# Leaks, riots, and monocles: How a $60 in-game item almost destroyed EVE Online

- **期号**: SRE Weekly Issue #129（2018-07-08）
- **作者**: Ben Kuchera — Ars Technica
- **链接**: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/07/monocles.ars

## 简介

Sometimes, a reliability risk can come in the form of a bunch of angry customers.

## 正文

[loot boxes became the bane of the Internet's existence](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/op-ed-game-companies-need-to-cut-the-crap-loot-boxes-are-obviously-gambling/), in-game purchases at large could cause a bit of commotion within certain gaming communities. Roughly seven years ago, for instance, a simple monocle almost brought down one of the most active gaming communities around:

*EVE Online*. With a staff holiday looming tomorrow on July 4, we're resurfacing this cautionary tale of computer-gaming consumerism. It originally ran on July 11, 2011 and appears unchanged below.

Controversy was expected, but not virtual *riots*.

On June 21, developer [CCP](http://www.ccpgames.com/en/home.aspx) updated its popular space-opera-slash-MMO *EVE Online* so that players could take their avatars outside their ships and walk around the game world. With this new ability came a store that sold vanity items—in-game clothing and accessories that alter an avatar’s looks but don’t change an avatar’s abilities. The price for these items was much higher than most people expected for vanity in-game items which did absolutely nothing, and it made players nervous. The *EVE* playerbase didn’t want their game turning to microtransactions to increase the cost of playing.

That fear seemed to be legitimate when an internal CCP communication leaked online. Called “Greed is Good?,” it provided a detailed argument between members of the development team over whether to sell items that could change the way the game is played. Nervousness in some players gave way to rage.

“I would like virtual goods sales in EVE. In fact, I’d like to sell a lot more than vanity items,” CCP’s Kristoffer Touborg wrote in one article. “Does this mean I’m an evil capitalist that, unless stopped, will cause the entire company to catch fire and be buried at sea by a secret team of Navy SEALs?”

He knew how badly the players would react if they heard him say that, and he went on to discuss that issue in the article itself. “There is a pretty overwhelming perception amongst EVE players that these changes are bad,” he added. “I think they’re brilliant, but our players don’t. We’re going to face an uphill struggle, and the reason many of us never talk about this publicly is that we’d be burned at the stake by the players.”

CCP’s John Tubefield argued the other way. “To me, virtual goods sales are far less appealing when the gameplay is affected and they aren’t replacing a black market,” he wrote. “When we’re adding additional things into the game that enable users to gain an advantage over other people for real money in a way they simply wouldn’t be able to if we hadn’t done so, then it becomes an issue.”