EVE Online Players Manipulate Game System To Steal 2.23 Trillion ISK From Corporation, But A Bigger War Could Be Brewing Right Now

Things are getting wild in Eve Online again… as wild as they can get in a game known as being spreadsheets in space anyway. Once again, another corporation has been brought down by clever maneuvering rather than firepower. This takeover, executed by Redditor Flam_Hill, involved using an account with very little history. Flan_Hill and a partner using the other account applied for membership in a corporation named Event Horizon Expeditionaries – a member corp of the Pandemic Horde alliance.

Once in, the duo made use of the game’s “shares mechanic” which involves players owning shares in their corporation. Flan_Hill transferred shares to the fresh account – enough to allow the two to call for a vote for a new CEO. The two voted yes, and were the only ones to vote. Three days later, the “yes” votes won and the new account was made CEO. Flan_Hill took on a director role, removing all the other directors and taking everything from the corporation’s accounts – a total o 130 billion ISK. They also walked away with other assets, including enough large ships to have taken 2.23 trillion ISK (valued at approximately $22,300 US, although the ISK technically can’t be converted to real-world money through any legal means).

Flan_Hill then shared news of his heist on Reddit, where others questioned where he got enough shares to pull this off. Some Redditors theorized that Flam_Hill was a former CEO of the corporation who hadn’t been around for some time but had held on to the shares in his account. As it turns out, the theory was correct. Flan_Hill, or Sienna d’Orien in the game, was the founder of Event Horizon Expeditionaries – according to PC Gamer. He’d quit EVE in 2018 due to burnout and returned last year to find the corporation wasn’t what it once was. He’d apparently attempted to get some of his old assets from the corporation after founding a new one but didn’t receive a response, so his friend suggested the shares mechanic, and they went to work.

This isn’t the most explosive takedown of a corporation in the game, but one of the points of EVE Online is that as long as they’re working within the game’s systems, players can be creative about how they go about destroying each other. This certainly meets the criteria.

Next up though, we're watching a current issue between two player corporations. While the conflict hasn't reached the level of a fully declared war just yet, the dispute has resulted in a 13 hour siege and over a trillion ISK in value destroyed. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess, but things in Eve have a way of escalating into Guinness Record Book levels of craziness so we'll keep an eye on things.