Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts

By at 1:46 pm Wednesday, Sep 16

The in-game economy in EVE Online is teetering after the mismanaged, embezzlement-plagued player bank froze user-accounts, tying up much of the game's capital so that players can't buy stuff.
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.

At the moment, customer accounts will remain frozen until the bank manages to stabilize. According to McCormack, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%."

Virtual bank in EVE freezes accounts due to deficit
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Cory Doctorow

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