"Ship-to-Ship" Services Now Available

The Herald staff had wanted more time to study the deep ramifications of this story, but now that Kotaku is reporting on sexual services available in EVE Online, it was clear that an editorial decision needed to be made.

Kotaku reports on a chat-based cybersex service that has made its way into EVE. But if you're not interested in having another person on the other end of your transactions, there's also a graphical ship-to-ship service available for pod pilots with money to burn. What's perhaps unique about the service is that makes real-world skin shots available within the virtual world, for a much more immersive experience (so to speak). [After the jump: Adults Only, Not Safe For Work]

Accessible on the Web or via EVE Online's in-game browser, the Pleasure Hub service offers EVE pilots the usual selection of pr0n, but delivered via a unique vector: rather than dress up (or undress) virtual characters, Pleasure Hub brings the real-world flesh straight to your spaceship. Though the service's creators have taken great pains to create an interface that melds seamlessly with the EVE interface (see below), the images that are available -- for a fee of 500,000 ISK -- are similar to those that appear in earthbound magazines like Playboy, and have clearly been beamed from a planet much like Earth, or at least one that's been terraformed enough to support swimming pools and gauzy lens treatments.

Having run for well over a year, something like 3,000 players have already subscribed to the service, according to Pleasure Hub representatives (who shall remain nameless here), and new subscriptions continue to arrive, at the rate of about one a week, despite the fact that the service does no advertising of any kind.

Notably, the Pleasure Hub staff has been in touch with EVE Game Masters in the past, who are aware of the service and have even expressed their best wishes for "good luck in the triple-X industry."

Comments

[Tony Walsh]

Walker, does EVE have an in-game web browser? Is that how this works? I checked out the Pleasure Hub site and they specifically mention how it was designed to run on low-end browsers, so I assume it's meant to be loaded within an in-game browser.

[Walker Spaight]

Yes, Tony, that's why my article says, "Accessible on the Web or via EVE Online's in-game browser..." :P

Were you just making sure of that before you re-activate your account? :D

Or do you plan to take over teh EVE media empire from within?!! (insert relevant empticon)

[Tony Walsh]

Heh. I phrased my question poorly-- I wasn't sure if EVE's in-game browser used external web content, or if there was some way for users to upload their own content to EVE's servers. I recall the in-game browser from my brief stint in EVE, but never really understood whether it was a "real" web-based browser.

But not even porn could make me re-activate my EVE account :) It's just not my kind of game.

Although developing pages specifically for an in-game browser is pretty cool.

[Tony Walsh]

Bah, if I'd looked at the screenshot more closely, I would have noticed the address bar with real-world URL.

[Walker Spaight]

Yeah, but that's a screenshot of the in-game browser. It uses the same page as the one you view on the Web, it just supports a smaller subset of html (like html 2.0? not sure). I don't know how you get stuff into it, though.

wake up and smell the browser, Linden Lab?

[eclipsegsx]

Yeah, the in-game browser improved during the Cold War patch, and was able to read some real-world pages.

Now, more and more people in eve are making IGB-compatible pages for their corps and in-game businesses -- and with the last content patch (Red Moon Rising), it apparently is even more capable on image loading and rendering.

[someone]

I've got something silvery for you... and it isn't Omber.