A banker has absconded with 86 billion from Dynasty Banking. Dynasty Banking? Is that an obscure Icelandic bank? Almost, it's a bank in the massive world of Eve Online.
Two years ago in a post called The Future of Macroeconomics I wrote the following:
time ever, macro-economists will be able to do experiments. I predict
that we will see some very interesting experiments in the near future.
The massive theft from Dynasty Banking is creating a bank run. There is no FDIC in Eve Online but other banks have agreed to lend Dynasty cash if it is needed – no doubt they fear contagion. No word yet on whether fiscal or monetary stimulus is planned but I will watch the experiment with interest.
If this is not enough to boggle your mind, Eve Online is in fact an Icelandic firm! Which explains why the money in Eve is called ISK, also the code for the Iceland Krona. To bring the story full circle the Icelandic banking collapse is causing problems for the developer.
"The present currency restrictions are putting us in a straitjacket.
We are in talks with the government, but if we can't let capital in, we
might be compelled to leave Iceland, even though this would be against
our wishes."
EVE currently has around 300K subscribers.
Gudmundsson's comments come after those of CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson,
who told Edge in October following the banking collapse, "I’m fortunate
that CCP has hardly been affected by the economic crisis here. We now
have to take advantage of our status as a global company and maintain
our diversified banking relationships."
CCP also has offices in Atlanta and Shanghai.
Finally, in other news, we have this:
Royal Khanid Navy Grand Admiral Zidares Khanid this morning released a
statement claiming that Khanid Kingdom forces yesterday attacked
thirty-three separate Blood Raider Covenant targets – ranging from
unmanned installations to fully-defended outposts – in what the release
terms “an effort to strike a blow against the spreading blight of
willful heresy.”
Just thought you would want to know. Does your head hurt yet?
Thanks to Roger Avalos for the pointer.
For those who care, it looks like 2bn ISK goes for about $60 USD.
http://www.gamegoldwow.com/index.php?cPath=2365
So the guy stole a few thousand dollars.
In this game scamming is part of life. We used to tell people it would cost them 200 million ISK to get into our corporation (which was maybe the 2nd or 3rd largest in the game at the time) all the time. If they would actually come up with it we would tell them due to a processing error it would require another 300 million. And on and on ad infinitum, it was a great way to mess with people. You had to be a member of a certain group outside of EVE Online to get access to the corp; there was no way to do it through the game.
Now we just need to start a bank whose reserves are backed by gold and who lend responsibly in Second Life for “The Great Austrian Experiment”!
Odograph is right about Halting State, one of Stross’ ‘near future’ novels. (Interesting but not a great read.)
The upcoming movie The International will no doubt feature evil economists.
I play Eve Online and based on my experience from over a years worth of playing and from previous scandals like this, I don’t think CCP, the company who provides the game/sercive will do a damn thing. Eve Online is a sandbox game: do what you want shall be the whole of the law. It is truly a anarcho-capitalists dream. Aside from a few rules about when and where you can kill other players there isn’t much the developers get involved with.
Goonfleet?
Yes, some corps and players really are jerks. If you play the game be very, very careful of who trust.
ISK = Inter-Stellar Kredit. No doubt chosen with the idea that the abreviation would be ISK.
And yeah, the Khanid Kingdom comment has little impact on game play and if for flavor. If you want the impact on game play look to the news items on player owned alliances. Some alliances like BoB, Goonswarm, Tau Ceti Federation, Morsus Mihi and others can have a huge impact on the game simply by going to war with each other…which they have. Against All Authorities and BoB are taking on the Goons and Tau Ceti Federation. The latter two alliances have called in the Northern Coalition (Morsus Mihi, Razor, etc.) to help them fight along with Pandemic Legion. This is one of the reasons why my industrial alternate character is making so much damn money mining veldspar asteroids in empire. Replacing capital and super capital ships sucks up alot of tritanium.
Steve Verdon wrote:
> It is truly a anarcho-capitalists dream.
Speaking as an anarcho-capitalist, I fundamentally believe in private property rights and that all contracts must be voluntary and well-informed. Theft is not part of anarcho-capitalism.
Now back to our scheduled programming…
…I played Eve-Online back in the beta and then onwards for about a year. Back then, 10 million ISK sold for about 100 USD in ebay. I made a few thousand selling ISK – the in-game economy was reset once a day and if you knew where to be and what to buy and had enough capital, you could clean up. Best day was making 56 million ISK in four hours.
Devaluation occurred pretty rapidly of course – by the time I sold my account (for 500 USD) it wasn’t really worth doing any more.
Fraud on ebay for ISK was rampant, though. I monitored *every* ebay auction for ISK for a couple of months, towards the end of my time selling. You rapidly learned how to spot fraudelent bidders – they bid a lot, they bid on auctions close to finishing and they bid high – because they were spending someone elses money and needed to convert it to goods before the card was stopped.
More than 50% of sales on ebay for ISK were to fraudelent buyers. The only safe way to trade was to use Western Union, because once you were paid, they guaranteed payment, even if the bidder turned out to be a fraud.
I left in the end because CCP IMHO really screwed up the in-game economy. I mean it was bad decision being made to handle the impact of a previous bad decision to handle the impact of a previous bad decision, etc, etc, etc. The in-game economy was utterly shafted – basically, what you’d expect from attempts to regulate the running of a whole economy. You can’t do it.
If this is not enough to boggle your mind, Eve Online is in fact an Icelandic firm! Which explains why the money in Eve is called ISK, also the code for the Iceland Krona
Quality can be measured by the shoe’s fit, rigidity, durability, construction quality and lightness.
Comments on this entry are closed.