EVE Online War bankrolled by… a casino??

Ok, even for the rich history of EVE Online, this is a strange one, but it’s fun to watch.

There’s a war going on in EVE Online, right now, featuring the Imperium, which at it’s core involves folks from the former alliance known as “Goonswarm” (named after the members of SomethingAwful.com, who call themselves Goons), being attacked by several other coalitions in an attempt to bring them down.

Like Ancient Rome, in the eyes of those who opposed the Imperium, they had grown too powerful (they’ve controlled vast parts of the low-security PVP area, so much so that they’ve earned tons of in-game currency just by telling folks “Nice area of space you have here. Give us 10% and we’ll protect you, mostly from us) and too proud (they actually tried to cash in on their history with EVE by trying to fund a Kickstarter to write a in-game history novel on their rise to power), for too long.

But the kicker to this story involves who’s bankrolling this war. It seems the backers behind an online casino (where you can use the in-game currency, which can be ordered with real money) got torqued off by a faction within the Imperium, and decided to bankroll opposition groups to take their hated opponents down.

Despite the factions not bringing out their super ships yet (that cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars of money in in-game credit), the battle rages hot and fierce, with EVE Online developers CCP saying that the battles had seen the most PVP deaths in game history.

It sounds like great science fiction drama, and would make a great movie, if it wasn’t led by people named “The Mittani”, “KillahBee” and the “Spacemonkey’s Alliance”.

You can read more about the war over at polygon.