Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game | Hacker News Reader

Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game

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120 pointsVaslo125 comments

While I haven't played EvE in many years, I still hold many fond memories of it back from my middle/high school years. Particularly when I chose to abandon the peaceful in-game lifestyle of building and selling ship to other players in favor of the pirate life.

I did this by fitting a small and fast ship with close-range weaponry that allowed me to take engagements versus much larger ships whose weapons couldn't reliably hit a target with so much transverse velocity. In addition I would run a special module that allowed you to deactivate your opponents warp drive, preventing them from escaping.

In game life was then just patrolling law-less star systems waiting for another player to arrive, typically they'd come to my star-systems in search of NPC pirates to destroy, netting in-game currency.

Once the prey was busy fighting the ai-pirates, I'd warp into their local space and begin shooting them to pieces. Once their ship was on the brink of destruction, I'd open a comm channel and demand an in-game currency transfer in exchange for letting them go.

This was a mutually beneficial arrangement as the ransom was lower than their ship value but also higher than what I could salvage from their wreckage.

As you'd imagine, responses were varied. More often than not however I'd get the payment and they'd return to safe space intact.

Ironically, I received more in-game love-mail than hate-mail for my exploits.

I've grown into a much nicer person since then but I can't help but look back on those times fondly.

Great story, thanks. I wouldn't say that role-playing a pirate in a game where players willingly submit to the risks of low-sec space is not nice. You were providing an important service that made the game feel exciting and interesting!

Yeah I paid Bethesda to make bandits, and OP is providing that service for free!

Well, at least you didn't take the ransom and kill them anyway

it was generally accepted that not honoring your ransoms was a poor choice for two reasons:

1) Word could get around and your 'customers' would stop paying the ransom. Bad for business since the remains of a destroyed ship could be worth substantially less than the ransom.

2) More alarmingly, you could attract the ire of 'honorable' pirates who might just be willing to take time out of their day to make an example out of you. This would likely involve a plurality of suitably armed starships visiting your local space at ...inopportune times.

By the time I started playing it was more common to ransom & kill than just to ransom.

Repeat custom is a rarity in the pirate business

If everyone expects to be killed anyways, then why is anyone paying the ransom?

Mainly it was only panicking newbies who paid the ransom. Losing stuff in Eve hurts more than most games, so people react in true panic style fashion.

There were a few roleplay corps that built in-game reputations on taking ransoms etc seriously. I'm sure they had better results

That is something special about EVE here, it shows that yes it makes sense to honor your word as a pirate. Real life pirates did it, at least the successful ones. Non-AI ones do it. Usually AI pirates and muggers are the only ones stupid enough not to do just that.

Our stories sound similar.

I led a small corp and our whole play was to declare war on high-sec mining corporations (a formal war deceleration allowed one to avoid the wrath of the "CONCORD" police force). We'd then gank them until they'd pay us a ransom to end the war.

Eventually, some of our former targets started paying us to target other mining groups that they were competing with!

It was really great fun and a set of systems that facilitated the "emergent storytelling" that so many new open-world/survival games aspire to.

Just curious, which hi sec systems?

Asking for a friend? ;)

I have a very fond memory of an event that occurred in the game while starting as a miner, this was a WOW moment for me, the adrenaline rush in Eve Online is real.

Found the article on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304033028/http://ghost.pilg...

I lived in low-sec for the majority of my time playing EVE. Was a Gal-mil rat that took any fight I could find. Still have good memories of some pretty crazy fights, and some pretty fun engagements. One of my favorites was making a mining barge into a trap for pirates and killing them when they tried to engage me.

The solo pvp life worked until off-grid boosting became so prevalent that most fights were no longer 1v1 even if there were only two ships actively shooting each other. When one ship is boosted to the gills because of a squadron mate somewhere in a safe-spot providing fleet boosts, things got less fun, and I ended up quitting.

edit: Shout out to anyone that flew with the "Monkeys with Guns" Alliance or "Mostly Sober" Corporation back in the day.

> This was a mutually beneficial arrangement

Admittedly, in much the same way that robbing someone at gunpoint is a mutually beneficial arrangement; because it's better for them than you just killing them and taking their money.

Assaulting someone and calling it mutually beneficial to keep it as a fond memory feels quite broken.

Yet this was precisely the business model of high seas piracy, and very much still is, so they successfully applied the model.

Ok, I get your point too, I just want to emphasize that what the OP did was essentially similar to casino side betting, going beyond the predicted actions in the world, by adding a layer of “entrepreneurial” spirit.

