Prize money in eSports tournaments can be quite high, which means, like many other sports, there are players and teams who try to win by dishonest means. Although tournament organizers impose strict rules and controls, scandals surrounding cheating and unfair matches still occur.
The story of the “trainer bug”
One of the most sensational stories of this kind in recent years – the so-called “coaching bug”. Its existence was first publicly announced in August 2020, and an investigation was soon launched by ESIC (the organization that monitors fair play in eSports). In total, by mid-2022, about 100 coaches had been punished with bans of varying lengths.
The bug could manifest itself in several ways, each of which allowed the team coach to see those parts of the map that should not have been accessible to him, and thus receive information about the actions of the enemy. According to a statement from Valve, the bug was fixed at the end of August 2020. In addition, at some championships, coaches were prohibited from being in the same room as the players during online matches, as well as from logging into the match server.
Match-fixing scandal
Another sensational story happened back in 2014. Two American teams were involved in it – iBUYPOWER and NetCodeGuides. Although the first of them was considered the favorite, in the end she lost with a crushing score. The spectators' attention was also attracted by the strange behavior of the players: they tried to reach the enemy with a knife when there was obviously little chance of this, and made other tactical mistakes.
At first, this was attributed to the fact that the team was unfamiliar with the map and did not have time to rest after a recent performance at ESLOneCologne 2014. However, the next day the publication of DotEsports received screenshots indicating that the match was fixed. It was later revealed that iBP's trustee was betting against the team from multiple accounts, and thus the loss was financially beneficial for her. As a result, four players were banned for long periods, and their professional careers essentially ended.
Forbidden tricks
Sometimes it is considered unfair play to use a bug or glitch that allows one of the teams to gain an advantage. This is exactly the trick that fnatic used at DreamHackWinter 2014. Playing against TeamLDLC, she was 10 points behind at Overpass, members of fnatic used a non-standard boost: olofmeister climbed onto a hill near the respawn point A, got a good view and began to hit opponents with a sniper rifle. Repeating this trick round after round, fnaticcame back the gap and won with a score of 16 – 13.
The problem is that the player olofmeister jumped on was standing on an invisible pixel. Because of this, the technique was considered unfair, and there was an agreement between the teams not to use it. As a result, the organizers invited the Swedes to replay the match, but they refused and admitted defeat. Thus, TeamLDLC made it to the semi-finals and eventually became the champions of the tournament.
A similar story happened recently on PGLMajorAntwerp. During one of the matches, M0nesy used a bug with smoke overlay, allowing him to see the enemy, despite being blocked by a smoke grenade. The player was not punished because he explained that the tournament organizers had formally allowed the use of this technique. However, later the teams came to a joint decision not to use it.
Despite the fact that CS:GO for more than ten years, professional players and amateurs continue to study the game in search of unforeseen opportunities, so this case is certainly not the last.
