EVE Online

EVE Online is a 2003 sandbox space massively multiplayer online game developed and published by the Icelandic studio CCP Games for Windows and macOS. Renowned for its scale and complexity, it places hundreds of thousands of players in a single shared galaxy, New Eden, comprising tens of thousands of star systems, where they pilot customisable spaceships to trade, mine, manufacture, explore and wage war. EVE is famous for its emergent, player-driven economy and politics: vast player corporations and alliances control territory, fight enormous fleet battles involving thousands of participants, and engage in espionage, betrayal and large-scale conflicts that have made international news. Its harsh, consequence-heavy design, where destroyed ships are permanently lost, lends real weight to every decision. The game runs on a single unsharded server cluster, reinforcing the sense of one continuous universe. Over two decades CCP has continually expanded it through free updates and integrated spin-offs such as the DUST 514 console shooter, and transitioned to a free-to-play 'Alpha' tier in 2016 to broaden access. Demanding and notoriously steep to learn, EVE Online has nonetheless sustained a passionate, deeply invested community and stands as one of the most ambitious and singular MMOs ever created. Its real player-driven wars, scams and economic crashes have repeatedly made headlines well beyond the games press.