As a rule, we don’t often report on Eve Online here. That’s because while the MMORPG has a free-to-play option, it’s not exactly free-to-play. What it is, however, is one of the most interesting MMORPGs out there – at least for me. It may not appeal to as many people as theme park MMOs. But even people who aren’t interested in playing it enjoyed watching it.

The drama and betrayal between players and their companies in the game alone is enough to grab attention from time to time. And then there are the wars…those massive events where thousands of players interact in a single location. All of this is thanks to the game existing on a single shard where players from all over the world live together.

This shard exists because of the cross-platform game engine that Fenris Creations (formerly CCP Games) has been working on for two decades. Today the company announced that the engine is now fully open source and features two dozen Carbon modules, including Carbon’s Destiny physics simulation and pathfinding technology. (Remember, this is the technology that allowed the game to support graphics-intensive PvP space combat involving nearly 9,000 players simultaneously in the same room.

This is pretty big news for developers and it will be interesting to see how they use the engine.