When a plan comes together: Inside a massive Eve Online corporate heist

Enlarge / A stock image from CCP Games' "Player Corporations" web page, or a potential movie posted for an Eve-themed heist film? Who can say, really? (credit: CCP Games)

Last week, we marveled at the story of an Eve Online player who used the game's arcane corporate share voting system to take control of in-game assets worth tens of thousands of dollars. Still, as we noted at the time, there were some important questions remaining over how mastermind “Flam_Hill" was able to secure the voting shares necessary to call a CEO vote in the first place.

As it turns out, Flam_Hill is just one alias of Dave (last name withheld), a long-time Eve player who previously served as the CEO of the Event Horizon Expeditionairies corporation (EHEXP). And Dave tells Ars that his recent "hostile takeover" started as an attempt to reclaim assets from a corporation he felt had lost its way.

The motive

The story of Dave's EHEXP coup goes all the way back to 2011, when he founded EHEXP under the control of his Eve Online character Nikki Shea. Dave says he quickly transferred the CEO role to his "original and first" character, Sienna d'Orion.