Being attacked by another player and losing your ship in EVE Online is painful, but few people can understand the pain that a player named Lactose Intolerant is feeling right now. Yesterday, he was ambushed by another player while carrying a lifetime's worth of treasure and lost an astonishing 150 billion ISK of EVE Online's in-game currency. Kill reports show that the damage was much greater, with players estimating their total losses at close to 500 billion ISK, which is the equivalent of nearly US$5,000 in EVE subscription time. This is one of the most expensive shipkills since EVE Online launched 16 years ago.

We don't have the full story yet, but what we do know is that the Lactose Intolerant was aboard the Orca, an industrial command ship used primarily to support a large mining fleet in EVE Online's resource-rich system. Because of its massive cargo bay, Orca is often seen transporting goods between EVE Online's various trading hubs.

Transporting anything in EVE Online can be a dangerous endeavor. Players often set up camp along major trade routes and use stargates to scan the cargo bays of players warping in and out of the system. When they find a player carrying something particularly expensive, they quickly gather a strike force to blow it up. Whether or not that expensive loot drops is random, but these pilots risk it anyway to punish other careless players.

In the high-sec space where Lactose Intolerant was killed, players are protected by an omnipotent NPC police force called Concord. However, like real-life police, Concord takes time to respond to crimes in progress. Assassins take advantage of this delay to organize fleets of ships that can inflict extremely high damage with a single blow, destroying their targets before Concord can appear. Because of this risk, players who wish to haul particularly expensive cargo usually use highly specialized ships enhanced with mods that make them extremely fast and difficult to target. However, they are not lactose intolerant.

I don't know exactly what this player was thinking, but his orca was filled with a treasure trove of blueprints that the player needed to build ships, weapons and modules. Some of the blueprints are relatively inexpensive, while others are ridiculously expensive; it is almost impossible to estimate their value because they are sold by special contract rather than on EVE Online's in-game market. In addition, blueprints can be upgraded (called research) to improve the efficiency of item manufacturing. This will also significantly increase the value of the blueprint. [This is why Lactose Intolerant losses are so difficult to measure correctly. zKillboard estimates Lactose Intolerant losses at 150 billion ISK (or about $1,500), but EVE Online's subreddit of players on the EVE Online subreddit believe the actual value is closer to 500 billion ISK.

As word of Lactose Intolerant's death spread yesterday morning, players struggled to understand what had happened and, more specifically, why 500 billion ISK worth of goods were transported on a ship not designed for high-value hauling. Many players speculated that Lactose was a "credit card warrior" who used EVE Online's premium currency (which can be sold to other players for ISK) to purchase vast amounts of goods without properly understanding the risks of playing the game, leading to much speculation.

So a director named Tharvoil of Among Shadows, the company with which Lactose Intolerant was affiliated, created a thread to clarify what had happened. We all agree that the way that [the blueprints] were transported was unsafe," Tharvoil wrote. "Looking at Reddit, several people have accused this pilot of being a credit card warrior and have made fun of the pilot, among other things. That is why I am writing this."

Tharvoil explains that Lactose Intolerant has been an EVE player for 16 years and is "an older gentleman who can be stubborn and likes to stick to his beliefs." The Lactose blueprint stash, Tharvoil says, was not purchased through microtransactions, but was gradually accumulated over 16 years of play.

I contacted Lactose, but he refused to discuss the incident. I don't want to relive that moment either. But it is difficult to understand exactly why he took so many risks. My guess is that he has made similarly dangerous trips in the past and returned alive.

But it is also difficult to exaggerate how careless this was. As if carrying a lifetime's worth of work on a mining freighter wasn't bad enough, I contacted Servoil directly, but Servoil explained that Lactose was using autopilot to get his blueprint stash to its destination. Autopilots slow down certain operations and make the ship much more vulnerable than direct control. Even more puzzling, Lactose was using autopilot to get through one of the most dangerous systems in high-sec.

Tragically, however, Servoil said that Lactose was moving his blueprints in order to take them to Jita, a major trade hub, and to make and sell copies to financially support other players in the Shadow. He was just trying to do some good.

According to Tharvoil, after his losses became public, Lactose quit the company and left EVE Online. Tharvoil wrote on Reddit, "At this point, what's done is done, and there's no point in complaining about the leaked [blueprints]." 'We did not punish the pilot for this because the loss alone is punishment enough. However, as a result of this he has decided to leave the company. We wish him the best of luck in whatever path he decides to take in the future."

If there is one cruel irony in all this, it is that of the 500 billion ISK that Lactose was carrying, only 2 billion ISK worth of items were not destroyed. nearly 800 blueprints were destroyed, all but one. Just like that, 16 years' worth of work was lost.