As eSports become a more and more prevalent undertaking, so too does the news pertaining to it. Unfortunately, the news that has come to light most recently isn’t as positive as some might like. Counter-Strike has one of the biggest competitive gaming communities and one team has almost completely been ejected from it.
The news comes to us from The Daily Dot, news that the French CS team Epsilon’s behind the scenes match fixing has been brought to light and Valve is coming down on them. Hard.
The accusations first began to fly when Robin “GMX” Stahmer was released from the team due to inter-team issues and his declining performance in recent matches. Stahmer wouldn’t be one to go alone and spoke out about a specific match fixing incident back in September 2014.
The cheating took place when Epsilon made bets on a match between themselves and team Over Gaming before throwing the match to pocket some extra goods. Valve took the accusations to heart and began investigations into team Epsilon.
The casualties of this investigation were Epsilon team members Joey “Fxyo” Schlosser and Kevin “Uzi” Vernel, who were both banned from Valve-sponsored events for the next year. To add salt to the wound, Epsilon quickly released the two of them from the team.
To make things worse, the whole team was suspended by Epsilon after their own investigations of evidence left the truth clear to them. However, it’s not all bad news as Stahmer made sure to mention that one of his former teammates was innocent in all of the issues, one Adil “Scream” Benrlitom. Epsilon has said that they will keep Benrlitom on the team for the future, once everything is sorted out.
My Opinion:
However much I hate watching Counter-Strike, I do love reading about big news in the eSports field. It’s a growing arena that has to suffer the pains that comes with being a fresh entertainment form. So even though it’s negative, it is good to hear about happenings like this. It’s also good to hear that Valve and team sponsors aren’t playing around. If offenses like match fixing are allowed to slip by, or only receive a slap on the wrist, it wouldn’t bode well for eSports. Cheating would breed a very negative environment for the players and viewers alike.
Myles K Farrington is one of the MONG Senior Editors and is legitimately wondering where he’s going from here. Keep up with him over on IGN and Twitter as well!
Do you want a free game?! Of course you do! You’re here, aren’t you? We’re running another giveaway that’s going up until the 9th of February! Take our money and get your game! Check out the entry information here! Exclamation points!
Middle Of Nowhere Gaming 
FPS aren’t that fun to watch especially CS GO. I think they need to have an isometric view for streams. It would make it more interesting. I’m shocked Valve does anything. I guess they’ve VAC banned people, but I don’t think they handle VAC themselves.
LikeLike
I don’t think a whole match should be in isometric perspective, but that might be cool to see every now and then, just to see how the teams are moving and strategizing (making up words!) against one another. As for the banning, it’s only from Valve-sponsored events, so presumably if it’s not something that Valve has a hand in the players can participate. However, I assume that if Valve bans them other event sponsors will abide by Valve’s decision.
LikeLike
Well isometric to see what’s going on, but since everything is full 3D in game I’m sure they can do any camera angle.
LikeLike