
Is it too late to start playing EVE? Every time I hear about these great
events it seems like it's the last and the game is over now.

~~~
kstrauser
Jump in!

Disclaimer: you _will_ die. Lots. The adage is "don't fly what you can't
afford to lose". There's no equivalent of "this is my special invulnerable
armor and the sword of my great-grandfather", because when someone inevitably
comes along and blows you up, it'll be _their_ special invulnerable armor etc.

Also, the concepts of fraud, scams, and so on are unusual in Eve in that
they're actively encouraged, or at least explicitly tolerated (with few
exceptions, like you can't claim to be an official representative of the
game's publisher). This is known as "adding content". As in, if you complain
that user Foo defrauded you out of a few hundred dollars of in-game currency,
the response will almost certainly be along the lines of "wow, Foo added a
_lot_ of content to your game, huh! You should thank them for it. You can't
get that kind of entertainment from an NPC, can you?" This fosters a certain
level of paranoia.

~~~
FreezerburnV
Based on the number of incredibly clever scams that exist, extreme paranoia is
correct. If something looks too good to be true, it is VERY likely to be a
scam. (e.g.: there are scams built around selling an item for a price that is
lower than a buy order somewhere, seemingly promising free money, but when you
attempt to sell the expensive item, it'll get rejected due to some quirks in
how some systems interact)

~~~
chii
> get rejected due to some quirks in how some systems interac

i dont think that works anymore now? Not sure...but it's human nature to scam!
There's been so many pyramid schemes it's not funny!

~~~
FreezerburnV
I would be surprised if that were the case. IIRC it worked by using a skill
that let a player put up a buy order without taking the entire cost of the
order out of their wallet. So the player could then ditch all their remaining
money, which wouldn't allow the buy order to be fulfilled.

What changed that disallows it? Did they remove the skill? Can a wallet go
negative? Even if they forced the buyer to take the item and give the amount
of money reserved to the seller, the scammer could theoretically just make
sure that the buy order is close enough to the sell order that the seller
still receives less than they paid. (though it makes it seem like a less juicy
payout, so people would fall for it less)

------
nottorp
The way I see it, they abused their position in the CSM for in game
advantages. When one random player betrays another, that's fine. This wouldn't
have happened if they weren't on the CSM though, which is something out of
game. They should be permanently banned from both the game and their CSM
positions instead of being made heroes.

~~~
codeulike
Eve is all about the meta-game, real world espionage and shenanigans often
happens. Its all unofficial but its kind of the unique selling point of Eve
really.

~~~
wolco
Not sure why the one leader was banned trying to get real world information if
one of the the selling point is about interacting outside of the game as well.

Why wouldn't it be perfectly valid to attempt to scare or convince this guy in
real life to give back the loot. It feels like it should be part of the game.
Bonus points for getting someone fired or sleeping with someone's sister.

~~~
wlll
There's levels. Lying to get access to a groups private information and plans
to gain a competitive advantage (spying in other words) is one thing,
attempting to dox someone because you've threatened to cut off their hands is
another.

------
bsder
Goonswarm strikes again!

RIP: vilerat. Hope you're somewhere laughing your ass off about this knowing
that your legacy lives on.

~~~
forsakenkraken
I don't really think we had that much to do with it. As much as I find it
kinda funny. I feel sorry for the line members tho. When The Judge said he
didn't mean to screw over line members, I don't know how he said that with a
straight face.

------
HirojaShibe
Okay, when is there going to be an in depth documentary series about EVE, I
mean Ken Burns Style but maybe a couple of season because so much has gone in
this space. Constantly every year I read or hear about some EPIC
Battle/Betrayal going on in this little realm of the gaming world.

------
MrZongle2
I've read a lot about betrayals in Eve, how much ISK are stolen and lost here
or there, and tales of revenge.

Does anybody actually have _fun_ in this game? Like, simple this-is-a-fun-
game-and-I-am-having-fun-at-the-moment fun?

~~~
dave7
Lots do, yes.

You make your own fun. Personally I had great times studying the market and
finding / executing (entirely on my own) new manufacturing chains, attempting
to gain an ever increasing margin and profit-to-effort ratio!

But to each their own :)

------
stonewhite
American ambassador assasinated in Libya, Sean Smith was also a high ranking
officer at Goonfleet corp and was playing it for 6 years! A game that is able
to attract these profiles is doing something very right.

