One of the biggest issues online competitive CS:GO faced this year was ‘Stream Sniping’. ESIC (Esports Integrity Commission) Commissioner Ian Smith in September had stated that they had evidence of both players and coaches stream-sniping their own matches during online tournaments, finally taking a zero-tolerance policy on the situation in early December while forgiving all such past instances.
Commenting on this incident Mousesports in-game leader (IGL) Finn "karrigan" Andersen in a recent interview with esports.com stated that “I don’t think stream sniping is a big issue”.
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Karrigan Comments On The Stream Sniping Incident
One of the best IGL’s in the world karrigan in a recent interview gave his opinion on the stream sniping incident which had recently been addressed by the ESIC. He went on to say that according to him this was not a big problem because teams cannot actually gain any “real-time information” due to the four-minute delay that almost all professional broadcast follows.
He added that stream sniping has always been a part of online competitive CS:GO and that it was impossible to keep an eye on every single team at all times. But despite teams partaking in such prohibited activities, Karrigan believes that “The information revealed from a delayed stream seems of little relevance”.
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ESIC earlier this month took a zero-tolerance policy stance against this situation and issued some basic guidelines for all tournaments organizers, requesting them to adhere to it and not take any cases of stream sniping lightly.
Some of those guidelines are as follows,
- The delay between real-time match action and the streaming broadcast should be increased to 3 minutes.
- During a technical pause, all information related to the round should be hidden along with caster and analyst commentary.
- Tier-1 CS:GO TO’s should take every effort to include a live feed of the entire room from where the teams are competing.
- Official ‘data agreements’ should be made between TO’s and betting operators so as not to lead to direct broadcast exploitation.
Along with this they also took the decision to forgive all the past instances related to this form of cheating, which created quite the buzz within the CS:GO community. But it was a compromise that had to be made and was the most understandable course of action considering the serious lack of manpower they currently face.
RELATED: ESIC Issues Rules Against CS:GO Stream Sniping, Forgives Past Cases
