After an investigation, CCP has found that Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire colluded during AT XIII. TMC provided ongoing coverage of ATXIII and the post-tournament scandal, including a summary of the finals, a TMC interview with Warlords leadership after their win in the finals, the initial Warlords whistleblower posting, and at the onset of the official CCP investigation into the collusion claims. Originally, Warlords were the crowned winners of ATXIII, defeating Camel in the final round. CCP has now disqualified the final round results and new ATXIII winners have been appointed.

CCP Logibro, announcing the investigation’s results, said:

“After assessing all evidence available to us, we have determined that Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire colluded to fix the result of Series 117b (the second match of the BO3 Quarter Finals between the two teams). As such, all Prize ships, medals (both inventory items and character sheet) as well as the Alliance Tournament Cup will be confiscated from both teams. PLEX rewards will remain as they achieved a position in the top 16 before the match they colluded in.”

When TMC previously asked Warlords AT fleet commander Blue Melon about that Quarterfinal match, he said:

“Well, Camel are a group of highly skilled and ridiculously motivated pilots, so we knew they would be the hardest to fight but we thought we had a fair chance to beat them given we know a lot about the team having practiced against them for so long, but on the day they out drafted, and out played us pretty hard. We dealt with it ok because we had to go straight into an elimination game afterwards and didn’t have time to look back. Ultimately with the tournament the chips falls as they do and you just have to look forwards.”

KADESH PRIESTESS, BANNED FROM ALL FUTURE ALLIANCE TOURNAMENTS

In addition to re-distrubting prizes earned by Warlords and Camel, CCP has also banned Warlords captain Kadesh Priestess from all future ATs, and issued a one year AT ban to Camel team captain Bob Shaftoes. Kadesh Priestess notably posted a volatile tirade in response to whistleblower DHB Wildcat’s original post, which provided Skype log evidence of the collusion between Warlords and Camel. It is surprising that only the captains of the respective AT teams were banned; knowingly or not, all other members of the affected teams dodged a bullet. While CCP has finalized its decision on the matter, the process of the investigation remains opaque as no conclusive evidence of collusion has surfaced for the public.

Since Warlords and Camel were stripped of their AT XIII titles, the new winners were determined as follows: First Place, Pandemic Legion; Second Place, Exodus.; and tied for third place (since there would be no clean way to determine third from fourth place) The Tuskers Co., and Nulli Secunda.

Prizes have been re-distrubuted accordingly, with Tuskers and members of the Nulli team awarded an even split of the prizes. Nulli Secunda has largely disbanded since the AT, as was previously announced.

CHANGING THE RULES

Moving forward, CCP has declared that it intends to further clarify the rules regarding collusion in future ATs. CCP Logibro went on to say: “…we are looking to make the rules more stringent in the future with regards to working with other teams. Details of these will be announced in the future, but in many cases, if we think it seems suspicious, we’ll be inclined to remove your team from the tournament.”

CCP says its decision to to disqualify Warlords and Camel from AT XIII came from evidence of match fixing surrounding the Camel versus Warlords quarterfinal. Perhaps the active sparring between Warlords and Camel in the days and months prior to AT XIII may have weighed on their decision to disqualify the teams and impose AT bans on the respective captains. It will be interesting to see what CCP will impose on the greater EVE community following this investigation.

WHAT THIS DECISION MEANS FOR THE AT

Many will argue, “Well, it’s EVE, you’re allowed to bend the rules of conduct, it’s a sandbox after all.” Hence, nothing is wrong with breaking official tournament rules to out-game your fellow opponents. The primary issue with this argument is that the AT is an official tournament, run by CCP, and not a player-run tournament colluding would be business as usual. “Cheating” in an official venue such as the CCP-run AT can shed negative light on the EVE community and CCP.  Being an official event, there are official rules. Agreeing to share prizes as a result of winning the AT with your buddy alliance? Probably fine. Fixing the outcome of a match by ensuring maximum prize value? Uh, hold on a minute.

The unique ships offered for the winning teams are very powerful, incredibly expensive, and give a large advantage to a team in using them in future AT matches. Maybe, the unique ships are the heart of the issue when it comes to AT match-fixing. Undoubtedly, players will do anything they can to earn such a highly prized possession. Change the prizes, change the behavior?

TMC has reposted CCP Logibro’s concluding remarks on the investigation of collusion between Warlords and Camel on page two.

UPDATE: Kadesh Priestess has posted a formal response on the Failheap Forums.

The below transcript is the original CCP Logibro posting that discussed the results of the Alliance Tournament ATXIII Collusion Investigation between The Camel Empire and Warlords of the Deep.

Hello Players

After assessing all evidence available to us, we have determined that Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire colluded to fix the result of Series 117b (the second match of the BO3 Quarter Finals between the two teams). As such, all Prize ships, medals (both inventory items and character sheet) as well as the Alliance Tournament Cup will be confiscated from both teams. PLEX rewards will remain as they achieved a position in the top 16 before the match they colluded in.

Additionally, the team captain for Warlords of the Deep (Kadesh Priestess) is permanently banned from participating all CCP Tournaments (including the upcoming Amarr Championship), while the captain of The Camel Empire (Bob Shaftoes) is banned for a period of one year from the conclusion of the tournament (until 2016-08-30). This includes any character they control, or any alliance they may be executor or captain for even if they do not wish to fly in the tournament.

A number of players from outside the teams purchased prize ships. The ISK from these purchases was previously placed in escrow, and will now be returned in full. Anyone that this affects will have previously received information regarding this matter when the ships were originally frozen.

The two alliances themselves and all other players on those teams will have no further actions taken against them as we do not have specific evidence that they were involved. However, the two teams will need to select new captains or executors as per above if they wish to compete again.

All remaining teams will be move up two positions in rankings and prizes (other than PLEX) will be redistributed on this basis. While we can’t know for sure that the tournament would have resulted in the same way if the two teams had not been competing, we believe this is the fairest way to handle the situation after the conclusion of the tournament.

As such, the new top 4 are as follows:

Pandemic Legion
Exodus.
The Tuskers Co. & Nulli Secunda

Note that as there is no clean way to determine which of the two teams would be placed 3rd or 4th, we have decided to instead split the prizes of the two positions evenly between each team (5 ships each). However, both teams will receive 12 inventory medals each.

Finally, we are looking to make the rules more stringent in the future with regards to working with other teams. Details of these will be announced in the future, but in many cases, if we think it seems suspicious, we’ll be inclined to remove your team from the tournament.

If any players have further questions, please feel free to ask.