ESIC Issues Sanctions Against Almost 40 CS:GO Coaches Over Spectator Bug Exploitation

The Esports Integrity Commission issued a statement Monday announcing sanctions against 37 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive individuals, mainly coaches, regarding abuse of a spectator bug in the game.

"On 4 September ESIC announced an investigation into the historical abuse of a bug in CS:GO's spectator mode (Spectator Bug). ESIC contracted the services of Michal Slowinski (the discoverer of wrongful use of this exploit) to work with ESIC in the fulfilment of the inquiry. This statement sets out the findings of the first part of our investigation. ESIC has also decided to include additional information annexed to this statement in order to ensure the greatest possible transparency and understanding of our process and outcomes," ESIC said in its opening statement.

According to ESIC's statement, the commission reviewed 99,650 demos, which adds up to approximately 15.2TB of data.

ESIC issued to annexures regarding the individuals who received sanctions and the decision making process behind the length of the sanctions. Sanctioning structure was based on the frequency (times used) and duration (number of rounds) of bug abuse. Here's a full list of names issued sanctions:

• Slaava "Twista" Rasanen
• Peter "casle" Sorensen
• Rodrigo "dinamo" Haro
• Arno "ArnoZ1K4" Junior
• Allan Rejin" Petersen
• Eliomar "glo" Hernandez
• Arthur "prd" Resende
• Alexey "NooK" Kozlovskiy
• Henrique "rikz" Waku
• Alessandro "Apoka" Marcucci
• Aleksandr "zoneR" Bogatiryev
• German "hellpa" Morath
• Egor "fuRy^"Morin
• Aset "Solaar" Sembiyev
• Nicolai "HUINDEN" Petersen
• Ricardo "dead" Sinigaglia
• Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira
• Faruk "pita" Pita
• Erik "AKIMOV" Akimov
• Ivan "F_1N" Kochugov
• Bruno "elllllll" Ono
• Pedro "peu" Lopes
• Robert "RobbaN" Dahlstrom
• Mariusz "Loord" Cybulski
• Anton "ToH1o" Georgiev
• Andrey "Andi" Prokhorov
• Milan "pepik" Gellebra
• Morgan "B1GGY" MAdour
• Christian "chrille" Lindberg
• Sergey "starix" Ischuk
• Alexander "ave" Holdt
• Jasmeet "RoSeY" Gill
• Sergey "Imbt" Bezhanov
• Henrik "FeTiSh" Christensen
• Mikolaj "miNirox" Michalkow
• Nikolay "pNshr" Paunin
• Casper "ruggah" Due

Sanctions were issued on a four tiered system with an associated ban period based on the amount of infractions. Tier 1 (Aggravated) offenders were issued 36 month bans, Tier 1 18 months, Tier 2 10 months and Tier 3 five months. Additionally, there was a concession matrix reducing the ban period based on confessions.

Those who confessed prior to the announcement of the investigation received a 40% reduction, accepted and partial confessions received 25 and 12.50% respectively. Additionally, those who assisted in the investigation received an additional 20% reduction. Those who didn't rejected a confession did not receive a reduction.

"It is noted that ESIC considered all emails sent to commissioner@esic.gg in its assessments of
confessions for the purpose of attributing concessions. This communication method for
confessions was notified in our statement of 4 September and a reminder was issued the day
before the notified confessions period closed on 13 September at 23:00 CET," ESIC said.

"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 organizers, 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."