Frokat
As Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) finalize their lengthy investigation, more details emerge about the true scale of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive coaching scandal. It seems that due to ESIC being slow on the draw, what we’ve witnessed previously was merely the tip of the iceberg.
As its name suggests, the Esports Integrity Commission is a non-profit organization with the sole goal of ensuring fair sportsmanship on the digital fields of esports. Founded in 2015, the organization’s scope grew over the years, going from investigating unfair play in gambling to fully-fledged monitoring of the esports scene integrity. Backed up by the big names like Intel, ESL, Blast Pro Series, Parimatch, and others, the organization makes sure no unfair player evades its gaze.
Perhaps calling ESIC “slow” is unfair as it has to investigate hundreds of instances of abuse, some of which require keen and methodical observation to be revealed. The esports source Dexerto alleges that the sources reveal the involvement of as many as 52 individuals – just to give you the real scope of abuse that plagued the scene for years.
What made the investigation even harder was the unfortunate state of CS:GO’s engine. Originally accounting just for one version of the bug that would allow the coaches to obtain and relay information to their players, it was revealed that these bugs were a lot more prolific than that. This discovery rendered the automatic tools the commission used pretty much obsolete – without some modifications, at least – once again prolonging the already lengthy investigation ESIC caught some flak for.
As @RLewisReports stated in his article, there were "other" types of coach bugs.
What you all have seen so far is what I called a "static view" coach bug, but during my investigation I discovered many other types of a coach bug.
A short thread to explain them all.
1/5
— Michal Slowinski (@michau9_) March 29, 2022
An esports referee Michal Slowinski helped explain the five different bugs that can severely impact the game’s outcome if abused in this Twitter thread. Even though they range in severity from a literal god mode free-cam to the ability to check whether the bomb is being defused or not in real-time, make no mistake: the tiniest unsportsmanlike conduct “makes the whole bunch go bad”.
In addition to the already proven concerns regarding the esports’ scene coaching scandal, some fans have raised concerns over the possibility of some players and whole teams engaging in far more devious unsportsmanlike conduct. After all, you can’t be a cheater “just a little bit”. The teams that don’t shy away from playing foul might not limit themselves to just bug abusing. Given the game’s engine vulnerabilities that can be exploited without any interference, the possibility of unfair play using undetectable third-party tools increases exponentially.
I knew a lot of cheaters and they still playing ?
— paszaBiceps (@paszaBiceps) January 28, 2020
A slightly cryptic two-year-old tweet from the lovable muscle man Pasza didn’t seem like much back then, only evoking a couple of jokes about flusha’s mouse-lifting. But it seems the way we’re heading will have more than just empty jokes.
The scale of the investigation keeps increasing as the anniversary of ESIC’s announcement of their collaboration with the United State’s Federal Bureau of Investigation is almost at hand. As it stands right now, the commission also had some 35 players under investigation, including those who switched titles to compete in Riot Games’ new project, VALORANT. Valorant’s developer and publisher, Riot, are also assisting in the investigation. An important note: they’re being monitored for the possible instances of match-fixing, not outright cheating.
Previously, we reported on how CS:GO’s closest competitor, VALORANT, addressed the potential coaching controversies. You can find the article here. Perhaps we can expect a similar move from Valve after the investigation is complete.
Thumbnail art created by Dirty Badger (Artstation).