EVE Online heister makes off with $13,000 worth of goods

EVE Online is a hotbed of villainy, espionage and backstabbing, but one intrepid corporate thief has made waves even in this setting.

The thing about EVE Online is that it's a true sandbox: the game's rules are very loose, and allow players to make careers out of theft, piracy, assassination and espionage in addition to more moral capitalism or just quiet tooling about.

This makes for some absolutely marvellous stories, like the recent heist by Non Erata on the corporation Vanguard Frontiers (VAF), which resulted in the loss of about 600 billion ISK worth of the corporation's assets. Because CCP allows you to buy subscription time with in-game currency, the haul has been valued at about $13,000.

Non Erata used five alts in addition to their main in order to pull off the heist, but their primary weapons were planning, persuasion and patience. Working their way up through the corporation over the course of more than six months, Non Erata became a director, even going to far as to set up and pay for a Teamspeak channel for the group.

Eventually they were in a position to strip the corporation's vaults and walk away with the loot. It's not the largest single loss of assets in EVE's history by far, but it's definitely up there. EVE News 24 spoke to both Non Erata and VAF leaders about the heist, and it's fascinating reading their accounts, and the details of how the heist was performed.

As for what happens now, Non Erata will remain active in-game as a point of contact for players wishing to engage the player's services against rivals - using new alts, of course.

Some players have argued that CCP should provide corporations with better defences against this kind of theft, and it's hard not to sympathise with them when a single unscrupulous player can rob whole clans of results of their hard work and then just come back with alts to do it again. On the other hand, it's kind of true to life, isn't it?