Huge Battle Erupts in EVE Online — Over $116k in Losses

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Sci-Fi role playing game EVE Online saw its largest-ever battle around 24 hours ago after a group tried to fudge a rent payment on a space station. It started as a fight between two smaller groups, and quickly escalated to draw in the largest factions in the game.

Both sides brought the majority of their forces to bear: gigantic supercarrier ships, dreadnoughts, and titans, which can be worth over $3000 USD each.

Here’s a quote from a reddit thread describing the action:

Here’s how it went down. Corporation Nulli owned a station. Which gave them ownership of an entire sector. That’s a big deal. Their corporate ally PL was tationed there and had lots of assets there. Nulli “forgot to pay rent” So then… The space-station became unowned. Except all of PLs assets housed there remained there. Another corporation, RUS was near, saw this going, and swooped in to take the station. They succeeded. PL came back with guns to take it back from RUS. To get their stuff back. PL also got their ally Nulli to help them. When that happened. RUS called their ally CFC.

Normally, these kinds of things happen between smaller ships. And one team will either leave or win. But both sides refused to back down. And the fight continued to escalate continually. Until we have what you see now. Currently 2160 people. In a pitched war.

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The in-game currency is known as ISK, and when ships are destroyed in-game that currency is lost. This battle has destroyed dozens of ships that are worth tens of billions of ISK each. If you were to convert this money back into USD, the total losses would tally over $116,000.

Co-incidentally, this battle comes on the one year anniversary of the last largest battle in EVE Online, known as the Battle of Askai. What trigged that war? One guy accidentally mis-clicked and warped into a system where he wasn’t meant to be.