Citation Needed - Eve Online's Judgement Day

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Eve Online (stylised EVE Online) is a space-based, persistent world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by CCP Games. Players of Eve Online can participate in a number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, piracy, manufacturing, trading, exploration, and combat (both player versus environment and player versus player). The game contains a total of 7,800 star systems that can be visited by players. In 2009, a player alliance known as Goonswarm was contacted by a disgruntled director of rival alliance Band of Brothers, one of the largest alliances in the game at that time. The defecting director then stripped Band of Brothers of a large quantity of assets including ships, money and territory, and disbanded the alliance. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Okay, but why would the movie mention they need a virgin if him fucking doesn't come into it? Dude, it's just a lie. You thought the children's movie Hocus Pocus didn't have enough fucking in it? Right, when you phrase it like that, it sounds weird. Yeah. Okay, what about the rubber masks? Just load them in with the costumes. Alright, yep. Hey, hey, guess what's with all this stuff? Oh, like you don't know. Yeah, yeah, don't even talk to him.

Eli, that's what they want. All right. Just ignore what's what we want. Oh, so you guys just happened to do an episode about a big internet espionage, the exact same week that me and Tom's plot against the dollop is about to go down. Yeah. What a coincidence. You make me sick.

Eli, what do I do with the balloons? The ones filled with pee or heroin? Yeah, both. What? Bio waste and then the carton that says Afghanistan. Got it. Okay, guys, whatever you're planning, we really didn't know about it. I promise.

Yeah, no, he's just found a really interesting story of internet culture and wanted to talk about it. You, you did? Yeah, man. 100% man. talk about it. You, you did? Yeah, man. 100% man. Yes. Damn. Well, Tom, is it still too late to get that tri guy,

his marriage back? Oh, yeah. Way too late. No. Did he, weren't we? Not yet, but he might. He might, yeah, sure. This show comes on in the delay.

I really hope that joke flies. I think it'll get better. Huh. What's a try guy? It's three guys. He's a third of a guy. Hello and welcome to the Citation Needed Podcast. We choose a subject. Read a single article about our Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the

internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be tanking this raid, but I'll need the rest of my party. First up, the guy's gonna carry hard and the button masher Noah and Tom. Well, less and less hard since I reached my 40s, but thank you Cecil. Hey, hey, hey, even I don't jump right

to mashing the button Cecil. Nobody likes that move. That's me. Yeah, you do. Nobody likes that move. That's right. Thank you. Also joining us tonight, two guys who put the D in DPS Eli and Heath. Ah, jokes on you, Cecil, because that means an even nerder thing to magicians and my diagonal palm shift is medium. So.

Okay, not sure what any of that meant, but my sexual style has been described as button measure for sure. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, if the clip worked anything like the N64 controller, we'd all have world peace right now. I think we should just acknowledge. To the N64 controller broke, if you pushed it real hard, I feel like 51% of us definitely wouldn't.

Wait, so works just like the clip. Yeah, thank you. I'm glad I never got to describe this corner trap. I'm glad with that. Patrons, you help keep this crazy arcade running and we can't thank you enough. And if you'd like to slowly put quarters in our slot while we make hard eye contact. Be sure to stick around until the end of the show. And with that, the way tell us Noah, what person place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event, will we be talking about today? Today, we're going to be talking about Eve online judgment day.

So he's, are you ready to tell these noobs what Eve online judgment day was? I am. It's one of the biggest heists in the history of the world. And it happened in outer space of the world. That game, that video game is called Eve online. And it's a massively multiplayer online role playing game or MMO RPG with a spaceship theme. It's been around since 2003 and it has one of the largest and most fanatical gaming communities out there with over 9 million players.

And judgment day was the culmination of a spite-based long-con involving elements of psychology, economics, international diplomacy, espionage, and intrigue, both in the gaming world and the meat world, leading to a massive theft that changed the entire landscape of the Eve online universe. Okay. Heath, I got to say for an essay that essentially breaks down to the time leaders 69 stole all my Disney bucks, that was a masterful set up, sir.

