Frokat
In the third round of FunSpark ULTI’s Lower Bracket, Entropiq faced off against team ECSTATIC. As FunSpark is the first prominent online event of the year, the stakes were high: the loser gets eliminated immediately while the winter advances directly to the Lower Bracket final.
The matchup turned out to be quite volatile: while Entropiq confidently took the first map, Overpass, with a score of 16:11, the second map was a total and utter wreckage for the Czech team. After Entropiq dropped Vertigo 6:16, it seemed like the Danes of ECSTATIC broke their opponents’ morale altogether.
The beginning of the third map seemed to only confirm the mental difference: Entropiq were utterly outclassed and outgunned, opening the match with a score of 3:14. But then, something unthinkable happened.
>check bank account ecstatic – a concerned Reddit user
Suddenly regaining their form, Entropiq began winning round after round. While losing both pistol rounds is usually doom and gloom in a professional match of CS:GO (and, quite frankly, any match), ECSTATIC all of a sudden couldn’t close out a “free game.” A couple of ill-advised force buys by the Danes later, and Entropiq took the series in the bag 2 to 1, finishing the third map 19:17 with a fierce battle after an awful start.
But the story doesn’t end here. What we witnessed could’ve been one of the greatest comebacks in professional CS:GO history… Or something more mundane – and unfair.
HLTV should only allow ranking points for tournaments with an anti-cheat.
— flo?️?️y (@floppyCSGO) January 23, 2022
A good chunk of the player base immediately started crying foul after the incident. ECSTATIC’s rumored connection to match-fixing – and even allegedly going as far to actually use third-party software to cheat – was a hot topic within the community for months. Those watching the match on the Twitch streaming platform might have seen the chat calling out “radar hacks” and asking ecstatic to dm me their PayPal – and as we all know, Twitch chat is never wrong.
Jokes aside, the issue with unsportsmanlike teams abusing Live Bets feature on betting sites to match fix isn’t outlandish or unheard of. While mostly limited to lower-tier online events, FunSpark ULTI still remains vulnerable to ill-motivated actors despite its high-tier status due to a lack of in-house anti-cheat solutions – and adequate ways to enforce the competitive integrity of the event. As we all know, cheating online is way easier than on LAN.
Now ECSTATIC is facing a double accusation from the player base – that of cheating, and that of match-fixing. You wouldn’t want to be dealing with even one of these. It’s not the end of the world for the team as it’s nothing official (at least yet), but for any Counter-Strike fan, competitive integrity is the number one priority, in both casual and professional games. Accusations are often quick – and mostly wrong – so let’s hope that this case, too, is just an incredible coincidence. Because the alternative is way too grim for the scene.