~~~
qohen
I, and some others, posted stuff about him further down this thread, for those
who might be interested -- you can click the link [0] to get there directly or
just keep scrolling through this thread.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246021)

------
abiox
i feel like the only thing i hear about with respect to eve is 'betrayals' and
'theft'. is there anything else to the game? is there anything else to do
besides steal?

~~~
luminiferous
Don't forget Ponzi schemes! Honestly there's a lot to do in EvE, since the
economy is entirely player-run. You can be a miner, mining raw materials. You
can be a trader, running arbitrage between different stations trying to turn a
quick buck. You can be a pirate, preying on either of the previously mentioned
roles. You can be a manufacturer, creating either intermediate goods or
finished products for the open market. You can be a (different kind of)
trader, buying and selling commodities, trying to time the market, etc. (This
is where the space spreadsheets meme mostly comes from.) You can go out
"ratting", finding and killing NPCs for goods and money. And, of course, you
can go join (or start!) a corporation (guild) and own a portion of nullsec
(full PvP) space, fighting with, allying with, and betraying other player
corps for power and influence over nullsec.

The reason you only hear about betrayals and theft are because that's what is
the most interesting to write/read about with regards to EvE. While it's
really cool, conceptually, that you can make a living in this game by
participating in this massive player run economy, you're not going to find a
lot of articles about people spending hours of their life mining internet
asteroids and occasionally getting ganked by pirates.

------
lagadu
This isn't the biggest by any stretch of the imagination.

~~~
Lorin
The citadel is the biggest player owned object in the Eve universe, right?
Maybe that's what they meant by biggest.

~~~
lagadu
It is but it's value with fittings is only ~300 billion isk (the eve currency)
which isn't that much when we're talking isk at the alliance level.

~~~
forsakenkraken
It's the biggest. Rough value of the alliance wallet, srp program and all the
citadels (not just the keepstar) is about 1.4 trillion.

And yes, the Keepstar is the biggest of the citadels (the smaller ones are
Fortizars and Astrahauses).

~~~
lagadu
That's nothing compared to Haargoth's damage, back in 2009 or Kartoon's.

Hell we've had single dudes do single corp thefts for more than that.

------
thatonechad
Sounds like anyone who plays this game needs to get a life.

------
hyperbovine
What?

------
myst
It is not the biggest.

~~~
forsakenkraken
Which one is bigger then? This is around 1.4 trillion. I don't think anyone
has gone much past a trillion in the past.

~~~
thoth
If you take into account inflation, there is an argument for previous heists
being larger... IIRC.

Check out [http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2017/09/did-judge-really-
pull-...](http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2017/09/did-judge-really-pull-off-
biggest-heist.html)

------
dsfyu404ed
Can we get a TL;DR?

(I read the article and the relationships between the parties vs events vs
timeline is still confusing)

------
kensai
I really like these Eve stories that show off the worse of humanity! They
portray a reality where there are relatively few consequences for the human,
so huge risks might be undertaken. If you die, your avatar has simply died.
OK, you might have invested literally months-years into forming it, but still
it's not the physical unique you.

You can always create a new sock puppet to rule the world.

~~~
busterarm
I liken it more to playing a game like Diplomacy.

It's a sandbox that gives you a safe place to RP some really dastardly, evil
shit. If everyone has a level head, you can go and enjoy a beer together
afterwards and start over.

~~~
forsakenkraken
Yes, but in this instance he's taken assets that take a very long time to
build up and left the alliance in a position which they're going to find very
hard to come back from. I'm not sure many people will keep a level head there.

------
kensai
I wonder if multi-sig contracts (not necessarily through blockchain) would
preclude such incidents in the future. Concentrating so much power to a single
person, inevitably makes for such "Little Finger" plays with devastating
effects for everyone involved.

I am watching the video of it all now here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdXie85VX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdXie85VX8)

