EVE Online has “the most crafty players in the world”, says developer

I love EVE Online. I’ve never actually played the game, mind you, but the unbelievable drama that regularly comes out of it must be one of the greatest (and perhaps most reliable) things in the industry today.

Most recently, it was a heist of five trillion ISK (Inter-Stellar Kredits, in-game currency) by notorious EVE Online space pirates Goonswarm, who exploited a game glitch in the new Inferno expansion to nab the cash. The exploit was described by Goonswarm command as “a literal currency fountain very nearly without limit”, but very definitely beyond the limits of Goonswarm’s moral boundaries.

“Regarding anger, certainly there’s none on our end,” Eve Online senior security administrator Darius Johnson told Eurogamer.

“We’d rather not be in a position to have to dig through all this, but it’s also certainly more interesting having what may be the most crafty players in the world prying at cracks in our system in order to gain a competitive edge than adjusting spreadsheets to determine whether people are farming wolf pelts too quickly.”

Regarding Goonswarm’s activity, Johnson said that “I’m not sure I’d classify it as a theft. It’s certainly an exploit.”

“Because the Loyalty Points are generated from thin air by this exploit (there’s a lot of work involved so that’s pretty simplified), it would be better equated to printing a currency than stealing it from someone,” he added. “I don’t believe we’ve ever been in this situation before. So, as far as currency manipulation is concerned, then it is by default the largest enterprise of its kind, but it is still an illegal enterprise from our perspective.”

In response, developer CCP has decided to remove the Loyalty Points from offending user’s accounts, although no further disciplinary action will be taken. That’s just part of the game.