In a super twist of events today, insomnia63 has seen a sudden drama happen earlier today in a elimination stage match between Team Unique & Cat345. We’ve seen a few stories in the past at iSeries, from those players who cheat, the great SpacePanda cheating debate, the TLR disqualification, but suddenly not disqualified, we’ve had it all.
A nice new feature was brought in for this event, because of the prize pool being £30,000, it meant that other more notable websites (*cough* HLTV *cough*) have ended up taking some interest in the event, which meant that there was some coverage on HLTV this afternoon with matches being featured on the match ticker. Team Unique (formerly known as SpaceJam) have flown out specially for the event after they managed to qualify through the online qualifiers. They are a Russian team, who represent some intriguing talent at their disposal and look interested in trying to beat out UK teams.
However, shortly after their quarter final match against Cat345, an allegation of sniping information appeared on Twitter, and from what we understand this information was gathered by using the scorebot feature on HLTV in between rounds. The issue is here, is that the scorebot has nifty features which shows money, health and numerous other details of the teams. The question here posed by the vocal minority on Twitter was, is that information live or is there a natural delay, because when watching professional matches, the scorebot tends to be slightly behind or slightly infront depending on the stream.
Imagine getting only a warning for looking at hltv to check money, weapons etc in between rounds on LAN, WITH video evidence. wp to team space jam/team unique (: pic.twitter.com/71nCF8YIWc
— soulcas ⛓️ (@dOMM1337) August 25, 2018
Unfortunately all the information we have is what has been posted on Twitter, but Dom posted a video which allegedly shows the team in question (Unique) sniping such info. The problem with looking at this video, is that it isn’t very clear if that information was taken during the warm up rounds or during some of the crucial moments of the match. What it also doesn’t show is whether they were checking their own match on HLTV or a different match.
What we know is that Team Unique were ran in two very close maps in this match, winning 16:14 on de_train & 16:11 on de_mirage. After Cat345 noticed the issues, they challenged the results immediately and got the admins involved. The admins ended up deciding that a warning was suffice due to lack of actual evidence (as stated above) and closed the book. However we can reveal that since it has gone viral and spread to the CS:GO Subreddit, and further examination of an under 5 minute video provided by Dom, they are now reviewing that decision and looking into it further.
The biggest complication to the story is that HLTV sniping isn’t really directly covered by any rulebook let alone the UK Masters rule book so unless admins are absolutely sure, there isn’t really much they can do on the allegation, however they do have leeway here with their rules as it looks like the admin team managed to cover the UK Masters rules really well as there is this at the bottom:
Rule Amendments
All Admin decisions are final.It is at the discretion of the Tournament Director to modify any of the rules above for any reason. The rules are most likely to be amended in the following cases (without limitation):
If a different patch/version release is used and modifications to the rules are necessary to ensure fair play.
If a game breaking bug is discovered during the course of the tournament.
If players are suspected or proven to be engaging in unfair play or collusion to fix the results of a game.
If changes to game settings and/or operations guidelines are necessary due to differences between online and offline tournaments.
If there are substantial delays to a tournament that would prevent it from concluding in a timely fashion.
We await the full outcome, and will update this particular post when we have an official comment on the matter.
*Update* – 7:28pm BST
Charlie Tizard, UK Masters Product Manager posted a Twitlonger to give an official statement on what is exactly happening:
After discussing the current presented evidence and the submission of new evidence that has been presented to our admin team, we are updating our decision to give a warning to Team Unique.
The evidence has allowed us verify the allegations made against Team Unique during the first map of their quarter final game vs Cat345.
We are increasing the punishment of Team Unique from a warning to a default loss of the affected map.
From the original video presented it was unclear if the video was made during a live map, and our team was unable to verify when the incident had occurred. It would have been unfair to Team Unique for us to act without sufficient evidence.
During the second map, multiple members of our team were present at both Team Unique and Cat345’s desks in order to verify integrity of the second maps result.
This results in the map score being 1-1, and the final map will take place at 21:00 BST, to decide which team will proceed to the semi-finals of the UK Masters CSGO open.
The final map between the two teams will be played at 9pm BST, the team that wins will square upto Team Endpoint in the Semi-Finals tomorrow.
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