Master. You lie. Wait, Eli, are we finally doing our episode on crypto I've had on the whiteboard? You guys said no. So I got thinking about the topic of gaming scandals after being reminded of a classic example from 2006 that happened in World of Warcraft. It all started when a player who controlled a character named Fagin passed away in real life. Following

her death, some friends from her guild in the game decided to set up a funeral inside that game universe. They published the event on forums and bulletin boards, and there was a big turnout. One of Fagin's friends was able to access her account and control the character, so everyone was able to see Fagin walk to the edge of a mountain spring and a long line of characters was there to pay their respects. Even a group from a rival guild showed up, including one of their leaders who walked up to Fagin as a sign of solemn remembrance. It was a truly beautiful moment of humanity being played out inside a game that's normally just about competitive killing for the most part. And then the leader guy made them scene gesture and killed Fagin in front of the entire funeral. The rival party killed everyone attending the funeral.

Now we're back to the world right now. There is. Someone should cut this video with an inner spurs baptism like the other godfather. Yeah, no, but it's not, but it's just a world of warcraft player being bathed for the first time. The funeral massacre was to plan the whole time by the rival guild called serenity now. They saw the public announcement about the funeral and they read the part that said, okay, guys, we know some rivals. You're going to be tempted to attack us during the funeral. Don't be a dick.

We're making a recording to give to the real-life family of the deceased. Seriously. Jesus. Don't be a dick. And surrendered. No, I was like, yes, no, of course, of course, funeral. Got it. And then they mascured the entire funeral, which was extra easy because most of the characters

who were genuinely paying their respects were wearing all black funeral attire instead of being equipped with armor and weapons. And that's when the entire world of gaming lost its goddamn mind and started arguing about whether video game funerals need to be taken seriously, just like real ones. So you guys have any thoughts on that? Do you have to take it seriously? Yeah. Trusting people, not to be fucking monsters online is definitely something that died in the early odds, I think. So yeah, I just think it would have been childishly easy for the parents of flu flu or whatever this character's name was to visit

the head of the bad guys at his house in meat space, as he calls it. And then the resulting live streamed torture wouldn't really change culture for the better, right? They did cut that guy with a knife over and over and over again until he begged them to die. So maybe I just play Minecraft. Yeah. What do they expect? Like, uh, Mr. and Mrs. Fajin. No, we are so sorry to hear about how your, you know, your child is dead. But listen, a bunch of us, internet strangers, what we made a video of a video game. So you can see how everyone's avatar in a made up world did some performative morning floss stance and you're walking away.

No, okay. All right. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but I've never attended a funeral that wouldn't have been improved by a bloodthirsty right? That's true. That's a real point. That's a real point. God, they're so fucking full of point.

And speaking of which, just a couple other details about the ensuing debate. First of all, the funeral was held on a player versus player server, PVP server, which means it was a potential battlefield. They could have used a player versus environment server, PVE, and enemy guilds wouldn't be able to attack. Also worth noting related to what Noah said, after the incident, a friend of the deceased said that Fagin would have loved this whole thing and she would have appreciated the funeral turning into a battle.

So does that make it better? I feel like it does. See, this is why Puzzle on a thunderstorm has a clause in our contract that if any of us quit or die, the other two get to pretend he got caught with child porn and we fired him for sympathy money. What the what?

Oh, yeah. No, no, it was a weird day for Andrew when he had to write all that. Yeah. So that story of the funeral raid made me start thinking more generally about the morality of gaming. And I learned about some other notorious moments in gaming history. Another big example, also from World of Warcraft, was the time they had an actual pandemic inside the game in 2006. It started when the developers at Blizzard make World of Warcraft. They added a new boss who had a life draining spell that would infect any

player who got within a short distance. And instead of, you know, avoiding the plague, a bunch of players decided to start teleporting out of the dungeon and spreading the plague. And refusing to wear masks and going to the grocery store. Yeah, I'm pretty much saying. The infection would take away hit points fast enough to kill a new player pretty much instantly. So high level players would just teleport all over the game universe for fucking spite and kill people really easily. Well, right.

Yeah. Today we call that running a 2020 simulation. To be fair, this is the only pandemic that might have actually been solved by shining sunlight on it. Like, come on, shut the curtains. I'm ruining other people's good time. This is legitimate hobby. You wouldn't understand. So eventually Blizzard tried to fix the pandemic by making quarantine rules. And it did not work very well. So a group of plague spreading idiots. Now stop me if you've heard this one. A group of plague spreading idiots decided to hide in the mountains and keep the infection going on. Jesus Christ. Why would digital mountains offer actual

respite back that part? but that's what they did. Blizzard was doing purges of entire servers to get rid of the problem, but these people found a way to infect their virtual pets in the game and then reinfect themselves after a purge and keep it going. Eventually, Blizzard had to do a hard reset of the entire system. And the incident actually got examined by real world epidemiologists and bioterrorism experts. Jesus Christ. Case study. Oh sure. But when I suggest a hard reset of West Virginia, you guys believe it out and cut it out of the fuck. So based on that, I kept reading about other incidents and I learned about the world

of Eve Online, which is the perfect universe for exploring the ethics of gaming. The developers basically set up, I ran Libertarianism in outer space as a game. Everyone's trying to make money in the space universe, which has a currency called ISK, which stands for interstellar credits. They spelled credits with a K for some reason. And, and people can use ISK to buy all different items, most importantly, to buy better ships for their characters. And the developers take this economy very seriously. The game's run by a company called CCP. And a libertarian universe's run by a company called CCP and a libertarian universe is run by a company called CCP. They were the first developers to hire a professional economist, like a real one from a university to oversee their in-game economy in 2007.

I feel like the first thing he'd tell him is stop with all the libertarians shit. No. Oh, no, this is what he was doing. Yeah. And since then they've expanded. And now they have a dedicated economics department to deal with all the players who band together and form large corporations to carry out high profit activity like mining, fracking and piracy and literal bounty hunting. Do you think they ever like tomb hours into a staff meeting with the economist and someone just starts screaming, I just wanted to make video games for children. Okay. Mario didn't have an economy.

I just wanted to make video games. Sorry, Larry. I can't hear you over the sound of our ch-ching cash register sound that plays every time a kid dies of a red bull overdose. So. And I should mention I was not exaggerating about I'm ran in space. The developers intentionally set up the game to have pretty much no rules. Behavior called griefing in other games that's generally banned in those other games

is considered just a normal part of the fucking libertarian hellscape that is Eve online. So a big part of the game is criminal activity like theft and ransom and extortion and racketeering. Jesus, you know, all the stuff that normally goes along with capitalism. Yeah, I thought you'd game to get away from reality. Spoken like a guy who'd ever spent an evening avoiding angry turtles and sentient bullets

after eating a mushroom. See, so okay. All right, that's fair. So, naturally, that capitalism also involves the formation of military alliances, and often with thousands of players banding together and these warring factions are constantly trying to destroy each other. This happens with standard combat like any other game, but also with a crazy amount of cloaking dagger stuff in the real world.

And in on zero amount would be crazy. Yeah. This is real though. Many of the large alliances actually have entire real world espionage teams that operate entirely outside of the game. They look to plant moles within the ranks of rival alliances and set up elaborate sabotage operations. And that is how judgment day happened. Hey, maybe if our FBI didn't pay a third grade teacher salary, we could have used some of these people to protect our elections.

But no, no, we have Cecil Stad on the Commodore 64 trying to boot up Facebook while they have a space war on the deep web. It's fine. It's fine. A dead guy. So the big sabotage operation started with a feud between a major federation called Circle of Two or CO2 and another called Goonsworm. CO2 was originally part of a coalition called the Imperium along with Goonsworm.

But CO2 defected during the middle of a conflict called the Casino War and the Imperium got crushed. Oh my God. Yeah. Side note, that war got started when a group of players built a gambling website that used the ISK as the casino currency. And as the house, of course, they amassed like bajillions. Then a bunch of people tried to knock on them and said they were breaking one of the few rules of the E economy. And some of the gnarks were in Goonsworm. So the gambling site people used their bajillions of ISK to fund the complete annihilation of Goonsworm and the Imperium for spite. And it worked, especially with CO2 deserting the coalition. I hate not only that I'm following this story, but that I'm listening to it and I'm thinking, oh, that's way more ethical than Roblox that game for children

and real. I was trying to understand the actual incentives here. So I looked it up and there is an actual exchange to convert these ISKs to real money. And I thought, oh, all right, that makes us all make sense. And then having had that thought, I beat myself in the skull with a claw hammer in shame. Yeah. And another brings out, like, shame for our species, quite like MMO RPG community. I get it. I know you keep saying goons swarm, but I like to think it's more like the temperature of the goon rather than a goon Swarm. Oh, that's a goon Swarm.

