No more free lunches you freeloaders!

In a move that should surprise no one, and upset even less, CCP has announced that they will be removing the ability for players to unsubscribe to EVE Online yet still allow their characters to skill up. No other game allows this that I know of, so really this has been a "feature" ready to be cut. CCP in their typical gregarious community relations falls all over themselves to make the fans understand, but from a business and gamer perspective, this makes perfect sense. From Torfi Frans Olafsson, Senior Producer:

"We can look at this from a variety of angles, but it all comes down to:

1. There was a way to progress a character in EVE without an active subscription
2. CCP noticed a surge in the trend and decided to fix the leak
3. Players now have to pay a subscription for characters to have them progress

We truly hope that the community will understand our actions and continue to enjoy playing EVE as much as we enjoy making it."

Again, I can't imagine letting players progress their characters by not paying the subscriptions, so like the Bobs in Office Space, CCP has "fixed the glitch." To read the rest of the developer blog, head over to My EVE.