Hmmm this sounds promising.
I’m also glad CCP aren’t engaging on reddit anymore. This…if anything has demonstrated that retaining control over your community is paramount right now.
I think Brisc shouldn’t be banned and that whomever instigated this overplayed their hand.
@Garth - Dunno … i feel that the culture of eve these days is “You gotta act fast, and deal with the consequences next…the meta circus demands this…”
There’s so much betrayal going on in eve ethos that it really doesn’t send the right message about the games potential. If anything falling victim to that is what has caused the issue, as CCP are just reacting not thinking… CCP really need to step up now and take better control over the culture of the game in order to attract new players. The days of players sabotaging one another to trigger a ban or two is getting to the point where it becomes a detractor. It’s one thing for in-game betrayls and meta to play itself out, but now its demonstrating that it has an outward impact into peoples lives.
Gigx made a wrong call on a night where he probably should have stepped away from the computer. He was baited into venting and he fell into the trap, The Judge played his hand well, as a result he gets banned for a behaviour that is over the line. Marshy fumbles a EULA breach, but there was no meta politics at play, so he gets a cake walk. Mitanni makes a series of bad jokes years ago, he’s still held hostage to that behaviour to this day.
We just kick until they all go limp and then we think “No, lets keep kicking” …
So… thats the price you pay now, thats the causation of the behaviour now on display. Reddit is a bonfire of horrible behaviours and it is actively encouraged everytime CCP engage on that forum. Here?..you don’t get that behaviour… why… consequences to your behaviour.
CCP need to really look inward now and demonstrate through action “What community do we want for the future” because the previous and current one isn’t attracting a new audience thats for sure.
i got the tin foil ready old friend hehe.
sympathy can be found in the dictionary between, shisha and syphilous … call me
Does this mean there will be two CSM elected this year? I’d like to run!
Ok, lets attempt to clear some of these misconceptions up in this thread;
CCP under the EULA retain all the rights of and access to your accounts. They are within their rights to terminate their service to anyone at any time for any reason. Doing so is not a crime, if disputed it would only ever be under a moral obligation by the company not an enforceable one by law.
The NDA however is separate from the EULA. As none of us have read the NDA (and yes, As I myself am under multiple NDA for work so know how many of these are worded) we lack the information to be able to speculate further. Often these agreements are not legally binding and at best only serve as evidence in claims and counter claims and serve as a means of fair dismissal.
Nobody to my knowledge (and I know all of the players banned) want to see anyone else get banned, fired, sued or hunted down by the inquisition for any of this. They simply want to return the the game they all have spent over a decade enjoying.
On the topic of Brisc, his real identity and grounds for a law suit. While CCP did not name him, they were aware of the link between his pseudonym and his real life, ergo knew they were making a public statement that would be easily associated with Brian Schoeneman and his very public persona. Now one could argue that because the servers are hosted in the Uk and the devblog/launcher are public domain (prior to you logging into your account which then falls under the agreement made in the EULA) that it would fall under UK legislation and not Icelandic/US legislation. So Brisc COULD file for defamation of character but the outcome would only be the removal of content, not a reversal of any ban, that is still entirely up to CCP.
While I’m confident in my admittedly bias point of view, that this was a malicious attempt to meta-game the CSM/CCP into exploiting a weakness in the Imperium (a large alliance like INIT. only having 3 strategic FC) my focus message to all is that these kinds of issues should never be about which side your on ingame, we are all part of the same community and its my hope that future situations like this can be avoided. At some point the meta-game crossed a line between the digital world and the real one, we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
So in there latest release they stated that they would reimburse all those affected by these banns. Well the entire Initiative family has been effected they lost there 2 main FC’s. They have lost much content and members have even lost ships due to the FC’s not being there to form response fleets in time. Then there is also the Initiatives enemies who have also lost content.
I hope CCP will also address this once there investigation is complete.
As we are EvE players and all love graphs, I originally threw this trends graph together for Reddit… then I realised that was a silly idea so I’ll just post it here.
The above graph represents how EvE Online trended over the last 12 months, below how Brisc Rubal and Brian Schoeneman trended. Note that this shows a few things;
First that Brisc and Brian share trending moments but are also distinctively different.