Oh, yeah. Goon Swarm. That's what I think. Like a warm goon. Oh, yes. That sounds delicious. Happiness is a warm goon. Also a time, by the way, that conversion that you can do at that exchange you found, yeah,

that does exist. Of course, it does. But that is one of the few rules in Eve is you're not allowed to just convert ISK to actual money. There's like a kind of a way to do it between a different currency to have that's based on buying hours in the game and then flipping it again, but you're not supposed to do that. But they can't do anything about that because you know, it's a real world. So there's that does it. There's a fucking exchange. Yeah.

That's you can exchange it there. Yeah. Also, one other side note, this was far from the first economic scandal in the world of Eve. In 2006, a player named Cali opened up the Eve Intergalactic Bank within the game. The bank provided loans. Oh my God. Okay.

So players could build their ships. And in return, those players paid back the loan with interest, often by working for Cali's alliance. Wait, that's called sharecropping in the rest of the world or capitalism, whatever you want. Okay. Yeah. So he's actually a whole bunch of players in the game made huge deposits of ISK to this bank. You know, they were like, yeah, no, it's FDIC insurance. Probably

fine. And the bank had 790 billion ISK in holdings. I don't even know if the FDIC thing is snark or real heath. I don't, I don't know that I'm sure people were like, nah, as bad as you would, nobody would fuck me over in this. It's got to be a hellscape. It's got to be a way to it. It says bank. It says bank.

There's no way they're going to take your mind. It's like being a doctor. You can't lie and say you're a bank. If you're not, if you, if you bank in the game, you bank in real life, that's like it's show me your bank dick. So there you go. Yeah. So they have a giant fortune, 790 billion ISK.

And then Callie just shuts down the bank, fires all the employees and takes all the currency because why would you? Right. Why wouldn't you? According to some estimates, that was worth about 175,000 dollars in real money at the time. So yeah, that's how the deregulated libertarian banking sector works in both video games and real life. At the time of the casino war, a player named the Mitani was the leader of Goonsworm and the Imperium, and he swore bloody vengeance

upon CO2 for deserting. And one of Goonsworm's players named Arith was the mastermind behind the revenge plan. Arith occasionally logs into the game and actually plays it, but his main roles are in the meta game. He's a literal real world spy for the Goons warm espionage team. And he's also a member of the Council of Interstellar Management. That's a group of player elected representatives who meet with the game developers periodically throughout the year at the CCP headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland. And they all just yell at the development team like British parliament

about how to run the game. According to PC gamer, Arith is a puppet master illuminati figure in the world of you. Yeah. And according to reality, I want to pull his underwear over his head and around his body until he's trapped in it like a mobius strip. So during a summit in Reykjavik, Arith started executing a plan to infiltrate CO2 and take them down from the inside. And his target was a player named the judge, a high ranking member of CO2 and their chief

diplomat. The judge was also a member of the Council of Interstellar Management. Oh my God. So Arith was able to interact. Tom is so mad about. I just know you're not. You're not a member of something called the counselor of interest. You're not managing any interstellar, anything.

No, none of this. You're really like they take it so seriously. They have like none of this fancy. Yeah. So because they're both on that council, Arith was able to interact with the judge in person during their summit meetings, seriously, they have summit meetings. And Arith was already aware that CO2's top general named gig ex was a giant asshole. Nobody liked him. Gag ex was, he was exactly as obnoxious as you might guess.

If you're told that somebody is the supreme leader of a corporation and military alliance inside a libertarian video game and outer space. That's very obnoxious. That is very indeed. So Arith was hoping the judge might be harboring some resentment toward Gig ex and Arith was right. So the long con began. Well, I was falling along with photos of Bulletin board and some string, but I fucking ran out of push pins in the last paragraph. So we're gonna have to take a break for some apropos and nothing. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Onscreen Captain Murbank. I see you got my little gift. You blew up a planet you goddamn monster. As I told you, Captain, I am a man of my word. You think you can stand up to the star alliance? You won't need to. Counselor, be box, you traitor! I'm traitor to one. I'm so sorry guys, give me one second.

Seriously, it's the grub hub guy. I'm lost my whole screen. Oh, hi. Yes. Yes, thank you so much. You can leave that at the front door. Thank you. Sorry guys, give me two seconds.

