US agents are invest…
As reported by Bloomberg, the FBI and Secret Service are looking into the Steam activity of Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah native accused of assassinating high-profile right wing organizer Charlie Kirk at a September 10 rally.
The account is 11 years old, with nearly 5,000 hours of gameplay logged in that time. This includes 399 hours of Helldivers 2, which was referenced in an engraving on an unused bullet casing found in the investigation.
Nearly half of Robinson’s logged playtime—2,148 hours—was spent in Rare’s co-op pirate simulator, Sea of Thieves. Robinson’s activity also included Pictopix, Deep Rock Galactic, Viscera Cleanup Detail, and 126 hours of PowerWash Simulator. Bloomberg also shared a quote from Robinson’s user review of Sea of Thieves: “If you play alone, you will die alone.”
Having a Steam account doesn’t exactly distinguish Robinson from the rest of the general population—there are at least one billion Steam accounts in the world—though that is a lot of Sea of Thieves to play (it’s a good game).
None of this reported activity includes a “smoking gun” one could reasonably tie to radicalization, political or otherwise. Most of these games are cartoonish and cooperative, complicating any read of Robinson as a disaffected loner. Looking over the still-public account, there isn’t much to go on: Some TF2 screenshots from 2018, a joke he made in his own Steam comments—some of which have been hidden, according to Bloomberg—and a gobsmacking negative review of Sea of Thieves despite that 2,000 hours of playtime.
The Secret Service is primarily tasked with presidential protective details, as well as investigation and enforcement related to the US Treasury. However, Bloomberg reported that the agency has been called on to aid the FBI in its investigation into Robinson.
This news comes shortly after Gabe Newell, alongside the CEOs of Twitch, Discord, and Reddit, was invited to testify before Congress regarding issues of radicalization in online platforms. The hearing is scheduled for October 8.