The prize money in eSports tournaments can be quite high, which means that like many other sports, there is no shortage of players and teams trying to win unfairly. Although tournament organizers introduce strict rules and control measures, scandals around cheating and unfair matches still happen.
Story with «coaching bug»
One of the most notorious stories of this kind in recent years is – the so-called «coaching bug». Its existence was first publicly announced in August 2020, and soon ESIC (the organization that oversees fair play in cybersports) launched an investigation. In total, by the middle of 2022, about 100 coaches were penalized with bans of varying duration.
The bug could manifest itself in several variants, each of which allowed the coach of a team to see parts of the map that should not be available to him, and thus receive information about the actions of the opponent. According to Valve's statement, the bug was fixed at the end of August 2020. In addition, some championships have banned coaches from being in the same room as the players during online matches and from accessing the match server.
Match-fixing scandal
Another sensational story took place back in 2014. It involved two American teams – iBUYPOWER and NetCodeGuides. Although the former was considered the favorite, it ended up losing by a resounding score. The spectators' attention was also attracted by the strange behavior of e players: they tried to reach the opponent with a knife when there was obviously little chance of that, and made other tactical mistakes.
At first it was attributed to the fact that the team was unfamiliar with the map and had not had time to rest after their recent performance at ESLOneCologne 2014. However, the next day, the publication DotEsports obtained screenshots indicating that the match was a contract match. It was later revealed that the iBP trustee had been betting against the team from multiple accounts, and thus losing was financially beneficial to her. As a result, four players were banned for long periods of time, and that was essentially the end of their professional careers.
Forbidden Tricks
Sometimes foul play is defined as the use of a bug or glitch that allows one team to gain an advantage. This is exactly the kind of trick that fnatic used at DreamHackWinter 2014. Playing against TeamLDLC, which was 10 points behind on Overpass, the fnatic players used an unconventional setup: olofmeister climbed up on a hill near respawn point A, got a good view and started hitting opponents with a sniper rifle. Repeating this trick round after round, fnatic wenton a tear and won with a score of 16 – 13.
The problem was that the player that olofmeister jumped on was standing on an invisible pixel. Because of this, the reception was deemed unfair and there was an agreement between the teams not to use it. In the end, the organizers offered the Swedes to replay the match, but they refused and admitted their defeat. Thus, TeamLDLC advanced to the semifinals and eventually became the tournament champions.
A similar story happened recently at PGLMajorAntwerp. During one of the matches, M0nesy used a smoke overlay bug that allowed him to see his opponent despite the smoke grenade barrage. The player was not penalized as he explained that the tournament organizers formally allowed the use of this technique. However, the teams later came to a joint decision not to use it.
Despite the fact that CS:GO is more than a decade old, professional and amateur players continue to explore the game in search of unintended features, so this case will probably not be the last.