Wait, you gotta be fucking kidding me, man. In the middle of something. So, how's Angela's mom? Yeah, you don't not great. You know, she's just at that age where there's only kind of so much you can do. It's just, yeah, wow, that's rough. I'm back, I'm back. Sorry, it's me, right?

I was going, it's you, go. It's you. We've been going for four hours. You want me to starve to death? Four hours, whatever. Die, I'm sorry, that's the baby. So I got to go check on her. Hang on. Literally in the middle of a space battle, man. I'll tell my infant that I'm sure she'll understand.

Shaker a little. See if that helps. So you get Thai food or? Yeah, you got to come with Stephanie next time you're in town man. This place is just insane It's actually really good. Yeah, I don't I don't think I've ever had Thai food What get the fuck out of here never not even pantie. Yeah, no, I don't think so. That's that's insane to me You got a chance. I gotta try it. So how's Angela's mom doing? Did he say anything? He said not great Well, well, you were getting your it. So how's Angela's mom doing? Did he say anything? He said, not great. Well, well, you were getting your food.

Uh, it's too bad. What's too bad? Oh, they were telling me about Angela's mom. I'm sorry to hear that, man. Oh, yeah. Thank you. You know, shit, she's doing her best with it. You know, I just, I do know.

Guys, space battle. Right. Sorry. Did I reveal that I am a trader yet? Yes. Okay. Nice. All right. Well, you're surrounded, Captain. You want a surrender? Or should we blow you out of the sky? Am I surrounded or did Craig get kicked off line three minutes ago? I'm looking. Oh, come on. Jesus. Reboot reboot now. I'm trying. It's the Wi-Fi! Plug into the internet with a wire, you're the leader of a space arm!

Why are it up, man? Stupid concast. Fuckers. We left off, gamers weren't ventitles like they were British words, which is good because no one cares about them either. So where are we? All right. Well, the key to a successful interstellar long con. Okay, you probably know the answer already. What do we always say?

It's making the mark feel like they came to you. They came to you. Right. Exactly. That's what we always say. I said, I'm my notes. I just I think. Arith spent the next year very slowly luring in the judge during summit meetings during

the first summit after hatching the plan. Arith just struck up a casual friendship with the judge occasionally bringing up the general subject of shitty bosses. And then he started making moves, according to Arith, quote, during the second summit, we know that CO2 would be in trouble when the moon mining patch finally came along. Our goal was to build up and exploit the judge during this time where CO2's lifestyle would be in danger, possibly even setting up a coup for the judge to take over. So I guess CO2's interstellar business model was getting fucked up by all the regulatory

upheaval following the moon mining patch. And that was affecting the universe. And look, people will tell you that the moon miners were just concerned about their jobs, but when they surveyed, they're actually like super racist. like super racist. If your lifestyle is in danger by literally anything that happens on a video game moon mine, I'm willing to bet that lifestyle is the wrong word to describe your living conditions. So Arith spent a few more summits laying out a corner. It's going to sum it. You're at a remata.

It might have been like the next land pickup remada double tree. Ray could have been a Weston. Could have been a Weston. I don't know. Donald breakfast. Yeah. I use the

I don't honors points for this guys. Oh, I can't even trade in for ISK. The fuck. So can I kill for more of these hip-knows? So they had to do it in cosplay, like you have to do that. You can't do this half-ass. You have to come to the remata in a cosplay outfit. Yes, of course.

And you're fucking, if you're the fucking captain of the whatever the fuck these guys, they're fucking break character even to take a piss like that. Not even a second. You cannot not a second out of the international. This is spelled out. Absolutely. Space commuter. Whatever.

Kill them. And then when they kill them, they shoot the ISK right out of them like a fucking rings. There is no chance these meetings don't start with a bunch of people being like, okay, my accessories. It's a lot. Can we plab a little area out to just I I've soared some like, can we just put them all and then we'll get them after? Because I, it's hard to sit. These are really nice chairs, but it's hard to sit.

Reagan's in the corner, guys. Yeah. Okay. Bathroom breaks in 30 minutes. I've got a whole cod piece to take off. It's going to take some time. Everyone here have a phone chart. everyone has a phone charger, okay? They finally take care of all their, uh, their stuff, put it in a little bin. And then a rith for the next few summits just lays out acorns for the judge. And then he finally saw his moment during the first summit of the following year. It's a really long gone here.

