If you’ve been sleeping on the developments of the professional Counter-Strike scene as of late, it’s been a bit of a dumpster fire at best.
Allegations of match-fixing have permeated the scene, indicating more than a few T2/3 players that made the jump into Valorant after struggling to gain recognition within Counter-Strike.
A cheating scandal circling around coaches exploiting a spectating bug to cheat within official matches, resulting in teams dropping out of Counter-Strike after they believed they simply weren’t good enough to beat teams that were secretly cheating and throwing a litany of titles and trophies into question.
It’s been rough.
The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) has been at the heart of it all, attempting to figure out who cheated, when, and how; the organization has stated that they’re sorting through 25,000 matches for the coaching exploit alone.
With their first results offered to the public early October, one individual easily cheated the most; a coach for Hard Legion called ‘MechanoGun’ who shifted his name to ‘zoneR’ in an apparent attempt to dodge notice. He willingly and repeatedly cheated against everyone from NaVi to Virtus.Pro, HellRaisers to Gambit Youngsters.
To say that his reputation quickly plummeted once the findings were officially released, even after being indicted in a prior release that similarly pointed out MIBR as cheating, is extremely accurate.
So forZe picked him up as a school coach.
Alexander "zoneR" has officially joined the coaching staff forZe School.
Alexander has a lot of experience in competitive CS: GO, which can apply in work with the students and help them them in the game
together with Alexey "dstr" Baranov pic.twitter.com/vx1V61AHuu— FORZE Esports (@forzegg) October 24, 2020
It’s almost like forZe is begging Valve to slap down coaching yet again; they have a history of doing such, and some former-professionals have stated that coaches have fulfilled the majority of their responsibility before the match even occurring.
Their role during matches is, at most, moral support (although some have been rumored to be involved in stream-sniping during matches in the pandemic, which MIBR has been seen to do).
It’s the closest thing they can get to baiting Valve to slap them down somehow, but they doubled down on their ideas since the community backlashed against the announcement.
To make things a little bit more clear.
We decided to give him a CHANCE to be useful and atone for his guilt and understand why the reaction of the community is very ambiguous.
Please, read👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/HZIw2dmxN6
— FORZE Esports (@forzegg) October 24, 2020
Somehow, forZe is viewing their choice to ignore the rulings from ESIC as though they’re doing the community a favor of keeping the cheater employed; the same individual that cheated for a darkly impressive 424 rounds that resulted in a ban from professional Counter-Strike for three years; easily the harshest punishment for the singular coach that has easily cheated the most.
The Russian team seems to readily be implying that, regardless of whether or not someone will cheat, there will always be employment ready for them elsewhere. How ambiguous.
