CS:GO's history features some of the most scandalous and quite frankly
hilarious moments across the gaming world and this is a tribute to some of
the game's most ridiculous shocking and intriguing past.
Considered one of the biggest controversies at the
time, Fnatic's infamous Overpass boost is still debated to this day. Whether you
think the boost was an amazing play that was engineered by the great CS:GO minds
at Fnatic or whether you think the boost was completely illegal and
unnecessary, you have to admit it made for a memorable Major.
Down 13-3 after the first 16 rounds, Fnatic finally made their
three-man booth works as olofmeister secured two quick kills on the
unsuspecting LDLC. Fnatic would continue to use and abuse the boost round after
round for the rest of the game and it would eventually win them that map over
LDLC. The big issue with this boost was actually that when using the boost, some
textures would become invisible and that was what was against tournament rules.
"They realized by getting from social media, that there is a texture bug. So a
texture transparency from that spot where you can see almost down to the T-spawn, you
can see what's called tunnel and in the rules that is not allowed." After a series
of back-and-forth between the teams and the admins, it was eventually ruled that
the entire map would be replayed. After the final decision, however, Fnatic
forfeited that match and LDLC would go on to win their first Major championship.
Although it's impossible to know exactly
when this lobby raider first appeared in the private lobbies of professional CS:GO
players and tournaments around the world, what we do know is the incredible amount
of craze this raider generated across the CS:GO community. Appearing in the private
lobbies of even Valve sponsored events such as ESL One: Katowice 2015 and ESL
One: Cologne 2015, this Raider gained notoriety within the community at a
rapid pace.
(Casting)
In no time, this chiken had a booming social media
following and so many fake accounts imitating him that it would become
almost impossible to keep track of the real one. This lobby raider gained so
much popularity so fast that he even held an AMA with almost 500
comments and over 1600 upvotes. There are several theories about the identity of
this anonymous lobby raider, with the most popular being that this is a
character creation of the Youtuber Failu, especially considering his video
contribution to the chiken craze. But I guess there's no real way to tell for
sure. Like all things, however, this character/meme would eventually fade
into obscurity, but we'll never forget that time when no one was safe from the
chiken.
Valve's Christmas gift to the CS:GO community, the
R8 update. The R8 update was, at the time, probably the most game breaking update
in the history of CS:GO. Not only was the R8 the most powerful pistol on release,
it was hands down the most powerful gun in the game. Although there were so many
things wrong about the R8 on release, the damage model was hands-down the most
broken. The gun had an extremely high base damage of 115 which meant you could
kill an enemy with one shot to the chest. But not only that it came with a
million bugs. Not only could you waste ammo during freeze time, you could hold
both the left and right mouse buttons to get the accuracy of a channeled mouse one, but
the speed of a mouse two shot. Not only that, players could defuse the bomb and
right-click opponents at the exact same time.
Needless to say, the community was outraged and tournament organizers
such as ESL refused to play on the new update. With the entire wrath of the
community at its doors, Valve nerfed the R8 in a blog post entitled damage
control. The nerfs were significant enough that less and less players began using
the R8 over time, and although the R8 is hardly ever used now, there was a point
in time when the R8 outdid every other gun.
The infamous Train bug, aka the bird boost. In December of 2014, Train was reintroduced to CS:GO and
it came with a complete facelift. This was significant because it was the first
time in the game's history where a map that was already in the game would
receive a complete overall signaling more of that to come in the future.
Building the map from the ground up, the new de_train was stunningly beautiful,
but valve included a critical mistake. It would only take a couple of hours before
the community would learn of the bird boost. With all the changes that Valve had made
to the map, a new addition was the spawning of pigeons every couple of rounds down
by ivy. The big issue was that these pigeons had hit boxes that players could
use to jump on top of and then enter the map with. The game breaking part of
this bug, was that, if used properly, it would allow clear vision down into the
A bomb site for the player outside of the map, giving them an extreme unfair
advantage. The bird boost was not long-lived however as Valve quickly got
rid of the bug and set up this mural in memory of this hilarious moment
Considered the worst
tournament ever held in the history of CS:GO, 2015's Gaming Paradise was anything
but. To start things off, the tournament itself began with a 12 hour delay in which
the tournament organizers explained the delay was due to a road driver who
allegedly went missing with the computers needed to run the tournament.
Replacement computers were eventually brought in, but they apparently were not
up to par and would drop frames and net less than 100 frames per second in smokes.
It gets worse. Police eventually arrived at the players' hotels and confiscated
their passports because, as it turns out, the organizers had not paid for those hotel
rooms. The passports were later returned to the players once the police were able
to confirm that the rooms were in fact booked by the organizers and not the
players or teams.
The story continues with the tournament organizers eventually drafting up a new contract
that stated that the players would be receiving their prize money by
completing their games. But to no one's surprise G2, who acquired the
Kinguin lineup that won the tournament, released a statement later that year
which made it clear that the team was not to receive any of the money that
they were promised. A fittingly horrendous end to a terrible tournament.