His network of spies had strong intel, network of spies were breaking down for CO2 and another big war was coming. According to Arith, I wanted to set up a super prisoners dilemma. I knew this was the time. So he decided to finally make a direct appeal to the judge about secretly flipping his allegiance. And if you want to see a real life version of judge flipping, just watch the Supreme Court testimony when they say they won't overturn the court. Yeah, I'm sure to think Eli put Heath up to this essay just so he could reference killing the judge without it getting bleeped out. So my bingo card, I don't have to bleep it out. Also, just quick side note here, I don't think

Arith understood what prisoner's dilemma means or how his plan involved that. A prisoner's dilemma is when multiple parties agree to some form of collusion usually. And if one party breaks the pact, that first party to cheat makes out even better. But if multiple parties break the pact, everyone does worse. It's like when competing companies agree to keep prices high. If one company goes ahead and cheats and lowers the price, they get a bunch of extra sales. But if everybody does that, all the companies make less money. So in a plot to secretly flip the enemy leader at CO2, that would make a riff and goonsworm into one of the prisoners who might get triple crossed

while trying to set up a double cross. So this guy just wanted to say prisoners dilemma during an interview, so we said it. Okay, that's true. But you got to admit, not knowing the difference between a trap and the prisoners dilemma, be famous thought experiment about altruism is the most libertarian thing I've ever heard of. No. It really is. this thought experiment about altruism is the most libertarian thing I've ever heard of. It really is.

So regardless of the correct terminology for the double cross, the Imperium decided to go ahead with Arith's plan for a big sabotage heist. Thanks to a series of entangling alliances, much like the start of World War I, some minor battles ended up triggering a bunch of mutual defense agreements. And CO2 had lots of presumed allies lining up against them in the impending war. The judge was at the summit trying to work some diplomacy about that, but his asshole boss, GigEx was making it worse by just threatened to murder everyone in the allied federations if they didn't stay loyal. And Arif was watching this all happen through his, again, very literal spy network in real life of real people. And he's just waggling his fingers getting ready,

make the sabotage happen. Whoa. Oh, sorry, my pizza bagels. You're being a damn judge. You've a guy who's forced me to sit through 20 minute explanations of tick-tock dramas on multiple occasions. Okay. Let's be in talk. It's a flame.

No, it's a flame. All right. So it's the final night of the summit. And that's when CCP takes all the delegates of the Council of Interstellar Management out for a very fancy dinner. As a big thanks for all their fanatical dedication to a fake universe. It was a Taco Bell. Heath.

That's where it was Taco Bell. He bought him a contract. That's the fan. Actually, you know, it breaks my heart because I looked this up when I read Tom's joke, they go to the nicest restaurant in Iceland, the one that it's commissionally. It's a really. It's really. It's a really.. Yeah, really? It's like a famous famous restaurant. The middle of it with all these fucking. They take ISK there. Yeah.

Right. We go with ISK. Is that something we can pay with? No. How many times do you think that restaurant has had to explain they don't have any mountain do during the particular seating, just get mountain do whatever. So they're at this incredibly nice restaurant in Reykjavik. And it's the last chance for Arith to interact with the judge in person for a little while. So Arith sets it up. So he's sitting with the judge and also a new CCP developer named Nagwal, who is focused on Medagame affairs. And then Arith starts getting a bunch of drinks for everyone part of the plan. As the first round arrives, he says to Nagwal, the developer, you want to see how the Medagame is played tonight?

Nagwal, of course, is excited about that. He says, yes. And as the judge gets more and more drunk, Arith just very slowly tells the whole story of CO2's mining problem and the entangling alliances and general giggex being a maniacal asshole. And then Arith finally turns to the judge and says, Hey, you know what? Just crazy thought ahead. Just now you could flip to Goonsworm and I'd be super fun, right? And the judge agreed. He'd become a secret agent for Goonsworm and steal pretty much all the stuff owned by CO2,

including their entire home base called Keep Star Citadel. This was a death star level space layer that was home to about 5,000 players at the time and took millions of gaming hours to organize and fund and build inside the game. Yeah, it's hard to convey just how big a thing this was, but imagine if every preteen in Minecraft had all been working on the same project on the same Minecraft server. That's what's about to get destroyed over oysters in Iceland. So the way it works in EVONLINE, a hiring official like the judge in a big federation like that is kind of like the CFO of a giant multinational corporation. He had the passwords to control all the assets of CO2. And that brings us to the actual judgment day around 10 a.m. in Australia where the judge lives. He used his admin credentials to check on the CO2 communication channel. And he saw

