Doing a runner with the money
Anyone who has an interest in space trading/combat sims will be aware of EVE Online. Now you can argue that this is more a space game than a traditional RPG, but by definition, an RPG is a Role Playing Game and EVE has a community that even posts in the forums in the characters they play in the game. The beauty of EVE is that you can be a hardcore RPGer or just a weekend funster and you’ll fit right in.To get some idea of how massive EVE is in terms of playing area, you’ve got roughly five thousand systems to roam about in… which is around 2000 more than you can see with the naked from our humble Earth. So next time you’re out, look up and remember that what you can see is vast… but EVE is two thirds bigger again.
A big part of EVE for the serious players is the opportunity to create and run large corporations, similar to clans or guilds in other MMOs but different in that they are far more complex in structure and effectively based on real world corporations. The beauty of EVE is that you can set up a corporation to do pretty much anything you want… including setting up a bank.
Now on the face of it, giving your hard earned ISKs, (EVE’s monetary unit), to another player to look after might seem like the daftest idea ever but, just as in real life, if a bank proves to be trustworthy and reliable, why not keep your cash somewhere safe and earn a bit of interest? That’s exactly what the Eve Intergalactic Bank was set up to offer players. A safe storage for their cash, loans, investments and pretty much everything a real bank does (with the exception of annoying junk mail).
And so the avatar Cally, over the course of four months in 2006, built up his banks assets and funding as players trusted him with their money, which he then invested in various projects offering good returns and making the bank financially solvent. Everything was good.
That is until one day Cally disappeared. Well, he not only disappeared but over 700 billion ISK disappeared with him too. Yep, the entire thing was one great big fraud, played out over the course of four months to net Cally the largest haul in a single scam in the history of the game. The previous notorious record holder had made only 30 billion ISK… which compared to Cally’s haul was, well, a bit of loose change really.
To put it into context, 700,000,000,000 ISK will buy you nearly 6000 game time codes for EVE, which would cost around £67,000 GBP or $130,000 USD! That’s an immense haul. Of course, you can argue that this is real world theft but Cally’s owner, later revealed to be a chap named Dentara Rast, claims that the ISK he absconded with will be used in the game by his other avatars. It later transpired that well over half the money came from a few big investors, with Rast likening himself to a spaced-based Robin Hood, stealing from the rich… but notable neatly forgetting about that giving to the poor bit as he said he will be using the cash for his other characters.
The reaction from EVE players was one of widespread condemnation of Cally’s actions, but served to highlight one of the major shortcomings of online worlds in that there is no effective police for non-aggressive actions such as Cally’s. The game just isn’t set up for dealing with the political and financial machinations that EVE allows players to be part of… but then, that’s why so many people play it and why players such as Rast can get away with it.
