Several well-known players were immediately banned for using a bug that allowed them to gain an unfair advantage. Among them were Ricardo “dead” Sinigaglia from MIBR, Alexander “zoneR” Bogatyrev from Hard Legion and Nikolai “Hunden” Petersen from Heroic, who recently won ESL One Cologne.
For Alexey Bogatyrev, the punishment was the most serious: since he used this bug on six maps during three matches at ESL tournaments, he will be banned from participating in competitions for two years. HUNDEN, who exploited a loophole in ten rounds on one of the maps in the DreamHack Masters Spring tournament, and his ban will last twelve months. Dead only used the ban once – on ESL One: Road to Rio. He will be able to return to playing in six months. In addition, all three teams will be disqualified from the tournaments where the violations occurred. They will have to part with rating points and prize payments.
Heroic was the first to respond to reports of punishment imposed on its coach: the Danish team said that an internal investigation had been carried out to understand what was happening. HUNDEN has already admitted his guilt and said that he hopes to someday return to the professional stage. The bug in question allowed trainers to look at a random point on the map. Thanks to this, they could reveal the enemy's movements.
