JITA — A CONCORD study published Thursday confirmed that the recent EVE Online HUD redesign, described by Fenris Creations as “evolution, not revolution,” was in fact designed by the same consulting firm that updated the CONCORD station terminal interface in YC110. CONCORD has not yet noticed.
The 47-page report, titled “On the Inadvertent Reuse of Vendor Procurement in User-Facing Systems,” was accidentally uploaded to the CONCORD public docket Tuesday when an intern misclicked “share” instead of “shred.” It details how the “accessible complexity” design language now reshaping capsuleer HUDs was first applied to the CONCORD customs checkpoint at Jita 4-4, where it remained until a maintenance drone tripped over a cable in YC115 and nobody bothered to reinstall it.
“We assumed the contract was expired,” said fictional CONCORD Procurement Officer Tuvan Bilocol, who spoke on condition that his name be spelled correctly because the auto-fill on his own terminal still suggests ‘Bilocol (Retired).’ “Turns out the vendor had been billing us for seventeen years. They even sent a ‘congratulations on your redesign’ fruit basket when the HUD blog went live.”
The fruit basket, consisting of freeze-dried Quafe and a single Amarrian apple, is currently impounded as evidence.
Capsuleer reaction has been muted. “I thought my overview looked familiar,” said independent pilot Vel Korrigan, reached via local chat while AFK in a Jita tether. “It’s the same color scheme as the wanted poster outside the CONCORD bureau. I assumed that was intentional.”
The HUD redesign, part of the broader “EVE Evolved” initiative, is expected to roll out to the test server next month. Beta participants have already reported three new bugs, two of which Bilocol confirmed were present in the YC110 CONCORD build. “One of them involves right-click menus,” he said. “We’ve been ignoring that one since before some of you were born.”
Fenris Creations has not responded to requests for comment. Their official forum account posted a 4,000-word statement reading, in part, “we hear you.” A follow-up analysis by capsuleer linguists determined the statement contained no actual acknowledgment.
At press time, CONCORD’s IT department had opened a ticket to investigate the fruit basket vendor, which was itself a subsidiary of the same design firm.