that GIG X was recently active, but now idle for about 10 minutes. So the judge waited a couple hours until GIG X was definitely asleep for the night in Serbia where GIG X lives. And then the judge just went to town plundering every valuable asset controlled by CO2. First, he emptied their bank accounts, they have bank accounts. Then he transferred control of their satellites, Citadel's to arrival alliance. And then he transferred ownership of the giant keep star Citadel to a space corporation that he owned personally. So, you just stole it straight up. I extend this thing like a Trump charity, man.

Yeah. Well, if anybody's ever going to cheat his way into an honor death star in real life, yeah. And the judge was not yet finished from there. As the new owner of the keep star Citadel, he revoked the docking permits for all 5,000 members of CO2 who were in there. And as per the secret deal, he sold the Keep Star to Goonsworm and got 400 billion ISK for it. Between that and all the other stuff he stole, the judge took home about 1.5 trillion in

ISK, which is worth almost $325,000 in real money, according to the exchange rate from the interlactic bank theft that we talked about before. Other estimates say it's about $20,000 in real money. The big difference. Yeah, that's pretty big. I guess they had some deflation since 2006, but regardless of the exact value, the heist also effectively stole all those millions of player hours over the course of years, while CO2 built up its empire. This was the largest

single heist in the history of the game. It just log in to do a little mining on your, you know, favorite game you play on week nights, maybe a little PVP with your friends, and they got to be like, oh, sorry, there was a space terrorism and all of your shit is gone. Oh, man. Oh, man. Now it's like all those thousands of hours spent in the digital minds were a, a nothing. I hear it now.

Yeah. It was nothing. So the main deed was done, but there were still lots more plundering to do. 5,000 players from CO2 had their ships inside a now enemy controlled death star, and they were getting evicted. They could wait around for a while and definitely get all their shit stolen, or they could leave, never come back and then get ambushed by the giant army that was waiting for them. Oh, shit. And Jesus. Get all their shit stolen.

That ambush army had already deployed after a rift sent out a message that said in all caps and all italics, a rift and the judge send their regards vengeance. Vengeance. Oh, these people were fucked worse than Eli's crypto wallet. Don't exaggerate. So in response to the cry of vengeance from Arith, everyone from Goonsworm showed up with their most powerful ships to surround the Keepstar to do some more plundering and deploy warp disruption bubbles all around the base to trap the CO2 players

as they tried to leave. Those bubbles have a useful mechanic for that purpose in the game. If you fly into what's called a warp disruption bubble, the in-game time dimension dilates and you basically can't do shit for a pretty long while. So you just watch while the other team annihilates your ship and kills you and takes all your stuff. And then they kill you again for spite usually. Apparently the designers made the game. So the first kill gives the killer a bunch of experience points and they get to salvage the wreck chip and keep the valuable parts. But the dead player escapes in a pod. But then you can kill the player in the pod

somehow, I guess, one second kill. It doesn't do anything. So it's just a built in extra fuck you with the season. Somebody this game sounds fun. It's something a fun game. It does that pretty quickly after the giant heist, some members of CO2, they realize what's happening. And somebody calls general giggex and wakes him up in the middle of the night in Serbia. He logs into the game and tries to minimize the damage, but it's way too late. So he flies into a rage and he gets on the CO2 communication channel and writes whoever knows his real name, home address and other details, message me right now. The judge, feel free

to use your hands by typing here while you can. But okay, Goons warm saw that coming, the rage and the like super crazy threat. And they had a plan for that. The judge who was still an admin with CO2 was streaming that chat window over Twitch to thousands of players from all different federations in Yvonne and naturally a bunch of those players filed petitions to have GIGX banned from the game because, you know, you're not allowed to literally threaten to chop off the hands of a real person. So pretty quickly, the developers at CCP removed Gieg X from the game entirely and without a leader or any money, CO2 pretty much disintegrated. I feel like we're going to learn that KGX is Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine invasion is

going to start piecing itself together. So to sum it all up at the end of this crazy scandal, super spy, Arith, explained how this was all just part of the game. He said, quote, it doesn't happen in the client. It's completely outside of the game. And it drives everything. It determines who wins wars. It determines who joins whom.

