ESIC bans 34 CS:GO coaches for historical cheating

The Commission has completed an initial investigation into past exploitation of a bug in Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

UK.- The Esports Integrity Commission has banned 34 Counter Strike: Global Offensive coaches from tournaments for up to three years as a result of its investigation into the game’s “spectator bug”.

It began an investigation on September 4 after three coaches were found to have used the bug to move around a game freely during matches, feeding back information to players about the opposing team’s location.

That saw it scan 96,650 demos on the esports portals HLTV and ESEA’s databases and identify 25,000 demos that it judged needed to be reviewed.

It has so far reviewed 20 per cent of those and has issued sanctions against 37 coaches, including 34 bans ranging from four months to three years.

Banned coaches will be prohibited from communicating with their teams from 15 minutes prior to official match starts and will not be allowed on the game server during official matches, on the official match channel on the Discord server or as part of the official map veto process.

Coaches have the chance to appeal by writing to the chairman of ESIC’s independent disciplinary panel.

ESIC stressed that out of the 99,650 demos it received access to, only 0.1 per cent showed any indication of spectator bug abuse.

The Commission says it had found evidence that the bug was previously reported to admins in non-ESIC member tournaments going back as far as 2017, but that it is not aware of how the reports were treated.

It now expects to complete the investigation by the end of October. 

See Focus Gaming News’ interview with ESIC Integrity Commissioner Ian Smith for more on how the Commission is working to oversee standards in esports.