The Coase Theorem in action...

I always loved reading stories from eve, but when I tried to get into it I didn't last more than a couple of weeks.

The swashbuckling sounds very wholesome. Does Eve have suicide bombers or any other kinds of asymmetric warfare?

You should come to the Belt. Live the pirate life for real...

After having been destroyed entering null-sec while hauling my gear, I changed career and spent my remaining EVE time around PF-346 and null-sec. It was incredibly satisfying to be part of Cry Havoc and I certainly remember those times as the best video game experience I ever had.

https://zkillboard.com/character/725122352/

What made you stop playing?

Nice. The best thing about Eve are the epic stories that come out of it. I couldn't get into the game, but I love reading about it. I remember a few years ago there was that massive planned attack where they accidentally left their flagship behind. It was one of those battles that was so huge the in game clock had to be slowed way down to handle it all. There was nothing the players could really do but to sit and watch for hours as their fleet was slowly destroyed. Some insane amount of real-world money just went "poof". Truly epic.

Hard to tell from the article whether the real person is stepping down, or his in-universe avatar is. Like, is he gone for good? Or will he just reappear as a new lvl 1 player in two weeks?

I assume the former, but there's something perversely funny about the idea of a player in a fictional universe having to resign from fictional corporation because he failed to adequately address in-universe HR claims.

There would be no point in him starting from scratch with a new identity. It wasn't the game he liked, it was the notoriety. Most people in EVE Online at this strata aren't even really "playing" the game, its all metagame at that point.

As a former notorious EVE player myself, yes this is correct.

I've done everything from old school POS wars to Titan kills to running multiple types of production empires to living in wormholes and being a wealthy (trillions ISK, back when the best way to get wealthy was through RP) feared low-sec space pirate (this one was my personal endgame).

Once you've reached one of EVE's endgame scenarios it's basically impossible to continue playing and get any enjoyment out of the game.

You might try, but it's like chasing your first high. It's never as good.

And knowing Mittens and what he's like...yeah he's not playing anymore unless it's waiting for the heat to die down and coming back in a year or two.

Eve is also notoriously difficult to "start from scratch". I'm sure someone like him could still maintain secret contacts that could help him out, but even then it's an insanely difficult, if not nearly impossible, effort to get even remotely close to where his old character would have been. And that's just in terms of stats and resources. Relationships are a whole different story, and a critical part of success in Eve.

It's not like WoW where the delta between someone that started the game in 2005 and someone who started in 2020 isn't that far apart.

Someone who started Eve in 2005 would be like a member of the Rothschild dynasty while someone who started in 2020 would be at best, some low level corporate middle manager.

Former somewhat notorious Eve player here who has met Mittani in meatspace. My bias is that I really, really dislike Mittani as a human being (and our in game groups were very close allies throughout our relationship).

It's impossible to say for sure if he is actually stepping down or not. He has apparently given the "keys to the kingdom" to other Goons and appointed an interim CEO. Whether that means he is actually permanently out of the leadership loop or not remains to be seen. I don't know how close the new interim CEO is to Mittani, but I saw that the person he transferred the corporation shares to is extremely close to him, and the shares is what truly matters. With the shares you can remove the CEO, just like a board in real life.

You can run a major Eve alliance and coalition without ever logging into the game. So while his character may not be listed as CEO anymore, it means very little in and of itself. At the end of the day with groups of thousands of people, it's almost entirely about the politics and group dynamics. If he still has access to the leadership Jabber/Discord/forums and the leadership still believes in him, he could still be the de facto CEO.

I do want to note - this article did a terrible job explaining why so many people are mad at him. There were chat logs and screenshots from various services that showed he:

- kicked a player out for reporting some serious sustained abuse sustained against her by one player

- elevated a well known pedophile to a position of power

- Multiple women unrelated to the game were complaining about him groping them at events in his hometown

Reading the announcement he posted about stepping down, he cast himself entirely as the victim here and took 0 ownership and never apologized. Unless he has finally gotten bored with the Eve metagame, I highly doubt this is the last of him.

So when he says:

> The accusations that I am aware of are unsubstantiated falsehoods

Does he mean that people got mad at him for the three points you listed and started inventing stories about him as a result, or is he flat out denying those things happened at all?

I take it as him denying all of it.

