Somebody is offering $75,000 to evict a rival alliance in EVE Online

I don’t know much about EVE Online other than that it’s a space MMORPG that features a huge economy and large sums of actual money. I still can’t get my head around it entirely to be honest. Back in 2014 for example, over $250,000 was squandered in a large scale war. You read that right – all of that money disappeared on a digital playground.

Now an event of somewhat similar scale (in terms of moola) could take place, at least, if this Reddit post is to be believed. In it, somebody that goes by the name Holder2k has offered up a cold hard cash bounty of $75,000 to have a rival alliance removed (via PC Gamer):

I’m giving away IRL money through a paypal contract link to pay for the IRL time for gamers to participate in evictions. Employed or not Employed IRL you can participate. It will be a “contract link” so payment will be verified by your effort and in game toons. The money can be contractually recalled if you try to take money and run. The event will be Total Payout of: $75,000 USD for Hard Knocks Eviction. Please send legit queries to: me with your in game toon names.

The paypal link will be up in 3 weeks based on level on response and screening of toons. The event will be recorded and all toon names logged. The amount is based on total payout, so the more people the less individual payout. Doing the math on HK if we get 800 toons, it’s $94 per toon, if we get less the payout goes up. Timing of Ops not disclosed.

I don’t know what exactly this alliance did to piss off the person behind this bounty, but it must be pretty serious if he’s willing to throw that much money at people to have them removed. Who is this Holder2k chap anyway? Hard Knocks members speculate that he is actually ‘HeWhoShallNotBe Named’ – somebody who has beef with their director of operations, NoobMan (holy hell these names are amazing).

Apparently ‘HeWhoShallNotBe Named’ was banned from Hard Knocks’ chat channel over some disagreement. He offered NoobMan his cell number to sort out the matter privately, but that then got shared with other members of the alliance.

Naturally, ‘HeWhoShallNotBe Named’ was not pleased. Here’s an excerpt from a lengthy post  he put up over on the EVE Online forums:

“I see that you took it upon yourself to pass that [cell phone number] along to other people in your [corporation]. Because I’ve received eight voice messages of people trolling me [in real life]. Most of the numbers were spoofed, but Verizon was able to trace six of them back to the correct origin. That number was a work number for a large global bank where I’m International Legal Council. The bank has now turned it over to the federal authorities to investigate.”

The topic has since been locked, but not before an EVE dev said the following:

We are taking cases of harassment and out-of-game threats very serious. That kind of behavior is strictly forbidden and we have a zero tolerance policy on this.

I don’t know all the little details, but I think it’s safe to say that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion, and that it’s downright childish. I mean, $75,000 and the threat of legal action over some disagreement? It’s all a bit ridiculous.

I don’t honestly think Holder2k will follow through with this bounty though. I am interested to see how this debacle plays out nonetheless. Will the two parties make peace, or will CCP be forced to hand out bans? I’m sure we will find out soon enough.

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Last Updated: October 12, 2016