EVE Corporations and alliances
Players can organize themselves into corporations (similar to guilds or clans in other MMOs). Corporations are run by one CEO who controls the corporation's assets. The CEO assigns roles to corporation members such as director, accountant and personnel manager. Corporations may also band together to form alliances. Corporations and alliances come in different shapes and sizes. Some player groups write press releases about new business openings and send out IPO information to potential in-game venture capital investors. Alliances can control enough star systems that their territory can be plotted on the Eve game map.[43] Alliances based in lawless space often group into political powerblocks, such as "The Greater BoB Community" and "Providence Holders", for the purpose of joint operations and logistics. Currently, the largest of these political blocks is "The Southern Coalition", consisting of alliances such as "Goonswarm" and "Red Alliance".[43]
Corporations take up numerous business models such as mining, producing ships or "ratting" (raiding NPC pirate bases, as NPC pirates have bounties depending on their class of ship). Normally members contribute a portion of all business proceeds to a pool and receive help in the form of cash and equipment. This is by no means the only model though many operate in this fashion as it helps to build loyalty amongst corporation members.
Players also form corporations for the exclusive task of pirating other players - these corporations are normally referred to as pirate clans. They for example stake out jump points and jump gates waiting for other players to arrive, then destroy and loot their ships. Few groups "pod-kill" players in this way, except accidentally, as it's considered needless. Such pirate groups are hunted viciously, even by other pirate groups. Pirate clans almost never prey on beginning characters as operating after passing a certain bounty level means they're fired upon by CONCORD security ships (which guard areas where new players usually are found). See the Combat section for more information about bounties.
While attacking another player in secure space will result in a loss of security standing and the risk of the attacker losing his ship to CONCORD, there is a way to conduct warfare in high security space. A corporation or alliance can declare war on another corporation/alliance at the cost of a weekly fee, thus allowing for combat in all regions of space without the fear of standing loss or the intervention of CONCORD.[44] However, if the target of a corporate war elects to make the war mutual, there are no fees involved for either party.