He lies all the time. His style of leadership to the rank and file is to provide a narrative they can buy into, and whether the facts fit that narrative or not doesn't matter. He just needs to keep the narrative roughly coherent for everyone to consume in his group.

To my eyes he's currently playing the, "I'm the victim here, but despite being blameless I will step down for the greater good of the organization" martyrdom and us vs them story. That sets him up nicely for a return to visible power after a few months.

To be clear on the 3 points I listed out, the only thing I can personally attest to is that the pedophile in question is indeed a pedophile, as we kicked him out of my former group many years ago once we found out and that he somehow found a landing spot inside of Goons despite them knowing full well what he was.

He denies everything, that is his MO.

The chatlogs of him calling the victim of harrasment a "bitch who could not find the block button", "Wounded bird", "Amber heard" etc is sufficient to want him out of power and indeed the game.

I do believe most of the other accusations - but won't claim anything is definitely true.

It indicates a change of culture that Goonswarm would care about that sort of thing enough to encourage Mittani to exit instead of (at best) just taking it as part of the old "dogs will be dogs" internet culture.

(Not a bad change; just observing the turning of the wheel).

In the end, Goonswarm is nothing but a tool for him. A way to make money and to feed his ego. I highly doubt this is anything but a tactic to move away from the limelight while maintaining tight control. The way Eve's mechanics work, he has to maintain that control or some fuckwad could tear it all down overnight.

In game power has been moved already (The executor corp is under the control in game of Xttz, and Goonswarm under TheAdj).

I don't doubt that the majority of the coalition would happily welcome him back though, the people outraged at his behaviour are loud and passionate but the minority for sure

So that begs an interesting question. EVE Online has one of the most nakedly Machiavellian power structure social dynamics I can think of in any multiplayer game. The combination of hypercapitalist core rules mechanics and hands off approach from moderators makes it a game where power is power.

If the people outrage it his behavior are a minority, why is he leaving? They must be a minority holding a big enough stick to prevent being simply ignored or marginalized.

It is an interesting question to which I do not have a good answer. I personally expected him to take a couple months off to "reflect", ban the troublemakers, and come back refreshed.

To quote: > the_mittani: and just like last time, i will simply put heads on spikes over and over again until order is restored, with the occasional oops sorry about that one overly enthusiastic apology thrown in

I believe the real issue was his name being dragged through the mud on Reddit and SomethingAwful etc. I think his monetisation was also being attacked - sponsors of shows and so on simply do not like being associated with this sort of stuff. I still simply do not know what was going through his head. But stepping down for "the greater good" and playing the victim may simply be a tactic to let things die down

Also have met Mittens IRL a number of times and know many people who have spent significantly more IRL time with him than myself: Absolutely nothing alleged shocks me. I can't say I've seen him do any of these things, but I'm also 100% able to square it with my experiences with him.

Former unimportant Eve player active 2008-2017, involved in most of the big wars of that time-frame. I met Mittens for the first time in meatspace in 2011, before he built much of his influence and infamy, but the impression I got back then mirrors your bias and was confirmed on many later occasions. Ironically he himself comes to the same conclusion, if a decade late: "... has resulted in [] my presence being a net negative for the wider tribe". For the record I think that Goons are still a net positive for Eve despite the many overstepped limits, but that is debatable.

He can have my character. 2005 with 12 years worth of skill points.

Former EVE player, and member of SA. Mittens is a complete narcissist and all around horrible human being.

I've been out of the loop for a long time now, but even from the title of the post I instantly thought "I guess something finally caught up to mittens."

I very much doubt he leaves the game/metagame in any meaningful way as even way back when I played it was speculated that a non insignificant amount of his lively hood was derived from his activities around the game/metagame.

Goonfleet has always loved their charismatic fascist leaders though. A whole lot of the early GF propaganda was veiled Triumph of the Will.

It’s funny that he’s complaining about his smears against personal life when in one of GoonSwarms conflicts with Band of Brothers they pioneered mocking the BoB leader for being a repairman irl

According to urban legend, BoB once found the physical location of an enemy fleet commander and cut their power.

Only a few years back, a director of CO2 got banned for threatening to cut off a hand of a diplomat that had taken most of their wallet.

The Mittani himself, mentioned here, also almost got permanently banned for a encouraging the audience to tell a Goon victim to kill himself on the Alliance Panel at Fanfest.[1] So it's pretty rich of him to complain about toxicity in the game.

It's not a very friendly game.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbYNLmtAMAw

It's a very unfriendly game which really teaches you to be the type of cut-throat that doesn't set you up well for real life.

