WTB scammer tears: The end of freeform contract scams in EVE Online
The sci-fi game EVE Online changed yesterday, in a rather subtle way. The developers eliminated one of the principal tools used by players to scam their unsuspecting marks: "freeform" contracts. The change was snuck in as single green-texted bullet point in the updated patch notes:
"Freeform contracts can no longer be created. This is due to griefing problems. You will still be able to view your completed freeform contracts for now but in an upcoming expansion older freeform contracts will be removed as well."
[EVE has a contract system which players use to conduct business transactions between different parties for items or services. They're generally used for legitimate purposes like auctions and item exchanges, but the more flexible "freeform" contracts could be structured so that a seller received in-game cash for items never actually given to the buyer.]
This otherwise unannounced elimination of the feature is perhaps a fitting demise for freeform scams. Those who haven't played EVE Online may be wondering why this is significant, if you scam another player you simply get banned, right? Not in EVE... It's one of the few MMOs out there where all manner of player villainy is permitted by the developer CCP Games, provided it happens in-game.
Every day players are warp scrambled and cut down by the guns of pirate ships, drug cartels smuggle their product into trade hubs, and players have even targeted powerful rivals for assassinations and heists. So yes, even scamming other players (in-game, for EVE's currency 'ISK') is allowed, and some players have found it to be quite profitable.
These are only a few examples of the criminal undertakings possible in the game, and most require some degree of talent and acumen. This should apply to scams and cons as well. However, for every true con artist player like Miz Cenuij there's a hundred who simply scam their fellow players with the game's contract system -- a misplaced decimal here, an intentionally misnamed item there. Typo scams are a dime a dozen and, while irritating, are easily avoidable. In EVE, they're essentially spam you see in the local chat channel of any major trade hub.
The less obvious scams have been those pulled off via freeform contracts, which used a flexible system that scammers could turn to their advantage. They'd typically rope someone and offer to provide what that individual is looking to buy, but in the end the scammer would profit to the tune of millions of ISK (or more), while the victim spent their cash on hot air. Freeforms may have been used legitimately by some players, but it was being utterly abused by most, almost to the point where the only real reason to use a freeform was to scam.
An EVE without freeform contracts might force lazy swindlers to be a bit more clever if they're going to succeed; it raises the bar a bit. While no one likes to get scammed, the fact is that for EVE's setting of New Eden to remain that gritty place the creators envisioned, a sense of risk should pervade the game, and not be confined to low security space or the lawless expanses of 0.0. In this writer's view, CCP Games made the right move by eliminating freeform contracts, but hopes they'll always keep an element of risk tied into EVE Online's gameplay.
[For the record, most players in EVE do NOT engage in scams, but enough do that you've got to stay sharp. Fly safe!]