It determines the future features of Eve based on how people behave. And it determines the economic conditions. Eve based on how people behave and it determines the economic conditions. The meta determines everything. CCP has given us a pure sandbox and we're able to shape that meta. Why would you play anything else? End quote. So all right. Normally we'd close it out with me trying to sum up what I've learned in one sentence, but I'm curious what you guys think. Did you guys learn anything about humanity from, you know, the funeral raid and the wizard plague and iron ran in outer space? Anything important?

Yeah. You learn about humanity. Heath, people do mean shit when there's no threat of getting rocked hard in the job for it. I learned that we should have seen Trump coming. Yeah. He's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's

he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's Yeah. That's what he means by meta. Yep. Yeah. Eli, did you learn anything to answer my question that I asked to everybody? Yeah. Jews. Yeah.

Yeah. Jews make all the spaces. Hey, are you ready for the quiz? Heath? That's great. I'm ready. Okay. I'll say I did learn something.

I would love it for libertarians to try out their thing in outer space. Try to bring your back to the shop. It would be less likely to get eaten by bears there. Yeah. There'll be space bears. Somebody will figure it out. Sure. I know something.

Yeah. But yes, I am ready for the quiz. All right. I got a question for you. In what way is MMO RPG, the worst initialism in the history of letters? Hey, if it's massively multiplayer, it kind of has to be online. Well, we did you have a fucking LAN party. B, right. Why do they have to use an adverb there too?

It could just massive. Yeah, I feel like that would work. That would be massive. B, you play roles in all video games. That's just part of the thing. See, the game part is implied by the fact that it's a video game genre for fuck's sake or D. My brain can't help but try to pronounce it every time I see it.

Yeah. More more. More. More. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to guess.

I'm going to guess it's because your brain can't help. It is D. It is actually. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Heath, which of the following sentences would serve as a perfectly reasonable spark notes version of this story. Hey, libertarians cannot be trusted to not ruin shit. Hey, I'm going to say a lot of

it. Be in a game once. Some guys kind of cheated, but not really. That's true. They didn't know. No rules. See, none of this is anymore real than flying Italian plumbers wearing raccoon outfits. I said you did. Gotta be D all the other. That's all we got. I got my house. I get you and I are eating different mushrooms, Tom. And, and, judgment day was a doozy, but what was a far greater betrayal? Hey,

Judas is betrayal of Jesus. Be, Judas is betrayal of Caesar. Okay. Or see, you keep changing the format of the show. Okay. Yes.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. the format of the show. What did I, what did I change? Because I asked you questions about what you learned. Yes. That I mean, okay. That no, you're right. That was the greatest betrayal. I was asking for one sentence answers from you.

Wrong. It's Judas' betrayal of Jesus for stand. Absolutely. I can't believe you missed that Eli wins this week. Yeah. It's such an idiot. I choose Noah for next week. All right, well for Tom, Noah, Eli and Heath, I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week and by then, Noah will be an expert on something else, between now and then become a patron of this show. I'm just going to straight out ask you to become a patron. It really helps us and your dollars go to amazing things like the special patron episodes to become a patron. to us on social media, be sure to check this show notes at citationpod.com. You bastard! You've destroyed it all! Why don't you just kill me and get it over with? No, no, no, no, no, Captain. Take your ship and leave. I want you to live on as a lesson to those who cross Lord Gregor. And that's going to do it. You guys go to call it there. Yeah, I got to get some sleep. Come on. You guys don't want to stick around for another one. I'm going to use the new

Titan ships to raid a local settlement. Can I add you guys in as a co-op? Okay. Can I add you in? Cool. No, I got a lot of work. I also have work in the morning. Baby. So long. All right. All right, Nick.

Soon me, huh? 1v1 in the PVP zone. We said, I should get to bed. Christine might still be awake and I haven't seen her all day. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. See you next week, man.

Yeah, next week, man. Yeah. Next week, man. You know, I don't put sad endings in the show. What do you do? Well, it's like Michelin Web. We were doing a Michelin. Just make a comedy podcast, man.

If you want to make people sad, you should just write your blog. But you have a blog? Okay. Okay.