The biggest heist in EVE Online history led to real-world threats of violence

[mattsie]

Yep. That trailer pretty much does sum up the gist of what happened. Good call Puiu.

If you read the RPS write-up, it goes into more detail about The Judge's motivations and what led to his actions. gigX was the first to betray. He "burned his bridges." He betrayed The Imperium (and Goonswarm) by deserting right in the middle of a war. Now The Imperium might not be the most liked group in the game, but thousands of players make up the alliance. Goonswarm had had it out for CO2 for over a year. At first, they just wanted to hurt them, but after a while, they wanted to bring them down.

The Judge just happened to meet Goonswarm's spymaster Aryth at the 2016 EVE Summit, and Aryth suggested the plan. The Judge wasn't even sure he was going to go through with it, but I guess one too many outbursts from gigX was enough for him to say, "Screw it."

But the bottom line is, EVE was designed specifically for this type of play, so I have a hard time feeling bad for anyone who lost. It's a game. I feel about as bad for the 3,500 people who lost it all, as I do for the person who goes bankrupt in Monopoly.

"Yeah, but this is like real money."

Okay, let me rephrase that: I feel about as sorry for them as I feel for someone who loses everything at the poker table.

They all know the risks of playing EVE. The risk is, in fact, what makes it fun. Now they can all start plotting their revenge against The Judge.

Very insightful. It seems more to this story! Thanks Cal for this.

But banning his accounts. The lost of everything should be enough. Eve shouldn't have deleted the acc. It's an empty threat. I wonder what happened with freedom of expression. He was mad, thats given and of course if I write he will hurt someone he wont. I would understand if he would start stalking him and at least attacking him once.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

Very insightful. It seems more to this story! Thanks Cal for this.

But banning his accounts. The lost of everything should be enough. Eve shouldn't have deleted the acc. It's an empty threat. I wonder what happened with freedom of expression. He was mad, thats given and of course if I write he will hurt someone he wont. I would understand if he would start stalking him and at least attacking him once.

I do agree with you in one respect; that being that gigX suffered a severe and humiliating loss. And had he just went on a normal rant, I'm sure that would have been accepted. However, he stepped over a line by issuing death threats, empty or not.

Think about it this way: If he had been playing poker in a casino and lost all his money to another player, would the casino stand for him telling that player he was going to kill him or chop his hands off in the parking lot? Of course not. It's no different here. The inability to immediately enact violence against someone does not make such threats acceptable.

As far as what happened to freedom of expression; threats of violence are not protected speech (at least not in the US). Over here that is called assault, and it's a crime.

 

[oldikes]

They are emotional for their time and money as you are reading this. Those people expend hundreds of ours in that game (and maybe money), wait wait wait, as you expend doing your hobby, aaaaaaand part of their hobby is advancing in that game/hobby.

Part of their hobby is also accepting the fact that in their virtual space game, there can be crime too, which in any rational person's mind, does not have ANY grounds to carry over into reality or into a person's actual life.

This is the bigger, adult version, of people screaming into their mic over a COD match, except actual potentially legitimate threats are involved.

 

[Aether]

This is completely sublime. It's a video game for heavens sake. It's something to be enjoyed at leisure and not to be taken seriously at all. Anybody who takes computer gaming seriously, has seriously lost all touch with reality. There's a lot more to life than just playing games.

This is completely sublime. It's a video game for heavens sake. It's something to be enjoyed at leisure and not to be taken seriously at all. Anybody who takes computer gaming seriously, has seriously lost all touch with reality. There's a lot more to life than just playing games.

Yea but, some people are already using video games to earn a living its not just reality and virtual no more, if you have only tried playing eve grinding a sht ton with your time gaining all those $13k worth items real life currency and having them gone in an instant by some hypocrite who got nothing to do but be a douchebag and then you would realize the frustration and anger gigx must have felt after experiencing this major betrayal. I dont support death threats but I think that ***** *** THE JUDGE deserves it to scare the **** out of him.