Date Posted:	Friday 25th August, 2006	Author:	cheese-cube
Subject:	Gamer's Thoughts	Views:	7029
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The EIB Scam: Too Many Idiots, Not Enough Rocks Original article: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/23/1918246
If you look closely you can see satan himself!

Yes, yes ladies and gentleman: a great crime, nay, injustice has been committed in the "persistent world online multiplayer game" EVE Online. The scam itself was fiendishly simple and as an added bonus it was entirely legal. Usually with high gain endeavours the risk is proportionate to the reward but in this case there was zero risk and the reward was fit for a king! The basic premise is that a player in the game set up this unofficial in-game bank, the EVE Investment Bank (EIB).

All you had to do is transfer some of your ISK, the in-game currency in EVE Online, to the EIB where it would be kept safe *snicker* and you would gain an interest on your deposit *further snickering*. So it’s really just like a real life bank minus any actual method of generating and delivering interest and no official legal obligation to that end. This is a commonlly used scam and is known as a Ponzi scheme.

The whole notion is so incredibly suspect that it would even set off Richard Nixon's bullshit meter which happens to be the weakest in existence. Seriously it's like giving your life savings to a drunken homeless guy just because he can write his name and the words "investment banker" on a piece of cardboard. In fact the whole idea was ousted as a scam from day one when Cally, the player name of the person behind the scam, started advertising the EIB on the official EVE Online forums.

Still despite the glaring signs that the EIB was a scam the human race demonstrated that it is still capable of carrying out stupendous acts of stupidity with hundreds of players investing large amounts of ISK in the EIB. The EIB quickly gained both supporters and detractors but it was the former that had wasted its time when Cally decided to stop messing around and cash in.

While the actual amount that Cally raked in hasn't been revealed most sources say that he got about 700 billion ISK. Like most virtual currencies ISK is commonly sold for real world money on sites such as eBay. Therefore to give some perspective to non-EVE players, 100 million ISK is worth ≈$23AUD, so 700 billion ISK would be worth ≈$165,310AUD! While many players have been calling the incident a scam it doesn't actually come into conflict with EVE Onlines Suspension and Ban Policy since it is entirely legal to transfer funds between players in the game and transferring said funds is the sole responsibility of the player involved.

However the selling of ISK on external sites is prohibited under section four of the Suspension and Ban Policy and many have speculated that the EVE Online administrators will be monitoring Cally's account for any signs of such activity (Signs such as large transfers of ISK from Cally to other players or, more simply, advertisements on eBay under Callys name, a practice which is also prohibited under section four). Pages:   1   2