In the wee hours of Monday morning, an immense fight erupted over a space station. Lasers fired, vessels were obliterated and thousands upon thousands of dollars were lost. The melee took place in a simulated universe online, and a late rent payment triggered the whole thing.
The battle unfolded in the massive multiplayer game "EVE Online." According to PCGamesN, a coalition known as the Pandemic Legion had been paying in-game currency to use the station and the sector it was located in as a sort of base camp. But when their payment didn't go through on time, rival coalition RUS promptly claimed the space station as its own.
The fight that resulted escalated into the largest battle in the game's 10-year history, destroying an estimated $200,000 worth of equipment that took months of gameplay to build, according to Fox News.
Kids, this is why you should always pay your bills promptly.
While details of the battle -- and the larger war that it's a part of -- are so complex they look like gibberish to non-EVE players, it's easy to see that this battle, however devastating it must have been for those involved, was absolutely gorgeous to look at.
Images of the epic clash were posted on Imgur. Check a few of them out, below.
This might put some of these other pictures in perspective. See those red and orange dots? Those are individual players.
And for those of you who want to see those photos in action, here's gameplay footage from the battle.