Before NC Final
On February 15th Ukraine was defeated by Germany and was out of the Nations Cup 2014. On February 24th RUS_Str0nk was added to Russian roster. Days later an individual approached me and told me that RUS_Str0nk might be UA_R1ch. So I did some digging and returned with no evidence to proof such theory. Weeks later, I was approached by a different individual who gave me first real evidence regarding this case. From there I began to investigate even deeper into the situation.
The first thing I wanted to establish were IDs. I have searched ID of RUS_Str0nk on many different servers which include IG_Battlegrounds, Wolfpack_Den, Warband Weekend Cup, RU Sweet, ENL and even in Fianna. No match whatsoever, it was clear that R1ch and Str0nk have two different IDs. In fact, there was no record of RUS_Str0nk on any servers whatsoever, meaning he is a complitely new player; where does the skill come from? The last time R1ch played on IG_Battlegrounds was on 23rd of February, on Ludus 17th of February. The first time RUS_Str0nk joined IG_Battlegrounds was on 24th of February (day before being added to Russian roster), on Ludus 25th of February (same day as being added to Russian roster).
However, this is nowhere near up to draw any conclusions. The following screenshot shows that R1ch is in Russian Nations Cup Teamspeak during a training match.
We have three players with Ukrainian flags in that channel. Vernon is ruled out because he is a member of the Russian team in Nations Cup 2014 and was not a member in any previous NCs for Ukraine nor Russia and as far as I'm concerned he is a Russian living in Ukraine (he also played for Russia in 5aside). This lives out Bendetto and R1ch. Bendetto is completely muted, so he cannot really be useful in a match which also rules him out. This leaves R1ch being suspicious. The following screenshot was taken one hour after the first but in the same training match. By this time R1ch could have unmutted himself so could Bendetto too.
Let's start from the bottom and compare players in-game and players on teamspeak. This leaves us with R1ch, Bendetto and Shato (from teamspeak) and Str0nk and WiZ_Khalifa (in-game). When I searched the ID of WiZ_Khalifa on Battlegrounds archive it matched with ID of Dirty Monk. The following screenshot displays R1ch's and Bendetto's pings during an UA training match.
Notice that UA_R1ch has ping of 37, and Bendetto (44) compared to WiZ_Khalifa 56. So it's quite safe to suggest that WiZ_Khalifa is definitely not R1ch nor Bendetto. Besides, Bendetto joined the server at somepoint during the match with his Inquisition tag. However, if we compare Str0nk's ping (3 and UA_R1ch (37) it's quite obvious that they are very similar which again supports out claim that R1ch is RUS_Str0nk.
When searching R1ch I was able to figure out that R1ch has been using four different Warband keys. His motives are uknown to me, however it further adds up to our research and claim regarding R1ch.
During NC Final
Just after the Russia vs Scandinavia match begun I went into Russia NC Team's teamspeak myself to see what is happening.
When I clicked on Str0nk's name, it displayed a Russian flag but then there is somebody knew called "Russia" who has an Ukrainian flag. Then I thought, well okay maybe I was wrong about the whole R1ch situation, maybe he isn't involved. So, I went ingame and took a screen of the same round.
Now let's take a look at players once again. We have left with Russia & Str0nk from teamspeak and Str0nk and Olonzo from the server. Now if you take a look at the previous screenshot you can see that Olonzo is a server admin on Inquisition teamspeak. Now, are you trying to tell my Olonzo is in-game but not on teamspeak with his team during the most important game? I call bull**** (excuse my use of the word) and no wonder because it's quite obvious that on teamspeak he is "Str0nk". Which leaves us with Russia and Str0nk. Let's return to the first screenshot of Inquisition teamspeak again. Notice how R1ch has Channel Admin, Ukrainian servergroup, Ukrainian flag and Inquisition icon. Let's look at second teamspeak screenshot and analyse "Russia". He has Channel Admin, Team Russia servergroup, Ukrainian flag and also Inquisition icon. Now you tell me which player has both Channel Admin and Inquisition icon with Ukranian flag in both teamspeak screenshots? Of course, the one and only Mr. R1ch!
After NC Final
The match begun at 18:00 GMT. My watch (bottom right side corner) shows 18:45 GMT (45mins after the match started), now look at how many minutes ago R1ch went offline; 46! I will let you draw your own conclusions.
I received anonymous message on TaleWorlds just now with the following screenshot.
It looks very valid to me however there is no date and time. But everything else matches. To be honest, arguing at this point by saying "R1ch wasn't playing" seems very silly to me.
