Here’s a bit more Counter-Strike: Global Offensive drama, as if the scene hasn’t been steadily imploding since the beginning of the pandemic with unprecedented levels of cheating accusations and rankings sliding sideways as even the most well-versed esport analysts struggle to discern what in the world could possibly happen next.
First, there have been rumors circulating about Robin ‘flusha’ Rönnquist (also of Team Fnatic) cheating, and Sergey ‘starix’ Ischuk has gone so far as to directly accuse Valve of covering up the Swedish player cheating on LANs to protect their own image.
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Granted, it’s the CS:GO community: when you lose, it’s mere tradition to accuse the other side of cheating and hacking, and we’ve seen more than a few death threats lobbed across the internet because a team was single-handedly destroyed by another. So when Twitch chat starts filling up with cheating accusations yet again, it’s difficult to presume anything other than par for the course.
Yet the drama with ‘flusha’, while experiencing a level of oversaturation within the community, has been completely unfounded as of yet regarding readily viewable evidence and/or a statement from ESIC, so take this as context.
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The teammate of ‘flusha’, Freddy ‘Krimz’ Johansson has just received a VAC ban seemingly out of the blue; the star player has attempted to reach out to the CS:GO developers to get the ban removed, but currently, speculation runs rampant as to precisely what happened.
Considering that many were waiting for an announcement regarding a player on Fnatic getting a VAC ban, this is a bit of a strange coincidence that ‘Krimz’ has apparently been hit with this.
The ban was not an Overwatch one, which is a ban levied on behalf of veteran community members that painstakingly watch other games to seek out evidence of cheats, and is considered a silver bullet when a player gets banned.
Instead, the VAC ban seems to have, as rumors state, arisen from software frustrations that directly tie into the ‘Trusted Mode’ launch that has been a thorn in the side of everyone – except cheaters, of course.
It’s almost like we called it.
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The CS:GO Twitter account hasn’t responded publically to ‘Krimz’ seeking help, and the community is currently waiting to figure out if this is an improperly levied punishment, or if something far bigger is going to be falling down the pipes any time soon.
Worth noting that there is a precedent for the Trusted Mode launch option causing false bans; Asian CS:GO professionals were receiving VAC bans consistently due to Trusted Mode interfering with a third-party matchmaking service.