Brazilian streamer Gaules apologizes after CSGO “cheating” controversy

Brazilian CS:GO personality Alexandre ‘Gaules’ Borba has issued an apology for his analysis of a CS Summit match, saying “if my attitude generated a negative reaction the made someone upset, I come here to apologize.”

Gaules has been criticized for sparking furious backlash against players of Chaos EC, namely 16-year-old American player Nathan ‘leaf’ Orf, after accusations that the player was cheating based on a handful of clips.

In an opinion piece, Richard Lewis called into question Gaules’ suitability as a partnered broadcaster for the Portuguese-language streams of official tournaments. Lewis said that Gaules spent “parts of the broadcast watching clips on-air and openly saying that Orf had cheated.”

This eventually led to Leaf deactivating his Twitter account after a tirade of abuse from Brazilian fans who were now convinced the player had cheated his way to victory vs MiBR.

“15 days ago I analyzed some CS Summit plays with influential people from national CS,” Gaules said. “The intention was to make an analysis of the match, and even reinforcing several times that neither the org nor the player should be pressed, some people went to the players’ social media profiles and said things that should never be said.”

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“From the moment that physical threats and violence became part of the issue, this means that we must take a stand and show that our community can no longer tolerate this type of attitude so that we can positively have a place within the international community.”

Concluding his apology, Gaules said: “Today we have a direct channel with the most important people from global CS, so that championships, whether online or offline, can be more and more reliable, competitive, and above all, respectful.”

Richard Lewis did note however that Gaules stopped short of apologizing for “accusing the player of cheating repeatedly during a partnered broadcast.”

Gaules has become one of the most popular destinations for fans watching Counter-Strike on Twitch throughout the period of online events due to LAN events being put on hold.

His streamer reached peak viewership of 387,000, with his highest peaks always when Brazilian teams are playing. In many cases, his livestream will actually overtake the primary English-speaking broadcast for the given match. With this newfound influence though, comes increased responsibility.