JITA — Fenris Creations published a report Thursday confirming that the recent EVE Online HUD redesign, described by the studio as “evolution, not revolution,” was in fact designed by the same consulting firm that updated the Jita customs terminal in YC110. The studio has not yet noticed.
The 47-page internal post-mortem, titled “On the Inadvertent Reuse of Vendor Procurement in User-Facing Systems,” was accidentally uploaded to the public developer blog Tuesday when an intern misclicked “publish” instead of “save as draft.” It details how the “accessible complexity” design language now reshaping capsuleer HUDs was first applied to the 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 Fenris Procurement Lead 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 customs office. 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 Jita 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’ 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, the studio’s IT department had opened a ticket to investigate the fruit basket vendor, which was itself a subsidiary of the same design firm.