Second, that the uptick in EvE’s trending lines up with the original dev-blog post.
Third, that brian’s real persona was taken along for the ride when the news story broke. Almost doubling the highest amount he has ever trended in the 12 months prior.
Finally (although not shown in the graph), the majority of hits on his real name are geo-located in and around his area of business. While trends for his ingame name are more decentralised across the states and the Uk.
Thats a quantitative analysis but doesn’t fit within the qualitative. You could further infer that given that the name was generated within the boundaries of existing news articles and so forth, that the need for a search or enquiry into his background wasn’t surfaced beyond that. Ergo, the damage made was like already in place within the confines of said “areas of damage”.
Underlying point though is if you can’t attach your real name to a game, then where does it stop becoming a form of entertainment and start becoming a real-life factor to be cautious of. Privacy is one thing but association of a players name shouldn’t be warded off as much as it would appear for this particular community.
Which demonstrates the root cause not the symptom (should he or shouldn’t he have associated his name to the player base)
Whether what CCP originally found holds, or someone else in the CSM made a mistake, or did something with deliberate intent, hopefully in this second look, CCP can get to the facts and we can all move on.
However, I think we should also have a new forum badge out of this. They’d be handing them out in spades at the moment:
Perhaps we should be wondering why you would ban a man before properly investigating a EULA violation claim?
I honestly was not pleased with the way this whole situation was handled by CCP. I am not a huge fan of really anyone on the CSM because it is nothing but a bunch of Nullsec players who only care about lining their digital wallets with isk. They do occasionally have good ideas that trickle down to the rest of us in New Eden.
I feel that the persons involved are unfortunately victims of a smear campaign, and CCP reacted as CCP reacts… quickly and without the full picture.
“As should be expected, we will issue a full and frank apology for any mistakes for which we are responsible, as well as provide appropriate reparations to those affected by any erroneous actions we’ve taken.”
Ominous? Perhaps
I don’t know the entire story but this whole thing has stunk from the beginning and CCP you have handled this wretchedly as far as PR and optics go.
Well, well, well. This is highly irregular. A pre-gaming mea culpa. Wonder how big the actual reveal will be.
Surely CCP would have said nothing if the bans were to hold. Hope the newbie CCP staff who made this mess learn from it.
There will always be those who put their interest above others. There are others who will destroy something just because they feel slighted. Maybe they got their fingers in the cookie jar - maybe it is just perceived. A wise choice would be to avoid the perception of wrong doing. Maybe they should just bow out of authority, and you can bow out of the heavy hand. The take away? You pay attention to the community. If there are issues, raise them. I appreciate your efforts to be transparent. For those who know the truth. Do the right thing. Don’t ruin the game for others please.
You are right. I personally will never trust anything that comes from the CSM. I barely have over the years and this sealed it for me, even if the accusations made are wrong. I have always been sceptical of the CSM and believed that players should never, ever, have access to direct game secrets, information, etc… regardless of good intentions and integrity of most members.
I love how CCP has always interacted with EVE players personally, in game, out of game. I am sure there is a better way for CCP to gather information from New Eden than allowing small groups of players access to game secrets.
It takes courage to admit you made a mistake and the fact that with due process (including hearing the accused parties after the initial “proof” was provided to CCP) all of this mess could have been avoided. I congratulate you about that CCP! Now free PANDO and rest of INIT-3 pls!
A clickbait announcement declaring they’re going to apologize in case it’s possible there is need to apologize. NEXT WEEK ON DRAGONBALL Z! It’s literally like declaring that you have information you’re going to release next week. If this was a youtube channel, it’d be called clickbait. 
That’s literally…
“My views have been confirmed even though evidence might prove otherwise, but that doesn’t bother me because I rather stick to my views no matter how wrong they are.”
You live like this?
Thank you CCP!
I could not have asked for a better response from you guys… This interim statement helps me regain my trust in CCP that was definitely lost last week when the initial poorly executed statement about the INIT 3 was released. I hope my gut feeling that this was all a big mistake will turn out to be correct and the INIT 3 bans will be lifted.
If it is found that others conspired to frame the INIT 3, well, I hope those involved are banned for life and good luck to them… Go play fortnite loosers… 
