Billions stolen from Eve Online .

Monday 6th July 2009 - 11:00


Bank theft causes virtual credit crunch in space trading game plus Steambot Chronicles Battle Tournament PSP screens



The real and virtual world has been blurred with the shock news that popular MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Eve Online has been the victim of a major virtual bank fraud.

Mirroring the credit crunch banking antics of the real world, it appears that one of the games largest player-run banks has suffered a major fraud - at the hands of the chief executive. According to reports, 200bn kredits (in-game cash) was stolen from the bank and then swapped for approximately (GBP) 3,115 in real world money. Once news of the theft spread through the community many of the players rushed to remove their money from the bank - plunging Ebank, one of the most popular banks in the game - into chaos. The stolen kredits amounted to 8% of the 2.6tn that Ebank had in its virtual vaults, but much more has been withdrawn by players since then.

"Basically this character was one of the people who had been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money," Ned Coker, of Icelandic company CCP which runs Eve, told the Reuters news agency.

Eve Online is a space trading 'business game' played by approximately 300,000 people. The gameplay focuses around mining raw materials from asteroids, trading and player run corporation taking control of space. The theft was carried out by a player known as Ricdic, a 27-year-old Australian who works in the technology industry and was playing as EBank's chief executive. Although he has been thrown out of the game it is unknown if any criminal prosecution can be launched.

The player apparently used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and pay medical bills. "I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it," Ricdic told Reuters. "But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation."

From online fraud to handheld robot wars. We've got some brand new screens of Steambot Chronicles Battle Tournament forthcoming on the PSP. The game is a Mech battling title promising plenty of customisation, open mission structure and multiplayer for up to four people, possibly even with just one UMD - something that the PSP really should do more of. The game is due to be released on Friday.