On November 17th, 2014 we reported that German player Simon "smn" Beck had been kicked out of Team ALTERNATE after a cheating ban from ESEA’s own anti-cheat software. Beck personally admitted to cheating, later releasing the following statement:
Just three days afterwards, Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian of Titan was also banned. In an official statement by the French player, he claimed that he had only cheated once in order to test out a client over three months ago, and has never used it since. He also claims that he used the cheats on an ALTERNATE account, and that the only reason that he is banned now on his main account was because VAC detected the logged files on his computer.
However, there are some clear gaps in his story, as pointed out by /u/DontThrowAwayTreees on Reddit. The cheats that KQLY used were private cheats coded by someone named “supex0”, not public cheats. The major difference between a private cheat and a public cheat is that private cheats cannot be found on public websites, therefore making them much harder to detect by VAC. ESEA having an arguably better anti-cheat software, worked together with Valve in order to detected supex0’s cheats, who later rolled out a silent update that gathered information on who’s cheating. According to the post, this would only take a few days to complete, meaning that KQLY was cheating only a few hours or days before the ban, and could have been cheating at online or even LAN tournaments.
Going back to smn’s statement regarding his cheating, he mentioned that it is possible to cheat on LAN because of Steam Workshop and SteamCloud’s ability to run programs from inside Steam. There have been many allegations against Fnatic players on this subject, pointing to various strange movements by these players when they play. According to this post on a Steam forum, both Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer and Robin “flusha” Rönnquist of Fnatic use something called an aim key which essentially works as a wallhack by locking the player’s crosshair onto the nearest player, giving away their position.
The following are just some samples of evidence that allegedly prove that olofmeister uses an aim key:
flusha's cheating evidence:
Please note that while the above evidence may seem to be conclusive proof that the two players are hacking, it is important to note that nothing has been confirmed yet by VAC. However, for arguments sake, if we just assumed that olofmeister and flusha are hackers, this would be a major problem as they participate in tournaments with prize pools as large as $250,000. Finding out that one of the participating players cheated would be detrimental to both the tournament organizers and legitimate players.
If indeed these players are cheating, then it is extremely important that they are removed from the scene. Cheaters not only damage the reputations of themselves, their teammates, and their organizations, but they also damage the reputation of the game itself. Sponsors do not want to put their brand out into an illegitimate game, and less sponsors would mean less money for organizations to send players to events, and less money for the events themselves. This would almost certainly lead to the demise of the game.
So what can we do about it? For starters Valve needs to create a better and more invasive anti-cheat system, one that is almost perfect. The current anti-cheat clearly needs work as it was still unable to detect the cheats of both KQLY and smn, who where only detected when ESEA helped out with the detection process. Secondly, tournament organizers should take all necessary precautions when dealing with cheats. LAN events should not have access to the internet or SteamCloud, and all equipment brought in from the players should be screened and inspected before they are allowed to use them. Lastly, tournament admins should carefully review POV demos by the players to make sure that they are not hacking. However, it is also incredibly important that the admins do not wrongfully ban a player, effectively ruining their career. Admins should be both qualified and objective to ensure that no one is falsely banned.
With the help of these three precautions, the CS:GO eSports scene can be saved from a terrible death. The issue is serious, and needs to be adressed as soon as possible.
