The number of names engraved in a monument to EVE Online’s community of players will eclipse the population of the very country it will reside in.

On April 30, a day before the annual gathering of EVE Online players and developers in Reykjavík, Iceland, artist Sigurður Guðmundsson, along with two of the game’s art directors Börkur Eiríksson and Ásgeir Jón Ásgeirsson, will unveil the 16 foot tall sculpture. Etched into a granite, face-like structure looking through a slate of stainless steel at another aluminum structure will be the names of all of the active, paying players on March 1, 2014, as well as the influential deceased players like Sean “Vile Rat” Smith.

As of February last year, EVE Online hosted over 500,000 active players paying its $15 a month subscription fee. And the amount of subscribers has only grown since the game’s launch in 2003. Developer CCP Games, which is based in Reykjavík, released two free expansions later that year, so the number is likely higher now.

More players are mining, fighting, and trading in EVE Online’s fictional space than people living in Iceland. There will be more than twice the amount of names on the monument as Reykjavík’s population in 2009–unfortunately newer, reliable numbers aren’t available. And there will be about 200,000 more names than all of Iceland’s population, based on a July 2013 estimate. That’s only counting the subscribers, though; the game has a free trial mode open to anyone who signs-up on its website.



It would be crazier if the names of players shooting each other in Dust 514 were included on the monument. Dust 514 takes place in the same universe–EVE Online players can even interact with Dust 514 players–but CCP hasn’t released official numbers and the ones out there are murky and misleading.

Even so, that’s a lot of names.

Source: EVE Online

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