As part of its attempts to crack down on cheating in Counter-Strike, and in particular one exploit that teams have been taking advantage of all year, the Esports Integrity Commission has just handed out bans for 37 coaches, some for just a few months, others for up to three years.
That exploit is a bug in spectator mode, which would let team coaches fly around a map and watch a game that was currently in progress, letting their players know the locations and movements of their opponents. Some coaches were already banned earlier in the year for this, as we’ve reported, but this latest crackdown was much more comprehensive, and involved going through almost 100,000 demos, which came in at 15 terabytes of data.
The ESIC has only managed to get through 20% of that, but has already seen enough to ban those caught, with the most severe punishment—a three year ban—reserved for Aleksandr “zoneR” Bogatiryev, who was discovered to have used the cheat 16 times between March and May this year.
Those caught earlier in the year have also now had their bans extended.
The ESIC says of the bans:
We understand that these revelations have been tough for many people within the CS:GO community, but we believe it is in the long term best interests of the game and all of esports for integrity breaches to be dealt with head on. We know that most coaches, players, tournament organisers, publishers and developers, fans, sponsors and broadcasters want CS:GO and esports to be clean and a fair competition between players and teams doing their very best to win. We see our job as being to ensure that that happens and that corrupt and bad actors are rehabilitated or removed.