Valve issues punishments to CSGO teams for exploiting coaching bug

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive developer and publisher Valve has issued a statement responding to the recent cheating scandal in CS:GO regarding professional coaches, handing down a significant punishment.

In the wake of the Rio 2020 Major being canceled, Valve has confirmed that all teams found to have used the coaching bug at Regional Major Ranking (RMR) events will have their Major qualifying points reset totally.

Although Valve expressed regret that the bug wasn’t fixed sooner, and accepted responsibility for this, the publisher also stated that it expects to be able to trust the players and coaches.

“Recently we’ve been made aware that several coaches of professional CS:GO teams exploited a bug in the game in order to gain an advantage over their opponents,” Valve said. “It is unfortunate and frustrating that we did not respond to this bug sooner.

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“But bugs are the reality of software—and until they are resolved, we need to be able to trust players and coaches. At a minimum, we expect that players and coaches will play by the rules, and immediately pause the match and alert tournament admins if they know of an issue that may give them (or an opponent) an unfair advantage.”

Any teams that were disqualified for exploiting the coaching bug, are to have their RMR points reset, a massive blow for teams hoping to qualify for the next Major – whenever it may be.

So far, a handful of top coaches have been found guilty of exploiting the bug, including Heroic’s Hunden, MiBR’s Dead, and MechanoGun of Hard Legion. These coaches were banned from ESL competitions for varying lengths of time for 6, 12 and 24 months respectively.

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This scandal has also threatened the careers of other coaches, as Valve concludes their statement by saying: “Mid-match coaching will always be a tempting opportunity for some teams to violate the integrity of the match. So we may also consider limitations to coaching.”

This was a fear among coaches when the scandal broke, as Valve – who have shown reluctance about the very involved roles of coaches before – could take further action to mitigate possible cheating in future.