Yeah, 2020. The year of Triglavian finale (AI ganking in hi-sec) and Forsaken Fortress (broken promise of asset safety). Now FC makes changes to the HUD (nice onces but this will not bring veterans back after they lost so much in assets). And new players when learned about history of CCP changes will fear to play this game. I myself left EVE for 6 years.
Dumb “CCP” decisions. They even sold company to Pearl Abyss to buy it back. That tells everything about decision making there and sums it up perfectly.
The Forsaken Fortress update for EVE Online, released in May 2020, introduced the highly impactful “Abandoned” state for player-owned Upwell structures (Citadels). If a structure goes without fuel for 7 days, it drops its tethering assistance, loses all reinforcement cycles (meaning it can be destroyed in a single attack session), and completely removes Asset Safety. [1, 2]
Because items inside an exploded abandoned structure drop into space as loot rather than being safely transferred, the update received a deeply polarized response from the player base. [1, 3, 4, 5]
The Reception: A Divided Player Base
1. The Active Player Base & Hunters (Overwhelmingly Positive)
Active players, corporate groups, and PvP hunters viewed the update as a massive victory for the health of the game. [6, 7]
- The Ultimate Loot Pinata: Prowling warbands immediately formed to hunt down thousands of low-power structures scattered across New Eden. This led to historic “smash-and-grab” operations. For instance, a single pilot famously plundered rare blueprints (BPOs) and assets worth roughly $60,000 USD in equivalent real-world value from a single structure. [7, 8, 9]
- Clearing “Structure Spam”: Players had long complained about the sheer volume of abandoned, unpowered citadels cluttering space. The community largely agreed that forcing players to maintain their properties or risk losing them injected much-needed risk, conflict, and economic redistribution back into the sandbox. [6, 9, 10]
2. Casual Players, Smaller Corps, and Inactive/Returning Veterans (Highly Negative)
The mechanics of the Abandoned state drew intense criticism from a different subset of the community. [4, 5, 11]
- “Pulling the Carpet” on Absentees: Historically, EVE Online players could take months or years away from the game knowing their life’s work was protected by Asset Safety. The update meant players who took an unexpected break, suffered real-life emergencies, or were deployed overseas could return to find everything they ever owned completely erased. Critics argued this permanently broke the tether for returning veterans, forcing many to rage-quit permanently. [4, 5]
- Punishing the “Little Guy”: Small or solo corporations felt the 7-day timer was too unforgiving. While massive null-sec alliances had logistics teams to keep their citadels continuously fueled, smaller groups were much more vulnerable to missing a fuel cycle and getting their hard work instantly wiped out by larger entities. [11, 12, 13, 14]
| Player Group | General Sentiment | Main Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Hunters & Active PvPers |  Highly Positive |
Created massive content, huge loot drops, and cleared space clutter. |
| Economy Enthusiasts |  Neutral / Positive |
Re-injected trillions of ISK and stagnant assets back into the market. |
| Smaller / Solo Corps |  Negative |
Increased vulnerability and logistical burdens compared to massive groups. |
| Inactive / Returning Vets | Highly Negative |
Wiped out years of progress without an adequate grandfathering system. |
Beyond the immediate community split, the Forsaken Fortress update triggered several chaotic, historic, and long-lasting ripple effects across the EVE Online universe. [1]
1. The Great “Delve” Purge (Shooting Their Own Assets)
When the update dropped, massive null-sec alliances realized they had thousands of forgotten “alt-corporation” structures littered across their sovereign space. Fearing that enemy spies or neutral warbands would blow them up and steal the loot, major coalitions like Goonswarm Federation frantically began shooting their own structures in Delve. It was a bizarre era where alliances ran massive internal military operations just to deny their own abandoned wealth to the rest of the galaxy. [2]
2. Economic Shockwaves
The amount of dormant wealth suddenly injected back into New Eden’s economy was staggering. [3]
- Flooding the Market: Years worth of hoarded minerals, rare tech, and Tech 2/Tech 3 blueprints (BPOs)—which had been frozen in inactive player accounts for up to half a decade—dropped into the hands of active players. [2, 4, 5]
- Deflation & Crashing Prices: When these active hunters dumped the plundered goods onto the markets in trade hubs like Jita, it caused massive deflationary pressure on certain high-end items, as supply drastically outstripped active demand overnight.
3. A Complete Paradigm Shift in CCP’s Philosophy
For years, the developer, CCP Games, had rigidly promised that Asset Safety was an absolute guarantee. They believed players would never trust the Citadel system if their hard-earned items could be permanently lost while they were away. Forsaken Fortress completely shattered that philosophy. It signaled a harsher, more cutthroat era of game design where the developer prioritized active player conflict over protecting the assets of absent subscribers. [2, 3]
4. High-Sec “Wardec” Metagame Redefined
Prior to the update, small high-security space (“high-sec”) corporations could anchor a structure and ignore the game’s War Declaration (Wardec) system by letting the structure sit in a low-power mode, protected by grueling multi-day reinforcement timers. Forsaken Fortress essentially put a target on every small group. Professional high-sec mercenary groups used locator agents to scan for unpowered structures, declared war on the owners, and melted the citadels in a single evening for easy profit, effectively driving many solo and small-scale operations out of high-sec engineering entirely. [6, 7]
And Quantum Cores (the subsequent update that forced players to buy expensive items just to anchor a structure).
What I see now are a lot of hidden Athanors in 0.5 systems owned by null corps. 
[1] https://www.talkinginstations.com
[2] https://tagn.wordpress.com
[6] https://support.eveonline.com
[7] https://forums.eveonline.com
[3] https://tagn.wordpress.com
[5] https://tagn.wordpress.com
[7] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com
[9] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com
[10] https://tagn.wordpress.com
[11] https://forums.eveonline.com
[12] https://forums.eveonline.com