EVE Online and real money: PLEX, the $68 monocle and a $300,000 battle

EVE Online is the game where losing a spaceship can make the news, because the ship can be given a price in pounds or dollars. That is possible because of one design decision CCP Games made in 2008. This is a short history of how EVE's in-game economy got tied to real money, and the three moments that made it famous.

2003: one universe, run by players

EVE launched in North America and the UK on 6 May 2003, and in the rest of Europe later that month. Every player shares one universe, and most of what is in it, from ammunition to the largest warships, is built and sold by players. Ships destroyed in combat are gone for good. That makes losses real in a way most online games avoid.

2008: how did PLEX turn game time into a currency?

In November 2008 CCP introduced PLEX, originally a 30-day licence extension that players could buy with real money and then sell to other players inside the game for ISK, EVE's currency. Players with money could buy ISK legally; players with time could earn enough ISK to pay for their subscription. It also created an exchange rate: if PLEX costs a known amount in pounds and sells for a known amount of ISK, any ISK value can be turned into a real-money estimate.

Today PLEX is sold in packs. On Steam UK they run from £4.00 for 100 PLEX to £520.00 for 20,000, which makes bigger packs about 35% cheaper per PLEX.

2011: the $68 monocle

In June 2011 the Incarna expansion opened the Noble Exchange, a store selling clothes for players' avatars. A monocle cost about $68 in real-money terms, roughly 1.3 billion ISK. Engadget noted that some items cost "more than real clothes of the same type". Players were furious, and the episode is still known as Monoclegate.

2014: the Bloodbath of B-R5RB

On 27 January 2014 two huge player alliances met in a fight over a star system called B-R5RB. CCP's own account says the battle lasted 21 hours and involved 7,548 different players, with up to 2,670 in the system at once. 75 titans, the largest ships in the game, were destroyed, and 11 trillion ISK was lost. Using the PLEX exchange rate, CCP estimated the losses at $300,000 to $330,000.

That figure isn't money anyone actually spent. It is what the destroyed ships would have cost if every ISK had been bought with PLEX. But it put the battle in the news far beyond gaming, and it is the best-known example of a game's virtual losses being given a real-money value.

2016: free to play, with limits

On 11 November 2016 CCP added "Alpha clones", a free way to play with limited ships and skills. The paid subscription became Omega. In May 2022 CCP raised the monthly US price of Omega to $19.99, the first rise to the 1-month dollar price since 2004. On Steam UK one month now costs £16.00, or £8.80 a month on the 24-month plan.

How we checked

Dates for the launch, PLEX and Alpha clones come from EVE's Wikipedia entry. The monocle price is from Engadget's report at the time. The battle figures are from CCP's own report, published on 1 February 2014. Current prices are from Steam UK, last checked on 10 November 2026.