·event MAJOR
Hulkageddon III - Summer of Gank
Image: Artist rendition of the Hulk exhumer · (c) CCP Games / Fenris Creations (used under fan-content policy)
Hulkageddon III "Summer of Gank" - July 2010, ~1,719 exhumers and ~288B ISK destroyed; Engadget / Shacknews mainstream-press coverage put highsec-ganking on the gaming-media map.
Hulkageddon III - Summer of Gank
Hulkageddon III, branded "Summer of Gank", ran from 9 July 2010 through 18 July 2010 (closing past 00:00:01 UTC on 19 July). Ten days, a record prize pool, and a noticeable shift from "EVE community curiosity" to "mainstream-gaming-press story": Engadget, Shacknews, and Massively all covered the event - the first Hulkageddon iteration with sustained outside coverage, and arguably the first highsec player event to break out of the EVE bubble.
Final tally: ~1,719 exhumers destroyed, plus over 700 mining barges and a long tail of capsules and industrials. Total ISK damage was ~288 billion ISK - only a modest absolute increase over Hulkageddon II but with substantially better participant-per-kill efficiency, indicating the gank meta was maturing (suicide Catalyst fits standardised, alpha calculations published, experienced gank teams cycling through belts on a schedule).
The "Summer of Gank" branding was the third Helicity Boson media coup in a row. The cumulative effect of three consecutive viral player events within a year - each documented on hulkageddon.wordpress.com, each covered by mainstream gaming media - is that highsec ganking enters the EVE lexicon as a first-class playstyle. Carebear forum threads from this era pivot from "is highsec safe?" to "highsec is not safe - what do I fit?". The Procurer and Skiff (then weak as exhumers) start being re-evaluated as tank-mining options. CCP begins quietly working on the mining-barge balance pass that would eventually ship years later.
CCP's official posture in this period was tolerant-to-supportive - they ran a press release on Hulkageddon III's conclusion ("Largest Hulkageddon to Date Concludes") that read more like community-spotlight coverage than griefing-incident damage control.
For returning players: if you mined in highsec in 2010-2011 and remember "the year ganking became a thing", this is the iteration. The Mackinaw's reputation as bait fit, the Procurer's reputation as tank fit, and the durable cultural framing of "AFK = your fault" all crystallised here.