ESIC to Investigate 25,000 CS:GO Demos For Spectator Bug Abuse, Gives Offenders Chance to Confess

ESIC (Esports Integrity Coalition) has had a lot on its plate recently, dropping huge back-to-back announcements in order to investigate several cheating instances. Just a few hours back ESIC announced that after having reviewed a large quantity of evidence they believe that “it is in the best interest of the industry to open an inquiry into the potential exploitation of this bug as far back as 2016.”

The game-breaking bug has been the focal point of discussion within the CS:GO community ever since ESL came forward to reveal the findings of its independent investigation in which three coaches were handed bans, and now ESIC has decided to dig even deeper by checking all the demos right back to the year 2016 through an independent investigation.

RELATED:  ESIC Currently Investigating 15 Potential MDL Match-Fixing Instances in CS:GO

ESIC To Investigate Spectator Bug Exploit As Far Back As 2016

In order to maintain competitive integrity, ESIC has decided to open an investigation which will go as far back as 2016 to check the potential of spectator bug abuse across all competitive CS:GO tournaments. 

Both Michael Slowinski & Steve Dudenhoeffer who have been the lead investigators in ESL’s initial investigation and are key individuals when it comes to the spectator bug incident are being contracted by ESIC to work on this investigation project as well.

Confession Period

Before the start of the investigation, ESIC has opened a ‘Confession Period’ giving a chance to any of the offenders to come forth with an admission of their wrongdoing. This confession period has already begun and will come to a close on 13^th September.

“Upon the assessment of an admission, and subject to the discretion of the Commissioner, ESIC may choose to apply a concession to any sanction that may apply to the offending party based on the presence and quality of the admission provided.”

RELATED:  Valve Reportedly Fixes Coach Spectator Bugs in Latest CS:GO Update

Information About The Inquiry

The following inquiry has been initiated after careful consideration of the volumes of material available to ESIC for review and they believe that the spectator bug was exploited by “other parties than those already sanctioned.”

ESIC will be completing the inquiry in the following manner,

• Analysis of approximately 25,000 demos pertaining to CS:GO games played between 2016 and 2020 will take place (both through the use of AI and by visual inspection).
  
  
• The analysis will begin from the recent 2020 demos progressing back in time till the 2016 demos.
  
  
• Based on the evidence collected, ESIC will establish standardized sanctions which will apply to the offending parties.
  
  
• Manual review of key suspect demos will be done, determinations made by ESIC will be in accordance with the standardized sanctions.
  
  
• Public release of tranches of standardized sanctions will be done on a monthly basis.
  
  
• The punishment rendered to the offending parties will be applicable across all of ESIC’s members including ESL, DreamHack, BLAST, WePlay, Eden Esports, UMG, UCC, and more.

Due to the immense workload (approximately 5TB of Demo footage) involved ESIC estimates that it will take approximately 8 months to complete the investigation.

ESIC is already investigating 15 potential CS:GO match-fixing speculations in ESEA MDL, an update on which was published by them just yesterday. With ESIC adamant on getting rid of all the offenders damaging the esports ecosystem let’s see how many professionals come forward with their confessions before the start of the investigation.

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