Conclusion (tl;dr)
** - Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and changed what happened. On behalf of all admins, referees and players I would like to apologise to Poland and Turkey who experienced defeats from Russia. I am truly sorry that we couldn't gather evidence early, and I hope we can be forgiven.
Official Statements
Thank you
- To my wonderful and amazing admins: Mr.X, Relax, Watly & Rey. Without your help and input this tournament wouldn't have been successful in any shape or form.
- To tournament referees: Arkantos, Arthasan, Cybran, Duken, LeRoux, Marda, Scar & Swordyke. Because of you we haven't had a single problem (as far as I know) regarding scheduling, teams not showing up and delays - you guys truly deserve a round of applause.
- To server donors: ReneKB, Viglaf, Wolfpack, Clew Brocolis, Alene, Zero & Unicorn. Without you we wouldn't even be able to host this tournament, thank you so much for donating your servers.
- To streamers: MB_TV, Warband Battlestream, Heroes Clan & IG.
- To DatFrog for amazing bannerpack!
- To special individuals who cannot be named but helped me with the Russian case. I really cannot thank you enough tbh.
- To all the captains and players (especially UK ) who have been involved in this tournament. You have been entertaining, all320 319 of you!
- To my friends & everybody else who was involved in giving me advice, support me and just being awesome.
On February 15th Ukraine was defeated by Germany and was out of the Nations Cup 2014. On February 24th RUS_Str0nk was added to Russian roster. Days later an individual approached me and told me that RUS_Str0nk might be UA_R1ch. So I did some digging and returned with no evidence to proof such theory. Weeks later, I was approached by a different individual who gave me first real evidence regarding this case. From there I began to investigate even deeper into the situation.
The first thing I wanted to establish were IDs. I have searched ID of RUS_Str0nk on many different servers which include IG_Battlegrounds, Wolfpack_Den, Warband Weekend Cup, RU Sweet, ENL and even in Fianna. No match whatsoever, it was clear that R1ch and Str0nk have two different IDs. In fact, there was no record of RUS_Str0nk on any servers whatsoever, meaning he is a complitely new player; where does the skill come from? The last time R1ch played on IG_Battlegrounds was on 23rd of February, on Ludus 17th of February. The first time RUS_Str0nk joined IG_Battlegrounds was on 24th of February (day before being added to Russian roster), on Ludus 25th of February (same day as being added to Russian roster).
However, this is nowhere near up to draw any conclusions. The following screenshot shows that R1ch is in Russian Nations Cup Teamspeak during a training match.
When searching R1ch I was able to figure out that R1ch has been using four different Warband keys. His motives are uknown to me, however it further adds up to our research and claim regarding R1ch.
During NC Final
Just after the Russia vs Scandinavia match begun I went into Russia NC Team's teamspeak myself to see what is happening.
After NC Final
Maybe it's true. Maybe he wasn't at home, but wait what's this?R1ch said:This is ridiculous. Me at this time was not at home . Thats not the first time when poeple write me that im stronk, but thats a real suprise for me frankly.
I received anonymous message on TaleWorlds just now with the following screenshot.
Conclusion (tl;dr)
- UA_R1ch = RUS_St0nk
- Russia violated the rules: "Teams must be made up of players from one nation, where possible. In extenuating circumstances, where a nation is having trouble finding enough players, on it's own, the captain should approach an event admin about merging with another nation."*
- Russia is disqualified, meaning Scandinavia becomes the winner of Nations Cup 2014. UK followed 2nd and Turkey 3rd.**
** - Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and changed what happened. On behalf of all admins, referees and players I would like to apologise to Poland and Turkey who experienced defeats from Russia. I am truly sorry that we couldn't gather evidence early, and I hope we can be forgiven.
Official Statements
Folms said:Having read both forums (Russian and TaleWorlds) I must say that it's disgusting to see so much hate going from one side to another. Once again I repeat what I have stated in my opening post, "I would like to encourage members of the community to stop discriminating against the Russian community as itself. It's an act of few individuals that shouldn't be reflected on the general attitude towards that community. Russian community is very nice and we should all be friends". I don't like when people say something along the lines of, "Russians are cheaters and Russians will cheat again", by saying "Russians" you're implying the whole community is responsible. No, they aren't. The difference I noticed on Russian forums is that they blame me for everything that has happened (not that I care anyway) but the point is that they do not discriminate against Europeans as much as discriminate against them. Some members of course made remarks that generally Europeans will do anything to stop Russia from winning.
