Virtual Bank Woes

bobmorning writes "EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of virtual cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized, leading to an in-game freezing of accounts for any individual or organization that happened to have invested any InterStellar Kredits (ISK) with the bank. Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as 'Ricdic') had embezzled — and then sold in the real world — over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently-installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is."

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Re:Virtual bailout needed!

[mwvdlee]

Because you'd think a virtual bank would be managed better than a real life bank. Apparently, they're managed the same way.

Video games have no prison.

[noisyinstrument]

Because you'd think a virtual bank would be managed better than a real life bank. Apparently, they're managed the same way.

Would you?

The only reason real bankers aren't stealing billions is because they don't want to go to pound-you-in-the-ass federal prison.

Take that away and bingo, everyone's a Christopher Skase.

Re:Don't trust anyone

[ildon]

And we shall call this theory "Government". We'll make millions.

What is virtual money?

[Biswalt]

I'd like to posit that the money in Eve Online is just as real as a dollar bill. I mean, you can buy ISK on Ebay, so there's an exchange rate [gameusd.com] of about 12 cents per million ISK. It's measurable, it's real, because ISK can be purchased for real money. What makes ISK less real than the Hungarian Forint, or the Chilean Peso, or even the US dollar? Currency very simply is people placing value in something that is not really intrinsically valuable. IE. paper dollars, little metal coins, huge stone wheels, bits of code relating to ISK, etc. So b/c it's valuable to these people we have a situation where the currency is very real. At least as real as any other form of currency has been.

Re:I guess I'm in the minority...

[timeOday]

How is the online world coping with the new institutions it must create with the added complexities of fast growing virtual worlds? Will it find a new way of doing things, or just repeat the same mistakes (this looks like repeating the same mistakes that were made a few hundred years ago).

They will evolve more or less the same rules as in the real world, for the same reasons. Then the next of idealistic young libertarians will get frustrated with all the rules, which they don't really understand, and set off to create a freedom utopia, and the cycle will repeat.

these are NOT BANKS

[Anonymous Coward]

second life had people bilking citizens out of money too. only a fool would hand over their money to an anonymous person in a simulation or game.