I wish I realised that earlier to be honest

Absolutely. There's a reason people call pushing the delete button on your profile and biomassing your capsuleer "Winning EVE."

Yeah, I liked the idea of the game and played it for a bit when I realized that the idea of "don't trust anyone ever" was exhausting for me.

It makes sense, since it's not "real" that people would act in whatever way favors their own interests the most

I'm not sure why you'd say that when all of my examples where of situations in which it extended way too far into "real".

Quite frankly, CCP used to play really hard into the "EVE is real" and "harden the fuck up" trope[1], it's not too surprising some people take it too far.

[1]: Literally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q

Sorry, I should have been more clear that I was speaking as the devil's advocate, in hopes that it would shine some light on the mindset of people like that.

I played Rust for a while and I still keenly remember the feeling of outrage and betrayal that the fort that I had spent nearly an hour on getting raided while I was logged out. It was a lark for the people to pop in and pillage my supplies but for me it was just as frustrating as if my real property had been stolen.

I mean the subreddit has for years been taken over by neo conservatives that basically use it as a means for testing how propaganda works.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nazimadakli/status/14190434038919...

Hypocrisy is a way of life, if not a requirement, as far as EVE politics go.

For people who likes the kind of backstabbing thrilling behind the scene diplomacy wackiness that ooze from Eve, but can't really get involved in it for whatever reason (most often being time, motivation, or the fact that 99% of eve gameplay is actually more excel than malta conference), I highly recommend you give Neptune's Pride [1] a try.

It's not at all the same kind of game (it's a "turn by turn" 4x game where turn passing is tied to actual time in the real world), but it's really simple and at its core is based on the same thing: diplomacy through the simple but effective messaging system between the players.

A game last days, but will only require you to play a few minutes every dozen hours or so (sending fleets to attack, etc ... Will take literal days to happen, which seems strange at first until you realize it's to give the diplomacy center stage, giving real people with real lives the time and opportunity to exchange and plan and backstab together.

It's also extremely fun with friends, in a mario kart's blue shell kind of way. 90% of the fun is the pretenses and backstabs, don't play with friends who don't like losing, nor with people who let themselves lose on purpose if against their SO etc ... or the experience drops significantly.

[1] https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing

The original game like this was/is the diplomacy board game. Definitely great fun if you play with people who don't take things too personal, but at the same time serious enough to really play. Also being a board game and personal interactions excludes much of the online virol.

another one game that's similar to EVE in some ways but different from what you're describing here (that I found from an HN comment 73 days ago) is Prosperous Universe https://prosperousuniverse.com it's kind of a cross between EVE and Factorio but glacially slow. there's no combat or graphics (aside from some fancy but not really useful map screens), so it's really just a game of logistics/planning/economy, and the amount of enjoyment you get from the game depends almost entirely on how much fun you find spreadsheet-making ("a lot" for me). I got some friends to play with me and it's been really fun to coordinate our slowly-expanding galactic empire.

This is the most sanitized version of what actually happened. Isn't he being investigated by the IRS?

...allegations of abuse? Man no one has been in a Goon comms channel if they're shocked by this.

End of an era. Met and worked with him a few times. He was certainly an interesting character.

I mean at the end of the day Goonswarm was entertainment for Mittens. So when imaginary spaceships become unfun, its probably time to go.

He was far better than Remedial was.

Was it just entertainment though? I recall hearing years ago that he was making a not-insignificant amount of money via EVE, whether through legitimate (e.g. themittani.com news site) or illegitimate (e.g. selling ISK or supercaps) means.

He was previously a DC lawyer who FIREed and moved out to WI. I think he made a little money but I don’t think it was anything other than toy money.

"Yeah, being an attorney wasn't cut throat enough so I decided to become a Space Pirate King..."

I've never played EVE Online, and considering how in-depth it apparently is, i am thankful for it.

I spent time in Goonfleet many years ago and generally did stuff like protect mining fleets. The actual work involved in maintaining access to null-sec space, running stations, etc and being part of a large in-game organization required an almost martial level of discipline from a scheduling standpoint.

It was fun for quite a while but eventually it became like a second job and I moved on.

Could this be a ruse, a distraction, part of a plan ?

Finally "winning" after all these years!

this time, we send our regards...

About time mittens was removed. So much of this was known for years but ignored because of his status outside the world of EVE Online, and thus the absolute position of power he crafted for himself within GSF.

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