EVE Online players get to blow up the game's biggest ship after hitting charity goal

On July 4, EVE Online's pilots will get to trash one of the game's famous supercapital ships — the Titan, believed to be worth thousands of dollars in real money — after raising more than $20,000 in donations for cancer research.

You might remember the Titans from last year's colossal Battle of B-R5RB, a throwdown so large it attracted mainstream attention, mainly for the assumed $330,000 worth of real-world money that combatants suffered in losses. Titans not only are enormous and expensive, they take months of real world time to build and train a pilot to operate. So many were lost at B-R5RB that EVE developer CCP created an in-game memorial to it.

Moreover, this sacrificial Titan belongs to the well known player Dovinian. His Titan is colloquially called the "Dovibus," so EVE pilots turned up in strength to back his cause — the "Leukemia Cup Regatta," a sailboat race to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The race is today and Dovinian, who captains a ship in real life, is in it.

The big blow-up will be on July 4, a suitable day for some fireworks (assuming Dovinian isn't luring people into the system for an ambush, which would be quintessentially EVE.) As of right now, Dovinian has raised $21,525.02, but still is taking donations with five hours to go until the race.

For more on EVE Online — "the most thrilling boring game in the universe" — see Polygon's feature from last year, a month after the Battle of B-R5RB.