Let me give you a good reason why we shouldn't discriminate against the whole community, (apart from the obvious aspects) if anybody remembers an old IG member Gultar. If you remember him, you might remember that he has lead a Russian Nations Cup team in 2012. I have personally spoken to him quite a lot in recent hours and he told me that he absolutely hates cheaters as much as everybody does. When he was a captain he had a member(s) who wanted to use a program that created some sort of hack. He told that individual to get lost and continued with the tournament AND followed the rules. Gultar demonstrated something that most Europeans don't see, not all Russians are sneaky and cheaters. I am sure there are many Russian community members that are respected and tend to actually follow rules. It feels incredibly disappointing having to outline somebody who follows rules, I don't want to be doing that on daily basis at all. It's not something we should recognise as an achievement, but what we should recognise is our own ability to judge the book by its cover.
When you read Russian forums you notice the impact created on the fans by the whole situation. Not only the admin decision, but they just cannot believe that their own Nations Cup team has cheated their way through the knockout stages of this tournament. As we, they are also waiting for any statement from their captain and those involved in the team. They heard nothing so far. I think we should just all work together to solve this problem. It's always easy to sit on you chair, read a couple of lines of text and then make some sort of judgement.
Vanok said:My apologies. I specifically publish this message at Russian.
Ребята. Давайте не будем усугублять ситуацию. Я и сам сначала погорячился с новостью. Но если взвесить все, то получается, что Folms прав. Мы ведь знаем, что доказательств вы не соберете. Зачем же тогда еще больше портить отношения со всем сообществ? На мой взгляд, самым правильным на данный момент решением было бы начать восстанавливать честь российского сообщества, а не качать права. Да, обидно, да, очень хочется удержать победу, но нечестная победа - это довольно странная вещь. Она вроде бы и есть, а вроде бы и нет: какой смысл гордиться тем, что кого-то обманул? Я не отрицаю того факта, что вы все играли замечательно, что сборная выступила отлично, но все это надо было сделать честно - без обмана и тогда ваши заслуги были бы только еще более серьезными. Увы, но теперь уже ничего не изменить.
P.S. Я ни в коем случае не хочу обвинять вас до момента оглашения официальной позиции сборной. Я думаю, что меньше всего сейчас сообщество ждет этого, но это не мешает мне понимать очевидную вещь: оправдание должно быть действительно серьезным - не менее серьезным обвинения. В противном случае вы только усугубите обстановку.
Folms said:I will kindly translate (message was aimed at Russian members I believe):
Vanok said:My apologies. I specifically publish this message at Russian.
Guys. Let's not aggravate the situation. I myself rashly reacted to the news. But if we weight everything, then it's clear that Folms is right. We know that you won't find any evidence. Why would you continue ruining the relationship with the whole community? In my opinion, the best possible solution at the moment is to begin restoring honour and respect of the Russian community without trying to determine who's right. Yes, hurts, yes, we want to keep our win, however this win isn't fair - this is a very weird thing. We kind of have it, but actually we don't: what is the point being proud of it, that we lied to someone? I don't deny this fact, that you won wonderfully, that the nation performed outstanding, but should have been done fairly - without lies and then your merits would have been ever more serious. Unfortunately, but now we cannot change anything.
P.S. I don't want, under any circumstances, blame you until the official position of our nation has been announced. I think, that right now this is the least what the community is waiting for, but this doesn't stop from me from understanding something obvious: the justification needs to be very serious - more serious than the accusations. The worst case scenario you will just make things much worse.
Heroes_Grifon said:Greetings to everyone and our apologies that it took so long for us to answer.
At first we wanted to bring arguments and proofs against the decision, but then, after having a long discussion amongst each other, we decided that it won’t prove anything to the admins and community, and won’t bring our victory back, especially considering the previous argument we had about the points from the tiebreaker.
So we’ve decided not to argue with the admin’s decision. Although we must say that the brought evidence is in no way competent and the conclusion is completely fallacious, and we have proofs of that, that can be given to admins if they are interested.
We are still proud of our victory and want to say thank you to all the teams we’ve played with for the intense and interesting matches.
Folms said:I have spoken to representatives of Russian team and obtained conclusive evidence, but do not wish to expose an individual involved and further humiliate Russia. Having said that, Russia is more than welcome to submit any appeal if they think it's the right thing to do.
