Eve Online has launched the first part of its revamped new player experience.

Developer CCP has also announced the notoriously complex space MMO launches on the Epic Games Store on 23rd September. CCP said this launch makes Eve Online "the premier MMO on the platform".

Quadrant 3: Gateway, as the new player experience is known, revolves around a series of themed activities designed to welcome new and returning players to the 18-year-old Eve Online. The new trailer is below:

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Eve Online's next expansion is named Invasion, CCP Games has announced. It'll launch on 28th May and, as usual, will be free to all players.

This expansion stars the spaceship MMO's Triglavian race and, spoilers, they are not good people.

Eve Online's creative director, the brilliantly-named Bergur Finnbogason, calls their arrival a "universe-changing event for our community to experience in familiar space".

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Eve Online is known for its outrageous space battles, propaganda and political maneuverings, but things got real earlier this month when an actual US politician was banned from the game for alleged corruption. The politician in question, Republican lobbyist Brian Schoeneman (in-game name Brisc Rubal), was accused by CCP of breaking a non-disclosure agreement to share confidential information which was then used by another player to conduct "illicit in-game transactions".

After conducting a review of the situation, CCP has now concluded its initial findings were incorrect, and has made a formal apology.

"It's now clear that our initial actions were based on unsubstantiated assumptions," CCP stated. "While we were motivated by a desire to protect the working relationship between the CSM and the EVE Development Team with all due speed, had we taken the time to review the information with greater scrutiny, this incident could have been resolved without the disruption that has since occurred.

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A real-life American politician has been banned from Eve Online for alleged corruption.

Developer CCP said Republican Brian Schoeneman, who went by the name Brisc Rubal in the space MMO, was removed from his role as a member of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), Eve Online's player advocacy group, for allegedly breaking a non-disclosure agreement and using insider information to make money in-game.

In a post on the Eve Online website, CCP said Brisc Rubal was found to be sharing confidential information with a member of his alliance that was later used by another alliance member to conduct "illicit in-game transactions". Brisc Rubal has denied any wrongdoing.

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EVE Online developer CCP Games has announced that work on its EVE-themed multiplayer shooter Project Nova will cease in its current form. Instead, CCP will now "take a step back and return to the drawing board".

Project Nova was first announced in 2016, as a spiritual successor to CCP's long-defunct PlayStation 3 free-to-play shooter Dust 514. News on the game, which was being co-developed by Sumo Digital, remained sparse until earlier this year.

In October, CCP finally shared some solid information on Project Nova, revealing that the sci-fi shooter would combine "tactical co-op PvE and explosive PvP modes, with a strong emphasis on mastery and strategy". It also unveiled a new teaser trailer, released first gameplay footage, and opened registration for an invite-only alpha to be held in November.

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Remember Project Nova? It's the new first-person shooter set within the Eve Online universe from CCP Games and UK developer Sumo Digital. Things had been quiet on the Project Nova front, but CCP has just lifted the lid on the game, releasing a flashy teaser trailer, letting outlets run gameplay footage and signalling a closed playtest for later this year.

Here's the teaser trailer:

"Project Nova is the upcoming dark and thrilling first-person co-op shooter set in the dystopian sci-fi universe of EVE Online," reads the official blurb.

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Charismatic Icelandic developer CCP, maker of Eve Online, has been acquired by the South Korean maker of Black Desert Online, Pearl Abyss, in a deal reportedly worth $425m.

CCP will operate independently as a wholly owned subsidiary across studios in Reykjavik (HQ), London and Shanghai, ensuring it will "continue to be free to do what we do best", wrote CCP boss Hilmar Veigar P tursson in a letter to the Eve Online community. "But now we'll have the support of another tried and tested developer that's proven their own mettle in the complex and challenging field of creating and maintaining virtual worlds."

"As a nerdy Korean MMO maker, Pearl Abyss' company culture is very similar to that of CCP's..." -Hilmar Veigar P tursson

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CCP, the developer of Eve Online, is making a new action MMO.

The company's London-based team is behind the unannounced action MMO (the main developer of Eve Online is based in Reykjavik in Iceland).

CCP mentioned the game as part of an announcement it is using Unreal Engine 4 for all of its currently unannounced projects. But that's all we know for now - we don't know which platforms this action MMO is for or when it's due out.

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In a modernist hotel lobby on the outskirts of Barcelona I sit face to face with the President. He's pretty casual as far as presidents go, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, wearing sunglasses even though we're inside. He's got a tattoo up the underside of his forearm which reads 'Neverdie'. It's his alias, but more of a name to him now than Jon Jacobs ever will be. He is President of Virtual Reality. It has nothing to do with Oculus Rift or VR goggles, and it's not some silly title in a game. President of Virtual Reality means president of all virtual realities - World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Destiny, the lot.

Who voted for him? Entropia Universe players, mostly. There, Neverdie is a celebrity, the man who sold a nightclub on an asteroid for a staggering $635,000. The election was held on Facebook in spring 2016, and Jacobs did a proper campaign trail for it. He even made ridiculous promises like a real politician - "talking a bunch of shit" he calls it - pledging to create billions of jobs by building a teleportation system to transfer characters between virtual worlds.

But two years later his presidency isn't going well, or at all, really. "I ran for President, did this thing and then everybody in Entropia Universe says, 'We don't want one!' They're like, 'You're not our President - bugger off!' It was a complete 'fuck you!' from the userbase! And then Entropia Universe [creator MindArk] said, 'Umm no we're not interested.' So I became President of Virtual Reality and they basically rejected my entire thing! And there was nothing I could do about it."

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The communities behind space games Eve Online and Star Citizen have gone to war over a new "copycat" spaceship.

On 14th June, Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium announced a new spaceship that would be made available for people to pledge for: the Drake Vulture.

The Vulture, which costs 112, is a single-person ship designed for solo players who want to get into the salvage career. It looks like this:

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