Looking into the details of the scheme, it was actually quite clever.Ī Fleet Carrier in Elite Dangerous. Polygon spoke with four commanders who had been trapped this way. At least a dozen - likely more - had already been trapped, press-ganged into working for low wages in a star system they had little hope of ever escaping. “I praised her for doing the right thing, reinforced the message with my boy (who truth be told would have jumped straight in the van),” Jason says.Īs it turns out, many older players jumped in the van before him. There would have been no way back other than to self-destruct his new starship and effectively begin Elite’s grind all over again.

Making matters worse, Jason’s son would have been trapped in that mining system, stranded more than 800 light-years from the populous center of the in-game galaxy.

Other players would then export those commodities to another system, profiting from his work. If his older sister hadn’t intervened, Jason’s son would have been forced to sell off those Void Opals for far less than their fair market value. The offer sounded too good to be true, and the girl’s “stranger danger” instincts kicked in. The goal was to work together in order to farm Void Opals, one of the rarest and most expensive commodities in the game. Once the money changed hands, a group of players would help them build a new starship, fly them to a mining claim, and help them break apart asteroids. They were encouraged to fly to a fleet carrier - a mobile, player-owned base - and exchange some simple goods for a large amount of in-game currency. Jason’s kids had received a rather lucrative proposition. The offer sounded too good to be true, and the girl’s “stranger danger” instincts kicked in Last month, a group of players worked to create a deep-space gulag, an in-game space prison designed to quietly trap new players and exploit their labor.

That little episode set the bar pretty high, but recently a group of players vaulted over it like a team of heavily-armed Olympic gymnasts. Like when a group of players farmed a bunch of rare items, then hauled them 22,000 light-years away in order to harass a terminal cancer patient. Unlike other professions in Elite, being a dirtbag takes hard work, creativity, and the willingness to be the kind of asshole that thinks outside the box. But, for a dedicated few, the real draw is making other people miserable.

For others it’s the combat, where you can test your mettle against other players or alien enemies that could easily snap your ship in two. For many players, the allure of Elite Dangerous is the freedom to explore the Milky Way galaxy, to see stars and planets that no other player has ever seen before.

Elite dangerous download slows down