EBank, Real Problems

Over the last year we’ve become used to scandals and failures in the real world banking sector. Now it seems that virtual banks are not immune.

The New York Times (NYT) reports on an unfolding financial mess at Eve Online. Eve is an online virtual universe with a virtual economy modelled on a completely laissez-faire capitalist system. As in the real world financial institutions such as banks have appeared – and as in the real world some of them have had problems.

One of the largest such banks in Eve is the “EVE-Tech Savings n Loans Corporation” – Ebank. According to the NYT Ebank has been the victim of embezzlement with one of its top bosses allegedly syphoning off game credits (ISK) and selling them back for real world money. The amount of money involved is believed to be around 9% of the bank’s deposits, enough to cause it real problems. To make matters worse the news has caused a run on the bank with worried depositors withdrawing their money.

According to the EBank website:

We are currently experiencing some technical problems.

Therefor, we ask that people do not deposit any ISK, until we have have solved the problem.

We also urge customers not to deposit ISK to any other character, until we advise so on our website.

In some ways this situation is a demonstration of how effective virtual worlds can be in simulating real world features such as the economy. Then again, some people would argue that the real world banking system long ago ceased to be “real” in any meaningful sense.