Empires that suffer from the no-capital bug seem to be vulnerable to this.

When an empire is destroyed (such as mine in the beta) while under the no capital bug, the game does not end for the player, and as there is no capital the player cannot abdictate and keep playing under a new empire.

(note: I'm about a year late reporting this but I'll try to get better at this kind of thing)

watch tv, do nothing 28 Sep 2016:

By "destroyed", xephyr means a situation where the player has lost every single planet to capture or revolt.

Players have reported that under the no-capital bug the empire tab, including abdicate functions, seems to appear on all owned planets.

If the player owns no planets, they can't abdicate and are stuck.

watch tv, do nothing 14 Oct 2016:

A possible workaround:

Log into Anacreon using Chrome, then press shift-ctrl-J. This opens the browser's Javascript console frame.

Navigate to the Console tab

Type in abdicateDialog() and press enter

Respond here if you try this as a ghost empire and are successful.

xephyr 10 Feb 2017:

In my case (beta II) doing the above does not work, so maybe there's more than one way to become a ghost empire.

watch tv, do nothing 10 Feb 2017:

I think there has only been one report of this working successfully, which might be anecdotal; it may not actually work at all

george moromisato 2 Mar 2017:

Fixed in the latest build.

NOTE: I've fixed the situation which would cause a no-capital empire, but I haven't necessarily retrofitted all corrupt empires. If there is an empire that is still in this situation, please let me know (post a new record with the game and empire name).