"And we found this new
site called CS:GO lotto." For better or worse CS:GO and the gambling market has been
in an intricate love affair since skins were first released in the arms deal
update back in 2013. Many would even say that weapon skins
are the reason why the game is so popular. Although it can be said that the
gambling scandals first began with former CS:GO player and now popular
streamer Mohamad "m0E" Assad versus CS:GO diamonds, the gambling scandals actually
really exploded when a Youtuber by the name of Honour the Call made a video
providing evidence that popular Call of Duty Youtubers TmarTn and ProSyndicate
have promoted and gambled on CS:GO lotto without disclosing the fact that they
were owners of that website. Through this story, several other notable streamers
and prominent personalities were dragged into the
forefront and the community began to seriously consider the legitimacy and
morality of such websites.
Valve's response came in July, when it
released an announcement stating that they had no business relationships with
any of the gambling websites and that it would send out notices to cease
operations. Valve followed through shortly after, with said letter and the letter
requested the immediate cease and desist of a long list of popular gambling
websites such as CS:GO Lotto, CS:GO Wild, CS:GO Diamonds, and most notably
CS:GO lounge. The gambling crackdown had some stating that this was the end of
CS:GO's competitive scene and viewership, but the CS:GO community held strong and
were able to set new viewership records during the ELEAGUE Major.
"l I don't even care, we're all on adderall. Like I don't even give a f--k."
CS:GO's doping scandal exploded mid 2015, when former Cloud9 member
Semphis admitted that he and the entire C9 lineup at ESL One Katowice were on
adderall. These remarks sparked a world of controversy about the use of drugs in
esports and ESL responded quickly, teaming up with the NADA to run their
first anti PED drug test for ESL One: Cologne of that year. When
Cologne ended, ESL released an article detailing the immense success of the
event along with news that the random PED testing held during the event came
back negative, successfully putting an end to the
biggest drug scandal in CS:GO history.
Near the end of 2014, a German pro player SMN was first caught cheating through
the ESEA client. Valve and ESEA then quickly worked together to help update the
Valve anti-cheat system and it was able to detect and ban SMN of Team Alternate
Sf of Epsilon and most notably Titan's very own KQLY.
(Casting)
KQLY soon after the VAC ban came clean, stating that he had in fact used the cheat for a week.
Following these VAC bans came an extreme witch hunt. "I know that a couple
of my teammates are convinced that...they think they cheat." The man most affected
by this witch hunt was flusha of Fnatic. As several videos accusing the Swede of
cheating became more and more popular over the Internet. flusha defended his
stance stating that he had never cheated and that he will never cheat
explaining that his unique playstyle and tendency to lift his mouse a lot more
than other pros as some of the explanations for the community suspicions.
Although the witch hunt would die down eventually as time past, speculations and
suspicions of pro players cheating still continue to this day.
A mistake that would change the lives of all the
members involved, the iBUYPOWER match-fixing scandal is probably the
biggest esports scandal of all time. On August 20th of 2014, two North American
teams iBUYPOWER and NetcodeGuides.com were set to face
off in an online match for the fifth season of CEVO's professional league.
iBUYPOWER were heavily favored in this matchup, but were blown out 4-16. When
the match ended there was some speculation that the match was thrown by
iBUYPOWER, but it was quickly brushed aside as just rumors. The story then
later resurfaced when veteran esports journalist Richard Lewis brought
to light new evidence in January of 2015. The new evidence provided by
Richard Lewis was incriminating text messages by Derek "dboorN" Boorn to his
former girlfriend. The text explicitly said that quote they really did throw
that match and I bet for them on alternate accounts end quote. The rest
is as they say history, as Valve put their foot down on the people involved through
a blog post entitled integrity and fair play in January of 2015. Although at the
time the bans were indefinite, Valve in their 2016 blog post entitled "A
follow-up on integrity and fair play" confirmed that the bans would be in
fact permanent.
Looking at the topic as a whole, we have to trace it back to
Canada's own Northern Arena where IMT's HEN1 was found not wearing his
headphones for the first two rounds of their final map against Cloud9. This
event sparked a slew of controversy around the importance of headgear
regulation and competitive play. Fast forward about a month or so and sean
gares tweets out the following Tweet. quote there needs to be rules on hazard
events without booths. You should never be able to see a player's ear end quote.
This tweet stirred up a relevant conversation about whether hats or
headgear in some way reduce the effectiveness of noise canceling
headphones on the players heads. Although no firm conclusion could be made about
whether headgear was in fact obtrusive to the noise canceling headphones or
whether pro players could use that to an advantage, the fact that the topic itself
was generating unnecessary controversy around fair play became an issue. The
response was swift as ESL made an official rule ahead of its pro league
finals that headgear such as beanies would not be allowed to be worn. This trend
continued on to the recent ELEAGUE Major qualifiers and even the ELEAGUE
Major itself and it will most likely continue on for the foreseeable future.
And that's the list. Please let us know in the comments below if you felt like
we might have missed anything and make sure to hit that like button and
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