Long before loot boxes became the bane of the Internet's existence , in-game purchases at large could cause a bit of commotion within certain gaming communities. Roughly seven years ago, for instance, a simple monocle almost brought down one of the most active gaming communities around: EVE Online. With a staff holiday looming tomorrow on July 4, we're resurfacing this cautionary tale of computer-gaming consumerism. It originally ran on July 11, 2011 and appears unchanged below.

Controversy was expected, but not virtual riots.

On June 21, developer CCP updated its popular space-opera-slash-MMO EVE Online so that players could take their avatars outside their ships and walk around the game world. With this new ability came a store that sold vanity items—in-game clothing and accessories that alter an avatar's looks but don't change an avatar's abilities. The price for these items was much higher than most people expected for vanity in-game items which did absolutely nothing, and it made players nervous. The EVE playerbase didn't want their game turning to microtransactions to increase the cost of playing.

That fear seemed to be legitimate when an internal CCP communication leaked online. Called "Greed is Good?," it provided a detailed argument between members of the development team over whether to sell items that could change the way the game is played. Nervousness in some players gave way to rage.

"I would like virtual goods sales in EVE. In fact, I'd like to sell a lot more than vanity items," CCP's Kristoffer Touborg wrote in one article. "Does this mean I'm an evil capitalist that, unless stopped, will cause the entire company to catch fire and be buried at sea by a secret team of Navy SEALs?"

He knew how badly the players would react if they heard him say that, and he went on to discuss that issue in the article itself. "There is a pretty overwhelming perception amongst EVE players that these changes are bad," he added. "I think they're brilliant, but our players don't. We're going to face an uphill struggle, and the reason many of us never talk about this publicly is that we'd be burned at the stake by the players."

CCP's John Tubefield argued the other way. "To me, virtual goods sales are far less appealing when the gameplay is affected and they aren't replacing a black market," he wrote. "When we're adding additional things into the game that enable users to gain an advantage over other people for real money in a way they simply wouldn't be able to if we hadn't done so, then it becomes an issue."

Tubefield doesn't want players to feel like they're being charged twice to play the game. "I feel that if people have already paid a subscription fee then unless there is a good reason for the overall community to introduce a gameplay-affecting virtual goods sales (such as with PLEX), then gaining an in-game advantage isn't justifiable," he wrote.

The debate goes on like this for pages. No decisions are made, no roadmaps laid out, and both sides make their points well. In context, there's nothing incendiary here; CCP's media relations staff even sent me a copy of the document when I began working on this story. But with that red cover and the tone of some of the arguments inside, the magazine looked bad to gamers.

And some of those gamers had an unexpected reaction: they rioted.

How much is that monocle?

To understand the special appeal of EVE, you have to understand the game's intricate economy—and how the new in-game items altered it.

EVE has two kinds of currency. The first is called "ISK," and it's what players use to buy items within the game. The second is called "PLEX," and it's used to buy gameplay time. (Think of it as your monthly subscription fee transformed into an in-game item.) Players can buy PLEX in two ways: by trading in ISK earned playing the game or by purchasing it directly from CCP with real-world money.

To buy the vanity items offered in late June, CCP introduced a third form of currency. Called "Aurum," this currency is created in the game by breaking down PLEX. The resulting Aurum is used to buy everything from an avatar's clothes to his... monocle.

"We developed Aurum with two major considerations in mind. First, PLEX are too large to use as units of currency," said Rick Reynolds, EVE Market Senior Director, when I asked about the new currency. "Each PLEX is worth approximately $17.50 on average, which doesn't provide enough granularity for purchases of small items. It's just too awkward. We needed some form of micro-PLEX."

Such decisions aren't made lightly; CCP employs two full-time economists to keep the economy running as smoothly as possible and to deal with changes such as the introduction of Aurum.

Aurum's impact should be light, at first. At the moment, Aurum can only be held by players, not by the larger player-run corporations in the game. Aurum can not be traded among players, but that's coming.

The currency cycle was illustrated on the game's official blog, and should help to illustrate all of this.

Since your subscription fee is an in-game item, players can buy PLEX with real currency. Instead of using PLEX to play the game, though, they can break it down into Aurum and use that to buy items, which can then be sold in the marketplace for ISK, which can then be used to buy PLEX. Players can move money into the game by buying PLEX, but they can't easily get it out by converting it back into real-world cash (at least not officially).

"We have customers with billing addresses in more than 200 countries, and some of those countries have financial regulations that might have come into play if we had used real-world currencies like dollars or euros," Reynolds explained when I asked about the wisdom of adding yet another virtual currency.

"Some governments might have required us to report player 'earnings.' Others might look at certain in-game activities and decide we needed to be treated like a bank or an insurance company. We're a game company. It's what we do best. We didn't want to support the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork real-world currencies would involve."

So what does this mean for the new vanity items? For one thing, it means that we can calculate their price in real-world amounts. With a fixed price for PLEX, we can do some conversions and learn that CCP was selling the monocle—a merely decorative item—for more than $60 worth of in-game currency.

Here's a nice breakdown of how these currencies work together in the game and what it all means for vanity item pricing. (This is based on the ability to sell one unit of PLEX for 3,500 Aurum, CCP's price of $17.50 per unit of PLEX, and an in-game value of 400,000,000 ISK. The value of the PLEX in ISK fluctuates, but this is a good starting point to look at the real-world value of these items.)

Looking Glass Ocular implant - 12k AUR -> 3.5 PLEX -> US$61.25 ->1.4 Bil ISK

Men’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Shirt - 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> US$16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK

Women’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Blouse - 3.2K AUR -> .91 PLEX -> US$16.00 -> 364 Mil ISK

Men’s ‘Commando’ Pants - 3k AUR -> .85 PLEX -> US$15 -> 340 Mil ISK

By giving players the ability to buy in-game time as an item with real-world money, EVE has created an internal economy that's stable and that encourages trade. Players can buy more Aurum and ISK any time they'd like, simply by buying and then converting PLEX via the in-game trading posts or through CCP itself in the case of Aurum.

If new in-game items began conferring real and immediate advantages (items purchased with ISK require training and time to use) for cash, a player's years of work could be overtaken by a newcomer with deep pockets. Cue the riots.