Eve Online is adding a new UI-only feature to its test server that disables the game’s graphics, meant to be used during the game’s massive, system-taxing space battles. For years, fans and critics alike have joked that Eve Online is really just “spreadsheets in space,” and this update brings that joke even closer to reality.
Eve Online has been running for a staggering 17 years, and it’s continued to evolve that whole time. That’s largely due to Eve’s unique model of putting players in control of nearly every aspect of its simulated universe as they fight for economic, political, and military power in the virtual cosmos. More recently, players have turned their attention toward helping to advance scientific research into COVID-19, using an in-game system called Project Discovery to analyze samples of the virus.
Now, Eve Online developer CCP is introducing a feature that might sound like a joke to outsiders, but which has been long requested by the community. In a post on the game’s forum, CCP announced that a UI-only mode is coming to the game’s test server, allowing players to turn off all 3D graphics and go into a high-perfomance mode. As CCP told Kotaku, the mode is meant to be turned on in extreme situations like large-scale war where a fully rendered scene could tank frame rates. However, the developer also recognized that fans may find other uses for it. That’s already being proven correct in the announcement post, where one player points out that their cataracts made certain areas of the game with intense brightness nearly impossible to see with the graphics turned on.
While much of Eve is driven by the community, developer CCP has of course been at the helm the whole time, adding major content updates and minor tweaks along the way. CCP says it has plans for the game going out into the third decade of its lifetime, and just this summer launched Eve Echoes, a mobile spinoff of the existing game.
Adding a mode that turns off the graphics might not make any sense for most games, but Eve Online isn’t most games. It has an incredibly dedicated fan base for whom the game can sometimes resemble a second job - and for some of them, the stakes and potential rewards are high enough to match. At the same time, it can be extremely tough to get into for new players. The new UI-only mode would likely not appeal to most newcomers, but for those worried about whether Eve Online can run on their machine, or who have other quality of life concerns, it might make taking off just a little bit easier.