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Fiddler’s Edge: If

December 4, 2013

Let’s imagine that everyone’s worst nightmares about EVE and RMT are true.

What if RMT (by which I mean the trade of EVE’s in-game currency, the ISK, for for real world currency) is not only being done on large scale by EVE online players, but has become the primary reason for EVE Online’s existence.

Let’s just say for argument’s sake that major in-game sov-holding entities and alliances, EVE gambling sites, EVE web hosting sites and a parade of EVE services purveyors, both in and out of game, are taking big stacks of ISK and systematically rolling them over into real world money. And heck, as long we’re blue-skying here, let’s say that CCP is not only unable or unwilling to stop EVE’s RMT trade, but are actually knowing participants and beneficiaries of the trade. Let’s say that CCP is colluding with key RMT interests for a percentage of the take and in order to optimize CCP’s RMT yield.

Let’s say EVE Online is no longer an entertainment for spaceship geeks of all ages and nationalities. Let’s say it merely exists as a money spinner, a machine for generating game world transactions that, in turn, generate real world transactions, thereby making real world money out of thin air.

After all, it’s not like this sort of thing is science fiction. It’s commonplace in the financial world. Wall Street is chock a block with financial organizations whose stock in trade is turning over transactions that have no point beyond the transactions themselves. The firm takes a small cut of each transaction, adding nothing of value to the item transacted. In such cases, the item and its value (or lack thereof) is not the point; the transactions, not things or services that provide utility of any sort, are the product.

Spinning money, it’s called. Right? OK, so let’s say for just a moment that all this is happening in EVE, and CCP (or key elemens thereof) are hip deep in the trade of real money.

Would it make a difference?

Think about it. Would you stop playing? Go play something else? Would it change the game for you? Would you be less entertained? At the end of the day, does it matter? And if not, should it?

Just something to think about.

– Mord Fiddle

About the Author: Mord Fiddle’s writings are an invitation to high tea in a world of rave parties. His readers gather at fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/ for thoughtful analysis, daring prose, deep insights, and Mord’s tendency to use words not writ nor spoken conversationally since Middle English went out of fashion.