Additionally, I would like to personally (and hopefully my admins can back me up) apologise for any distress caused by the impact of our decision to ban RUS_Str0nk from the remainder of that final. It's worth pointing out that it was confusing for streamers and people watching, not to mention players. Primarily focus should have been on the final itself rather than the drama behind the scenes. It should have been for the fans and about the players, because they have earned (with few exceptions) their place in that final.
EDIT: I would like to thank everybody for their amazing comments, however I would note that me alone don't deserve such credit for investigation. Without any evidence, I would have dismissed any claims and quite frankly I just did what I thought was right by digging into the truth. In addition, I would like to give a shoutout to Captain Lust who has been amazing at his role as a Community Manager during this scandal. I am very happy we have people like him in this community.
Vanok said:Hi, guys! I think it is time to clarify the situation on behalf of the Russian-speaking community. To my great regret, the events of recent days had questioned the reputation of Russian-speaking players. Given this, before it's too late, I would like to publish the official position of the community. But first I would like to explain who I am. I am the founder of the largest and oldest Russian-language Mount & Blade fan-site — rusmnb.ru.
With authority in the community and guided by the most known players of our community, I want to apologize to all the participants of the Cup and it's administration. We find the actions that our team had committed are unseemly and insulting to the honor of our community! We find these actions unworthy and in no way do they represent the spirit of the whole community. Violation of fair play principles is unacceptable regardless of the result achieved. Unfortunately, I have no formal authority to admit cheating, but I find the evidence, which presented by Folms, sufficiently substantiated. We were proud to see a good performance from our team, but that is all worthless if victory is illegally achieved.
As far as I know, our team is also preparing for the official statement. I sincerely hope that the position of the team will be described as accurately as possible. In addition, I want to ask team captain (Grifon) to do everything possible to restore honor of our team and community. Most likely, we made a big mistake and the first thing we need to do is to recognize it.
I also want to express my special thanks to Folms for his willingness to cooperate.
R1ch said:Хочу сказать спасибо всем командам которые участвовали в этом турнире, было действительно весело. Хочу извенится перед русской командой, которую я подвел в данном случае, такого итога я ей точно не желал, извените меня засранца, как говорится на ошибках учатся и такого в дальнейшем не повторится. Фолмс лично тебе хочу сказать на будущее чтобы ты знал, если ты админ или ты судья то у тебя должна быть четкая позиция, если ты принял решение то его по 20 раз изменять не стоит а то это выглядит смешно. Изначально твои ошибки были в групповом этапе, когда россия должна была выйти с группы на первом месте и после твоего не уверенного решения она выходит на второе место и попадает на очень опасных соперников, таких как польша и турция и все равно проходит в финал и в финале она при тех обстоятельствах которые были в том матче со скандинавией опять доказывает что они лучшие и победа их в этом нц безусловная. Еще раз всем спасибо и простите. RUS_Str0nk
Gulatr said:I will translate R1ch's post as accurately as possible:
"I want to thank all the teams that took part in this tournament, it was really fun. I want to apologize to the Rus team, which I let down, I never wished for this outcome. Forgive me for being wrong. As they say we learn from our own mistakes, and this will not happen again in the future.
Folms, I want to tell you for the future, if you are an admin or a referee you must have a 100% clear position regarding your decisions, if you make a decision you should not change it 20 times after, it looks silly. At first you made errors in the group stage, when Rus was supposed to finish first , but after your insecure decision it got second place and had to play against very strong teams like - Poland and Turkey. But despite that managed to get into the final, where despite the conditions when playing against SCA managed to prove itself to be the best and that their victory in this NC is undisputed.
Again thanks to everyone and forgive me. RUS_Str0nk."
Thank you
- To my wonderful and amazing admins: Mr.X, Relax, Watly & Rey. Without your help and input this tournament wouldn't have been successful in any shape or form.
- To tournament referees: Arkantos, Arthasan, Cybran, Duken, LeRoux, Marda, Scar & Swordyke. Because of you we haven't had a single problem (as far as I know) regarding scheduling, teams not showing up and delays - you guys truly deserve a round of applause.
- To server donors: ReneKB, Viglaf, Wolfpack, Clew Brocolis, Alene, Zero & Unicorn. Without you we wouldn't even be able to host this tournament, thank you so much for donating your servers.
- To streamers: MB_TV, Warband Battlestream, Heroes Clan & IG.
- To DatFrog for amazing bannerpack!
- To special individuals who cannot be named but helped me with the Russian case. I really cannot thank you enough tbh.
- To all the captains and players (especially UK ) who have been involved in this tournament. You have been entertaining, all
- To my friends & everybody else who was involved in giving me advice, support me and just being awesome.