It was the perfect crime. When you're assisting in the administration of a player-run bank in EVE Online, billions of ISK (the in-game currency of EVE), flow through your fingertips. Billions! And a player named Xabier decided that he had to make a go of it. So he's apparently embezzled 80 billion ISK and hit the road.
Read this bit from Massively's coverage of this event and see how many sentences it takes you before you feel like you live in Crazy Town, USA. (Sugar. Baby.)
Massively contacted Xabier today, who stated that the value of assets taken from Dynasty Banking was 86 billion ISK, adding that the total value is now 106.2 billion ISK due to how it was invested. He also stressed to Massively that he's used some of this ISK to repay his friends who invested with Dynasty Banking. We also spoke with Manalapan, the Chairman of Dynasty Banking, who placed the embezzled amount at 82.5 billion ISK. Manalapan has released a statement in hopes of quelling rumors related to the theft, which comes in the wake of two senior members of Dynasty Banking stepping down from their roles.
To me, MMO games involve right-clicking on things and swinging swords at stuff until it falls over. This sort of futuristic Trade-Wars-but-not-a-BBS-door-game stuff just makes my eyes glaze over. We fear what we don't understand. But how awesome is it that a group of players can just decide to run a bank, and then one of them can just decide he's had enough and bail on the whole thing with a bunch of the cash? I mean, since it's all in-world, it's not like there can be any actual real-world repercussions. But I bet this guy will have crazy men in spaceships following him for the rest of his EVE Online life. All this kind of makes me want to play a little EVE Online for myself... just so I can one day steal a bunch of money and blast off into the eternal night of outer space.
Read the full story on Massively for info on how this actually impacts players who invested their hard-earned ISKs in this venture.