Few games have developers as intimately connected with their players as EVE Online, the spacefaring MMORPG with a literally galactic scale. Developer CCP Games endorsed a major space battle for a terminally-ill player that had over 2,000 people taking part last month, and earlier this week it created a permanent monument to mark the site of a graveyard project started by a fan in 2007.
EVE Online player Azia Burgi began collecting corpses from destroyed ships in-game because, “It was just something nobody else seemed to be doing, so I thought I’d have a go and see what happened,” according to a 2017 interview with PC Gamer. CCP Games first brought attention to the project in 2008, and soon thereafter it had to be moved “above the first moon of Molea II” because the way loose items were anchored in space was changing.
In the years since, the in-game cemetery has been kept up through spreadsheets and forums by the online community, and many have begun to leave memorials for real-world deaths at the site. Once again, changing in-game mechanics threatened to eliminate the graveyard, so CCP Games placed a new monument that will keep items from despawning so it can serve as a permanent in-game cemetery.
According to CCP Games’ post on the new monument Tuesday, the site can still be destroyed or looted despite the monument, but that shouldn’t stop players from going to pay their respects. EVE Online has been used for similarly altruistic purposes before, with CCP Games creating a minigame to further coronavirus research efforts earlier this year.
EVE Online is available now on PC.
Source: EVE Online, PC Gamer
