EVE Online is at least in part a game about space pirates. But it’s also a massive, teeming online ecosystem that often blurs the line between virtual and real-life experiences. So when you mess with EVE, it’s fair to say that you can expect to be met with swift and brutal justice both online and off.
EVE developer CCP taught several former EVE players this lesson in the best way possible this week after the Icelandic studio tracked down four people responsible for vandalizing a real-life monument to the game just days after it was first erected. In addition to pressing criminal charges against these players “outside the virtual world,” EVE community manager CCP Falcon said in post yesterday on the game’s forum that they will face an even harsher punishment in the game world.
“The fact that the monument was vandalised is an insult to the entire community, not just to the individual who’s name was directly targeted by the vandalism,” CCP Falcon wrote.
“We would like to reiterate that we do not tolerate this kind of behaviour and will continue to operate a zero tolerance approach to dealing with harassment and victimization in the EVE Universe.”
As such, three of the four people identified were issued lifetime bans from EVE and Dust 514, a related game that operates in the same universe. The fourth player, who was “indirectly involved in the vandalism,” was issued a six month ban.
Harsh, but fair. Because even as CCP meted out justice, it didn’t just throw these disgraced EVE players to the dogs.
“While the community has been justifiably outraged and a number of people have requested that we release the ingame identities of those who carried out the act, we feel that this would be contrary to our privacy policies,” CCP Falcon added, sounding a tone of civility and caution. “As such we will deal with this incident in line with our current policies, and the identities of those responsible will remain confidential.”
Because what kind of lawgiver would CCP be if truly let the rest of the EVE community go at these people tooth and nail?
“With this in mind, we now consider this issue resolved within the EVE Universe, and any further action taken outside the virtual world relating to criminal damage or recovery of costs for repairs to the EVE Universe Monument will remain confidential between CCP Games, the authorities, and those involved,” he concluded.
Comments
18 responses to “EVE Monument Vandals Get Punished With A Lifetime Ban”
A number of people have requested their name(s)? What are they gonna do, get them shanked whilst they’re serving prison time for this hard criminal activity?
Sheesh. They scratched a name off an EVE statue, they didn’t shit on your mothers grave.
They’d probably just troll them for the rest of their internet lives. I can imagine that some Eve players would be a petty bunch like that.
That’d probably be worse.
What do you mean ‘some’? Pettiness is in the majority in the EVE community. Plenty of good folks out there but they’re greatly outnumbered.
Criminal charges are gonna suck, but something tells me the life time ban won’t be so significant.
The former in that instance is because they’re banned. This literally happened a few days ago.
Life time ban. Well they’d have to be pretty into the game to go out of their way actually go to the monument and find the player’s name that they wanted to deface. They can possibly get around it but will probably lose a significant amount of gear they have acquired.
Oh they will lose a lot. Skill training happens in real world time and takes a long investment. They probably had all sorts of ships and business ventures going on, stock and cash… if they were “hardcore” enough to travel to some Eve event then they probably had a lot invested here. I can’t think of another game that comes close to how much a ban can cost a player.
Make another account and get new IP?
and next time use a chisel and gimpie?
One of the main “resources” in the Eve universe is the real time taken to accumulate skills. There are ways of speeding this up, but not by much. Basically, there’s no such thing as power levelling (although a boatload of ISK helps in other respects).
If the people who did this are enthusiasts (which seems probable) and long time players (also probable) then even if they manage to work around the ban somehow, they’ve taken a serious hit.
It took 4 people to vandalize a monument???
Eve players aren’t know for their physical prowess.
You just made me laugh.
Well it’s about as what you would expect I guess. CCP needs to lay down the law very clearly, otherwise there’ll be plenty of names getting scratched out by other players holding grudges.
That said, I’ll be very surprised if someone doesn’t try to scratch Xenuria’s name out again once it’s repaired. The guy’s an asshat.
Whats the deal with him? I have little knowledge of the EVE universe.
Apparently he’s a neo-nazi asshat.
Bizarrely, that information is included in the original article about the topic, but that original article isn’t linked to in this follow up -_- some weird shit about neo-nazis and/or hackers.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/eve-onlines-real-world-monument-has-already-been-vandalised/
Edit: that was in reply to @benjamasm . Thanks kotaku comments!
Honestly – I can’t think of anything more in the spirit of EVE than this incident. I’d have thought that CCP would just shrug & move on.