CCP Games HQ
Reykjavik, Iceland
October 24th, 2017 will be a day that goes down in infamy. To those few people out there that aren’t “in the know’, allow me to relate what happened that day: CCP Games, possibly in a fit of madness, released the Lifeblood update for EVEOnline. While the game has experience several patches, some more controversial than others, the fallout received from this one was truly unprecedented. Players are quitting in droves as the game has become—to them—ruined.
The atmosphere around the town of Reykjavik has been electric ever since the launch of the expansion last Tuesday. Dozens began to protest and to form picket lines around CCP Games office building mere hours after the expansion launched, and the number, after a few days has grown to several thousand. The protests, while initially peaceful, have escalated into a full scale riot.
Iceland has declared a national state of emergency, and does not have the manpower in neither military nor police force to handle a situation such as this. While the riot was in its initial forming stages, Icelandic police forces attempted to disband the crowd using tear gas and other non-lethal methods. What finally made the police force retreat is when rioters broke into a delivery truck filled with heavy weight scale models of Vexor ships, which they began to hurl at the police. Reports from several wounded officers confirm this, as they had initially thought they were having boots or sneakers thrown at them.
Since that day, the riot has continued to swell in size; the only thing sparing the CCP HQ from destruction being its current reinforced timer. That has not stopped the rioters from destroying every vehicle, small business, and home within a block radius of the office building.
I searched for hours to find a protester to interview, wishing to discover what all the fuss was about. It was a difficult search however, as most protesters simply wished to shout their opinions as loudly as possible, and be heard by as many people that will listen—voluntarily or otherwise. I finally found someone willing to sit down and discuss their side of the story without raising their voice. This man, Derek Yung, described himself as “The Voice of the Vets”. He informed me that he had been here for far longer than the 24th, and he had been against CCP’s decisions for a long time. He said he would continue to camp outside of their offices until things changed. Judging by the amount of empty baked bean cans and hard liquor bottles that had accumulated in and around his tent, Derek had been here a very long time.
(The following interview has had many expletives and drunken tangents removed)
Samwise: So tell me Derek, what is it about Lifeblood that is making everyone so upset?
Derek: This is just the straw that broke the camel’s back, man. CCP has been going downhill ever since they released Quantum Rise. It’s been a real crapshoot since then. I don’t know why I’m even still subscribed to the game.
S: Quantum Rise?
D: Yeah you know, back in ’08.
S: …right, but that’s CCPast, what about the CCPresent?
D: Well for starters, you can’t passively make billions from moon mining anymore. And they’re randomly distributing the moon types, AGAIN. Like, are you kidding? What if my SOV has all terrible moons? Just because they wanted to use some “mcmoonface” meme as a new moon seed doesn’t mean they need to ruin MY system and MY income. And don’t even get me started on the Agency.
S: I thought the Agency was a nice little addition to show you where content was located…
D: Gonna stop you right there, Samwise. The Agency is a spit in the face to anyone that’s been around as long as I have. Usability? User-friendly? This is not the EVE way. I don’t want a quest log of all the content I have available to me in this game. I want to go through five or six different terribly formatted and outdated wiki articles to figure out what to do. CCP making content accessible like this is just encouraging the casuals to play and ruin our perfect space sandbox. I’ll bet sooner or later they’ll start adding controller support and some other nonsense like a better default overview.
S: Wouldn’t more players, casual or otherwise, be nothing but beneficial to EVE? More items in the market, more content? More potential friends and enemies?
(Derek went on for an hour and a half lecturing me about how casuals are never good, and that EVE should only exist for veteran players such as himself. It is being omitted due to a lack of any valid points)
S: Okay, thank you for that. One last thing, what are your thoughts on Resource Wars?
D: PVE content, in EVE? What a joke. Real players should never even see that content, null and wormholes all the way, bro. You in null or wh, right?
Samwise: I, uh, I’m renting right now, actually.
Derek: You motherf-
(At this point I was threatened with physical violence and forced to leave; thankfully, he was too drunk to stand up straight to chase me. I deemed the interview as concluded.)
Those seeking to travel to Iceland in the near future may want to avoid doing so until this situation comes to a close. However, the end of the rioting appears nowhere in sight. As for myself, I have evacuated and am sending my thoughts and prayers to the people of Iceland in this dire time.
