Bank Robbery in EVE Online

EVE Online is a game even I won't touch due to its level of crazy and that's a pretty big order of crazy considering I've played Saints Row 2 which allows me to streak through the city wearing only a smile. EVE is also a lesson in unbridled capitalism.

The person who was the CEO of one of the bigger banks in the game decided to pull a Ken Lay of Enron and raid the coffers for himself taking about 200 billion in game credits (or kredits -- which I can only assume is due to the game originating in Iceland and those people are too inbred to spell right) and turning it into hard cash (about $5,000) for personal gain. While apparently the bank raid wasn't outside the game's terms of use, trading the credits for real money did result in him getting kicked from the game.

No LAN in Starcraft 2 to prevent piracy

So the not so surprising shoe is dropped as to why Blizzard wants everyone to connect to battle.net to play Starcraft 2: to fight piracy.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II.

I could care less about most of those features in Starcraft II though. The most effective way to communicate in a LAN is just yell at your buddy before throwing a beer bottle so the dumbass will build more tanks.

Starcraft II.. Blizzard likes to piss off their fanbase

What's a great way to piss off the fanbase of the Starcraft series who have been waiting for a very long time for the sequel to a great game? Not supporting LAN based action is a sure way to start the hate train rolling. I mean seriously, what the hell. So now if I want to play with friends while at their house we'll what? Have to log online to battle.net then get into a matchmaking room just to find our friends and join a game through that network when we have a perfectly good LAN in the house? Ridiculous.