War Of The Nerds: The Grudge Of A Lifetime

For you loser plebeians out there, EVE Online is an Icelandic MMORPG—i.e. World Of Warcraft type thing—set in space. It’s what you’d call a “sandbox” game, which means that there’s no quests or levels or bullshit like that. Instead, players have free roam over the entire universe to scam, rule, steal, profit or troll as much as they dream, which has ensured that EVE has become a fully-formed microcosm of society. Drama, intrigue, class-divisions, betrayal—EVE is basically a mix of Shakespeare and capitalism in space. Here, we’ll fly deep into the gas cloud of one of EVE’s juiciest hooplas: the betrayal of a lifetime.

COFU

Enter protagonist The Judge. He’s the head diplomate in a 4.000 person alliance called the Circle Of Two (CO2), which he had been enthusiastically involved with for 5 years. The Judge had become resentful and pissed off with the leader of CO2, gigX. The reasons why are complicated, but basically The Judge thought gigX was being a dickhead and wanted to teach him a lesson.

As all good betrayals end, The Judge finished his carnage with a sky-written bubble display over the citadel that fittingly read, “LOL”.

This ominous ‘lesson’ was stealthily crafted at EVE’s annual gathering EVEFanfest in Reykjavík—we assume in some sketchy area like the basement of Paloma. User Aryth, who is high up in a rival corporation called Goonswarm, offered The Judge a legendary deal he could not refuse.

What was it?!

On September 11th, 2017, in one fell swoop, The Judge stole all of CO2’s money, ships, and their Death Star-esque space citadel and gave it to CO2s mortal enemies, Goonswarm and TEST. This ended up being over a trillion ISK (not kroner, the in-game EVE currency), which is around $20,000. CO2 and gigX were effectively destroyed in minutes and thousands of CO2 pilots suddenly found themselves stranded homeless in space. As all good betrayals end, The Judge finished his carnage with a sky-written bubble display over the citadel that fittingly read, “LOL”. He detailed the entire treachery on a reddit post in the EVE Online subreddit fittingly called, “Look what you made me do”. As they’d say in 2005, pwned.

It’s difficult for non-gamers to understand the massiveness of this event. It’s effectively as if Bellatrix Lestrange defected to Dumbledore holding all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Or perhaps if Donald Trump Jr. took all of America’s secrets and sold them to Russia. Oh, wait…

His life’s work stolen away from him like Edison and Tesla, gigX went nuclear and promptly doxxed the Judge and threatened to cut his hands off. He was then permanently banned from the game. Talk about the worst day ever.