It goes without saying that the exploitation of unwitting and inexperienced players in Elite: Dangerous has the topic of slavery on many people’s minds, particularly since one of those ringleaders turned out to be a ravening trash fire of a human being and players running the scheme have been locked out of private and open play as a result of breaking TOS.
That still brings up the matter of the game’s lore and gameplay itself, which refers to slaves as a tradable illegal commodity or a perfectly legal commodity in Imperial space. One player took to Elite’s official forums to discuss the matter of Imperial slaves, proposing initially that the human slaves be traded out for synthetic ones but then — realizing his initial idea was inelegant — changing the proposal to running a series of community goals and Galnet releases that feature an NPC fighting against the remaining slaver powers.
The post further goes on to poke holes in dissenting opinion, pointing out that the NPC’s actions aren’t without precedent in the real world, particularly since many arguments against removing in-game slaves point to real-world slave-holding civilizations.
“The funny thing about the comments about slavery being a fact of life, and the proposition that I am being unrealistic, is that it presupposes that there are no inspirational leaders, no heroes, no revolutionaries who step up and stop it. That is also unrealistic, as we have also learned from history. If a major superpower institutionalized slavery today, there would be global outrage. The media would assault that nation. There would be severe economic sanctions, isolation, and probably war over the issue. But 1300 years from now, nope, it’s still a thing, and no one can do anything about it.”
Overall, the thread garnered a lot of honest discussion among the playerbase, though the thread was eventually closed as some people were incapable of not using ad hominem arguments. Still, it’s clear that the entire episode has stirred up some discussion. Ideally, it will also stir up the proposed community goals.
Further reading about this story:
Elite Dangerous players discuss the ramifications of in-game ‘slaves’ and ways to change the lore
Shadowbanning of Elite Dangerous ‘slavers’ is reportedly corroborated by email screenshots
Stick and Rudder: Leader of Elite Dangerous ‘slavery’ racket espouses a ‘cult-like’ guild full of ‘chaos and evil’
Elite Dangerous players are apparently being duped into indentured servitude
