Several high profile players were banned for using a bug that allowed them to gain an unfair advantage. Among them were Ricardo «dead» Sinigaglia of MIBR, Alexander «zoneR» Bogatyrev of Hard Legion and Nikolai «Hunden» Petersen of Heroic, who recently won at ESL One Cologne.
For Alexei Bogatyrev, the punishment was the most serious: because he used the bug on six maps during three matches at ESL tournaments, he will be banned from competing for two years. HUNDEN, who used a loophole in ten rounds on one of the maps in the DreamHack Masters Spring tournament, and his ban will last twelve months. Dead has only used the ban once – at ESL One: Road to Rio. He'll be able to return to play in six months. In addition, all three teams will be disqualified from tournaments where violations were committed. They will have to part with ranking points and prize money.
Heroic was the first to react to the reports about the punishment imposed on its coach: the Danish team said that an internal investigation has been conducted to get to the bottom of the matter. HUNDEN has already pleaded guilty and said he hopes to return to the professional stage someday. The bug in question allowed coaches to look at a random point on the map. Because of this, they were able to reveal the enemy's movements.
