5
The Pink Party Hat Crisis --- RuneScape
In 2003, the RuneScape economy crashed because of too many imaginary pink party hats, which is still better than the reasons for some real financial disasters.
Pixland/Pixland/GettyImages
"We loan money to people who can't pay it back, sell the debt to each other for a profit, then escape on our unicorns before anyone notices!"
Player SixFeetUnder was trying to trade in a scythe, because even computer glitches love symbolism, when he accidentally worked out how to spawn any item in the game. Everyone immediately demonstrated their intelligence by relentlessly duplicating an item whose only useful property was rarity. The pink party hat went from being the most valuable item in the game to the least valuable hat. (This is why the blue hat is now the one worth $1,680, the maximum amount of money the game can hold.) It's now colored purple, but a full decade later, its value still hasn't recovered. But it never stopped being a symbol of how ludicrous video game finances are.
Jagex
Behold, the ultimate symbol of online wealth and class.
In fact, the entire game still hasn't recovered. The developers couldn't work out how to even perform the glitch for several days, during which time the players replicated like Australian rabbits, with similar effects on the local economy. Eventually Jagex offered a free lifetime membership to anyone who'd tell them how they were managing to piss in their own pool this time, and they were finally able to fix it.
4
Final Fantasy, Absolute Asshole -- Final Fantasy XI
A raid is when players team up to have fun and achieve certain challenges. 2005 is when Square Enix said, "We hate those players." They released a new end boss called "Absolute Virtue," which was like calling Donald Trump "Attractive Humility."
Square Enix
Yeah, I'd rather sleep with this.
1645 Comments