During June an update was released for Eve Online and it led to a player revolt. Despite being widely reported I didn’t fully understand what happened or why. All I knew is that there was a monocle you could buy for your in-game avatar which cost $60 and players were pissed.

Foreward

To make things perfectly clear: I do not play Eve Online and I have never played Eve Online. I find player revolts interesting and I wanted learn what happened and why. I’m only a pretend journalist so please be gentle and kind in pointing out inaccuracies. :)

Monoclegate

What happened? CCP released an update to Eve Online that added a captain’s quarters. For the first time players have an avatar that can walk around. Naturally, players will want to customize this avatar. This opened the door for microtransactions.

Most games with microtransactions have clothes and items that cost $1 to $5. That was not the case in Eve. Most items cost $5 to $20 and one item, the monocle, cost a whopping $60. Gasoline was thrown onto the fire when an internal newsletter titled “Greed is Good” discussing microtransactions was leaked (