Collusion, voter fraud, and smoky backroom deals are all the norm of real world politics. The accusations of such underhanded tactics are common place after real world elections, such as the recent presidential election in the U.S. and Iran. Citizens of any country who participate in the democratic process want to know the way they choose their representatives is fair, and know every vote that was cast was done by an eligible living human citizen.
In EVE Online, a common phrase repeated by players, and the game developer CCP Games, is “EVE Is Real”. Just how real can it be? In the aftermath of the Council of Stellar Management 13 election, maybe more than we would like.
An investigative journalism task force from EVE Onion News lead by OpusMagnum, with the help of freelance journalist Seraph IX Basarab was formed. We started an exhaustive investigation of the rumors that Russian bots under command of the Kremlin infiltrated CCP Games servers, to not only cast multiple votes, but to disrupt real vote calculations. Was this true?
Lead Up to Election Week
In the weeks leading up to the CSM election, several denial of service (DDoS) attacks had been plaguing EVE Online servers. Despite CCP’s best attempts to thwart or minimize the attacks they kept happening. Then they stopped. Was CCP Games finally victorious or had the Russians accomplished their mission? Were the attacks just a diversion as they hacked CCP’s election servers to disrupt the upcoming CSM election? We’ll never know for sure, but one source from within CCP who remained anonymous, said there were “rumblings of concern about the strangeness of the attacks”.
No group ever took responsibility for the attacks.
Enter Brisc Rubal
Why this election? EVE Online has had 12 CSM councils before this one and never once were Russians or bots blamed for the outcome. Sure, there have always been rumors of Pandemic Legion (PL), GoonSwarm Federation (GSF), or CCP Games bias determining the outcomes of elections, but never any outside influences and certainly not anyone unaffiliated with the game.
This led our investigative team to look at this election’s outsiders. A single, but key outlier was staring us—and all of EVE Online—in the face. Brian Schoeneman, real life lawyer and current lobbyist better known by his in-game avatar name Brisc Rubal, was running for a seat on the CSM. Brisc burst onto the scene completely out of nowhere. Instantly, he had a professional website, YouTube video announcing he was running for CSM, and a steady stream of weekly podcast and twitch show appearances. He was the talk of the whole campaign season. Every podcaster, journalist, and twitch streamer wanted to have Brisc Rubal on their show. Most attributed his well-oiled campaign run to his real world experiences. He had run for public office before, and helped run campaigns of others. He had the resume to do exactly what he knew needed to be done to win this video game council election. So, the question in the forefront of our teams minds, did he choose to run leveraging his past or was he chosen to run? That question began to trouble the investigative team.
An Honest Man in a Liars Den
The election was fast approaching and the team had little time to uncover the truth. Seraph reached out to all his contacts in The Imperium and The Initiative for information. Nothing. His usual contacts were either too scared to talk to him or had gone silent. This lead OpusMagnum to reach out to his only source with verifiable ties to the criminal underworld of EVE Online. The infamous founder of Bot Lives Matter (BOTLM), E. Z. ISK.
OpusMagnum and Seraph met with the activist and hero to the oppressed bots of New Eden at the BOTLM HQ in 8TPX-N, a system in the Vale of the Silent region in the North. There, they learned of the shocking disappearances of bots on a weekly basis. Sure, the greater EVE Online community knew of the mass bans by CCP Games and their security team chief CCP Peligro. However, he claimed an even larger number of the disappearances could be blamed on something else. He suspected Russian bot farmers who were looking to replenish their ranks by enslaving free bots out in Null to do their dirty work. Once we started probing for names and other contacts within the Russian bot farmer organization, E. Z. ISK became very nervous and asked to stop the interview.
What could this all mean? Was it even related to our current investigation? We weren’t sure.
The team hit a dead end. What more could we do? So, we did the only thing two guys with a lot of time on their hands would do. Listen to EVE Online podcasts and twitch streams. This is where we found the break within the investigation we needed. Brisc Rubal was the key! Let me paint you a picture of what the team uncovered in this investigation.
The team had done countless interviews with friends, acquaintances, business partners, and even college roommates. The one thing that kept puzzling us was how everyone—even enemies of Brisc—called him honest. This struck us as odd. How could a man praised as being honest and morale be wrapped up in a scandal such as this? The answer was right in front of our noses. Brisc, in many of his CSM interviews stated that it was at the overwhelming nudging of his corp mates, CEO, and other alliance peers that he run for CSM. Brisc was the unknowing puppet in the biggest collusion scandal EVE Online had ever seen!
The R factor
We had cracked the code! At this point we had only one place to go. We had to go outside the EVE Online universe, and into the real world of US politics. We secured a highly secretive and exclusive interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She gave us all the answers we needed. Russians! They were popping up in everyone’s investigations lately. She spoke with 100% certainty that if we kept going we would find them at the end of our investigation as well. With the trusted word of a once high ranking and powerful politician in Washington D.C. and a hunch, we veered focus from Brisc Rubal and pointed our investigation on The Imperium and The Initiative.
The Imperium and Russian alliances have always had a history. They had fought beside each other in The Great War of EVE Online which was chronicled in the book Empires of EVE authored by Andrew Groen. Everyone in EVE knew TheMittani was cozy with real Russians even going as far as to meet with them in real life.
This was the connection! Once we presented our loosely constructed theory to several known affiliates within the underground community of EVE Online, they knew it was just a matter of time before they were caught. In exchange for information, we agreed to keep their names out of this investigative report.
This is where we must be very vague. Once we were sure of our story and the players, we submitted our data to the United Nations (U.N.) and to CCP Games. We were given permission to speak in general tones, but are unable due to the ongoing investigation to say names, dates, or locations.
The story begins with the formation of the CSM. The Imperium—then called the CFC Alliance—wanted to dominate the meta sphere of EVE Online. They theorized that it would take years and years of failed attempts until they would do it, but eventually they would gain a majority hold and keep it. Year after year they were thwarted by CCP or PL. The rules would change from year to year on how the CSM would be run or their one time friends and allies Pandemic Legion would strip seats from them. It was in 2017 that things started to look up for The Imperium. The Judge had been flipped from CO2, giving them a commanding voice within the CSM. Then with the CSM 13 race beginning and the U.S. election investigation heating up with allegations of Russian collusion, TheMittani knew it was now or never to initiate (no pun intended) his plan.
He and others executed the most scandalous collusion of any election inside EVE or outside of it to date and Brisc Rubal would be the conduit. Brisc Rubal was not just any politician: He was a Republican. The very party in which the Russians had a foothold and unknowingly, Brisc was destined to fill this role from the very day he stepped foot into EVE Online. His decisions were not his own; his history in the game hand weaved by the highest levels of The Imperium and Kremlin.
The Math Doesn’t Lie
Our investigative team’s journey was over. We had found the truth. It is a truth that will have unmeasurable impact on the game we play, and maybe even the world. Math doesn’t lie, and to end this report, we will give you a formula by which you and others can use to decide for yourselves if we speak the truth or tell tall tales.
The R out to the side of Brisc Rubal’s real life name does not stand for Republican, but Recruit.
Brisc Rubal’s initials backwards are RB. R + B = Russian Bots.
R + BR = Recruited By Russians.
You do the math. It all points to the scandal of the century.
