If you were a coach for a Counter-Strike team, and your view in-game suddenly went somewhere
that revealed information about the enemy you weren’t supposed to know, what would
you do? Would you report it? Or would you abuse it
to give your team the advantage? The coach spectate bug is currently the big
news over on globaloffensive’s subreddit. There has been a massive investigation into
it, and several coaches have already been banned for exploiting it.
Sometimes, it’s been in spots where there are point_viewcontrol entities placed in the
levels. I don’t think these entities have much use in the game any more. They used to
represent view angles that were used when you were picking a team. And maybe they fulfil
some kind of spectator purpose. But I think it’s safe to say that they weren’t intended
to be used in this way… …but the exploit isn’t limited to these
spots. The other day, Igor posted this video on Youtube, showing that when a player died,
the camera no longer moved on to another player like it was supposed to, nor did it reset
at the start of the next round. And Michal says you can pick any location
on the map you want, and can intentionally activate it, but doesn’t divulge more details
on how to pull it off. And although you can’t MOVE the camera once it’s active, you can
still rotate the camera using the mouse, to look in any direction you please.
It’s a big exploit, but has been patched so isn’t possible any more- meaning that
hopefully no future matches will be affected by this. But damage has already been done,
and now it’s a matter of scanning back through all the matches where it could have been abused.
This would require watching thousands of match demos. It’s a massive undertaking.
But that’s exactly what Esports referees, Michal Slowinski and Steve Duden, have spent
the last 3 weeks doing, working 12 hour shifts as they scan through literally thousands of
matches, some dating back over a year. And they’re not done yet.
So it’s clear this view bug has the potential to be exploited to reveal the location of
the enemy team and what kind of equipment they have. You can see a very suspicious recording
here, where not only is the bug active, but the view is being moved about by the coach
in a controlled and calculating manner as he gathers info on where the enemy team is
going at the start of every round- as well as having a pretty good overview of the whole
of A site. The CORRECT thing to do would be to call for
a technical pause, to report the bug and to reconnect.
And this is exactly what some coaches have done… until they haven’t. Seems the temptation
gets too great for some. Especially when money’s on the line. This
year, the coronavirus has resulted in more tournaments being hosted ‘online’ than
ever before- some of these with large prize pools. So you can understand the temptation
there would be to abuse this bug, assuming that since they’re not being physically
watched, that they might get away with it. One interesting case is Team FURIA. Michal
posted a tweet showing it being used by their coach in a match…
..to which Furia’s coach, Guerri, responded with a half-hour long video explaining the
situation from his point of view. I suggest you watch it, it’s got English
subtitles and everything. He explains that when it happened, he alt+tabbed out of the
game so as not to abuse it, hence the laggy viewmodels. He’d occasionally alt+tab back
in to the game to see if it had fixed itself, but it doesn’t look like he used the exploit
to gain his team an advantage. Whether or not he’s innocent isn’t for
me to say, but I commend him for coming forward and for explaining the situation in such a
detailed and open manner. And for keeping match records for at least 18 months- which
is how far back the game is now. That’s at least 18 months in which this exploit could
have been used. So what should be done to the teams caught
using it? And what counts as ‘using it’? I’ve already read some entertaining opinions
on twitter about what should be done about it.
ESL has already banned 3 coaches who had ‘knowingly misused’ it gain a ‘competitive advantage
in live tournaments’. The length of the ban depends on how many times they used the
exploit- ranging from 6 months to 2 years. Their teams have been retroactively disqualified
from those tournaments, and lost the points and prize money involved.
And it goes further than just Dreamhack and ESL- the ESIC has got involved, which is the
‘Esports Integrity Commission’, which has an even bigger ban hammer at their disposal.
And what about the players? Were they in any way involved, or aware of what their coaches
were doing? Did they find it weird when suddenly they were getting call-outs with prophetic
degrees of foresight? …Not yet. So far the ESIC has found insufficient
evidence that the players were involved, but is keeping the investigation open for another
2 months, so things might change. And Hard Legion has announced that they agree
with the banning of their coach, of whom has been dismissed from the team.
This whole investigation would not have been possible were it not for people like Michal
and Steve. A GoFundMe page has been set up, link in the description, should any of you
like to donate to them for all their hard work, scanning through the thousands of matches
where this kind of exploit might have been used.
The investigation is still ongoing, and there may be further discoveries and bans. But hopefully
this video has helped get you up to speed on it all so far.