One of the undoubted scourges of New Eden is piracy, a rapacious criminality that has been present in some form since humanity reached out to the stars. At first, bad enough, the pirates were mere mortals who preyed on other mortals. Now there are immortal pirates who devastate and loot mortals and other immortals alike. Many capsuleer pilots take to piracy, either as a means to gaining wealth or, more darkly, out of sheer enjoyment of the act of preying on those weaker than they. Most capsuleer pirates focus on the most lucrative targets: other capsuleers plying their way across the trade routes of low-security space and the outer regions.

Pirates are in particular an ever-present danger in low-security space, those half-abandoned and practically lawless systems that lie between the core empires and the outer regions  in the EVE ONLINE ISK. Nominally subject to law, low-security systems are guarded only by static sentry guns around stargates and stations, with CONCORD peacekeeper fleets concentrating on maintaining order in the more populated or important systems of the high-security zones. As these systems cannot be directly controlled by the capsuleer alliances, it is rare that even the brutal frontier justice of the outer regions is visited on low-security space with any consistency. Therefore the pirates flourish.

However, the pirates are sometimes opposed by bounty hunters and so-called "anti-pirate" corporations or coalitions in theEVE ONLINE ISK . Some capsuleers actively hunt pirates for possible profit, while others band together to try and bring order to sections of low-security space. Even so, the pirates are many and the most powerful outlaws can command capital ships capable of destroying starbases and other infrastructure. Only the most determined can hope to fight against these pirate lords but some rise to the challenge.