The Worlds Most Complicated Video Game Has A Wealth Inequality Problem

Almost exactly 20 years ago to the day, on the deep outskirts of a fictional universe, one of the most ambitious projects in gaming history was completed. A small group of high-ranking members from the EVE Online Alliance, Ascendant Frontier, had secretly finished constructing the game's first ever Titan, an Avatar class vessel that was named Steve in honor of the recently

passed Steve Irwin. Yes, that was also 20 years ago now. Despite requiring thousands of collective man-hours to harvest and produce the materials and components to produce the ship itself, the final step of the crafting process was intentionally left hidden in an otherwise unremarkable and quiet corner of this game's expansive map. The group's own leadership went as far

as to make up bogus industrial jobs, pretending to manufacture fleets of smaller ships to cover up for what they were actually building. And the reason for all of this secrecy was twofold. One, because the ship was a very powerful PvP asset. The group actually deployed it by surprise a few weeks later, and it did genuinely turn

the tide of a very important battle. But, more importantly, while it was under construction, it was a sitting duck. A sitting duck that, if destroyed, would be gone forever. And a target that, at the time, represented a not insignificant portion of all of the resources ever harvested in this game up to that point. Not to mention many

thousands of real-world dollars that opposing groups would love to brag about blowing up. However, in the two decades since this particular ship was launched, there have been thousands produced just like it, all enabled by an in-game economy that itself has grown to be hundreds of times larger than it was back then. Back in 2006, building a Titan in this