EVE Online introducing paid 'vanity' items

EVE Online players will soon be able to step out of their spaceships, at last, and onto stations with the 'Incarna' update. In the wake of that, developer CCP Games has announced plans to sell cosmetic "vanity" items for real money in the pew-pew spaceships MMO.

Pretty items such as "clothes and accessories for your character, custom paint jobs or logo placement on your ships or a fishtank/stripper pole for your Captain's Quarters," or the fancy techno-monocle above, will be purchasable for real cash money.

A new virtual currency, Aurum, is being created for players to buy the vanity items. You'll be able to get your hands on Aurum by buying and "breaking up" an EVE 'PLEX' time card--which can be bought with real money or EVE's own in-game currency, ISK.

You won't necessarily need to cough up real money for vanity items, mind, because they will be saleable on the open market like any other EVE item. As ISK can be used to buy PLEX, to break up into Aurum, to get vanity items, at a certain price-point it will theoretically become profitable for players to buy and resell hats.

The first phase of the Incarna update, single-player Captain's Quarters, is scheduled to launch on June 21. Here's a peek at what that'll bring: