Update 23/11/14 (DD/MM/YYYY)
Quite an important development.
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Original start post below:
Source: http://www.loadthegame.com/2014/11/21/csgo-team-titan-epsilon-esports-disqualified-dreamhack-winter/
Articles linked in the above article:
http://www.loadthegame.com/2014/11/...ayer-hovik-kqly-tovmassian-gets-banned-valve/
http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw14/2014/11/21/dreamhack-winter-2014-last-call-qualifier-this-saturday/
Send me on VACation if old.
--
Other sources, in order of publication date:
http://www.hltv.org/news/13624-smn-banned-on-esea-for-cheating
http://www.hltv.org/news/13626-alternate-dismiss-smn
http://www.hltv.org/news/13636-kqly-handed-vac-ban
http://www.hltv.org/news/13638-titan-suspend-kqly-following-ban
http://www.hltv.org/news/13641-epsilons-sf-vac-banned
http://www.hltv.org/news/13642-titan-epsilon-disqualified-from-dhw
http://www.hltv.org/news/13648-epsilon-release-sf
Quite an important development.
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13656-niak-about-titans-dhw-exclusionTitan's manager Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries had more to add about Valve and DreamHack's decision to exclude their team from DH Winter and the qualifier, as well as about possible implications this situation and everyone's reaction has on CS:GO as an eSport.
In a personal blog titled "DreamHack Winter 2014 Epilogue" on Titan's website, the team manager Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries further talked about the way Valve handled communication with the organization and why he thinks it presents a major problem in eSports.
CONTENT BELOW
Furthermore, Sudries explained why he thinks DreamHack and Valve's decision to exclude his team from the subsequent qualifier is harsh, and why the responsibility shouldn't be assigned only to Titan but also others he fooled as well.
CONTENT BELOW
Via http://titan.pro/news/read/DreamHack-Winter-2014-Epilogue/21Why lack of communication from Valve concerning a ban represents a major problem for esports
In the wake of November 20th, I myself alongside the rest of the Titan staff have been working very hard on bringing light to the events that preceded the VAC ban of our former player Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian.
As a general rule, Valve currently refuses to discuss the circumstances of bans, and our own requests for more information in the case of KQLY was met with:
« We are not able to discuss any additional details about a VAC ban. »
Now, it is reasonable to believe that this decision was made in order to respect Steam’s subscriber agreement, as well as to ensure that the VAC-system’s detection process remain secret. However, this strategy is not aligned with the path that esports is taking, and I will try to explain my reasoning below.
In a case like this where a player is accused, we cannot as an organization, a community, as players or as media, be made to rely solely on the statements of the player involved. We have no opportunity to check the validity of the player’s comments, to know if the third party program was used during professional play, in a specific competition, or if the offense itself should now legitimately call into question a title or event qualification. We are left without certainty in a climate of untenable doubt.
In our specific case it is also important for the rest of the team to know if the recent months’ performances, following the arrival of KQLY, were legitimate.
The lack of communication in regard to a ban can also raise unjust problems. Imagine that a player gets banned by mistake: how can he defend himself? The players don’t play just on their personal computers. They move, participate in boot camps, in tournaments where PCs aren’t formatted after each use, play at friends’ houses, etc etc. It may very well be possible for a player to be exposed against his will and to be banned as a result. In this case, how could he clear himself without having any information surrounding the ban to defend against?
We mustn’t kid ourselves; the allures of esport today (and in future) may sadly tempt unscrupulous people to cheat during a competition. The more money that’s at stake, the more evolved and hard to detect the illicit technologies will be.
The fight against this sort of practice, however, is similar to anti-doping for sports, and Valve, just like the international organizations in this field, have to be able to communicate more detailed information on the cases concerning professional players.
As it currently stands, we don’t even really know if VAC detections are retroactive. Does Valve store data allowing them to identify a cheating player weeks or even months after the third-party program was used? Or are players only caught if they very recently, or currently, are running the program, whereas past offenses can go by undetected?
If the system was reliable and could be validated, then more communication could serve as a massive deterrent and make up the first line of defense against cheating. Also if proof could be given that cheating occurred during a certain event of qualifier, then past titles could legitimately be stripped and claims of retribution be made, providing yet further cheat disincentive.
Why we felt wronged by our exclusion from DreamHack Winter
As a result of the events on November 20th, both Epsilon and Titan were banned from competing in the tournament. This raised a major question: is it right to penalize a whole team for the actions of one player?
There are two possibilities here in my opinion
- Either the ban was an isolated case, where no proof exists to implicate other team members in an organized cheating scheme.
- Or we are facing a case where it is proven that management or other players were either informed of, or even worse participated in, illicit practices.
In our case I can personally guarantee you that our policy towards this issue is very clear. There has never been, and will never be, any tolerance towards this cancer which has already done so much harm in sports. I would be ready to put everything on the line to fight against this practice which so easily could ruin the credibility of years and years of work.
Now, it’s obvious that discovering a cheater can truly call into question the performances of an entire team. However, we also can’t allow such speculations to tarnish all collective performances without providing a least a minimum of proof, and this is what we tried to get from Valve.
In the case of DreamHack Winter, aside from losing our invitation we were also excluded from the last minute qualifier. Is this reasonable or even justifiable? Taking into account what I have outlined above, I don’t think so.
I do not shy away from responsibility when it comes to the fact that we worked with a player who may have cheated in a team context, and believe me, this fact affects me, the team and the entire organization a great deal. I personally will be more vigilant and put more effort into making sure that this sort of suicidal behavior is prevented from ever occurring again. However, we aren’t the only ones working on cheat prevention. Valve and the tournament organizers are both partly responsible for providing systems which effectively and reliably target cheats.
In KQLY’s case, he is a player who’s been competing on a professional level for more than a year and a half, who participated in a lot of online tournaments with multiple anti-cheat programs, as well as several off-line events, on servers protected by Valve, in front of thousands of spectators. If in the end it turns out that he tricked us all for months, you can hopefully understand what a simplification it would be blaming Titan for everything. This in turn is why I find DreamHack and Valve’s decision, and some of your comments, very harsh towards us.
Here we can again look at professional sports, which benefit from federal organizations making sure that everyone’s rights are respected. In cases like these, the whole team would have been penalized only if it was proven that other team members or team management were involved, either through malevolent action or omission of action after becoming aware of the situation. I ask myself if this is in fact what DreamHack and Valve are suggesting?
By excluding us like this, the image and reputation of our players is tarnished.
All the aspects addressed here deserve real reflection, and discussion, so that clear rules can be established which claim real responsibility and respect the integrity of all parties.
This blog was in no way written with the purpose of escaping our responsibilities; we assume them, and would act on them even further if given the support to do so.
In order to stand a fighting chance, however, we must work together and make sound decisions so that we effectively can combat that which threatens to ruin the game we all feel so passionate about.
- Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries, CS:GO Team manager.
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Original start post below:
Yesterday we learned that Hovik “Kqly” Tovmassian from Titan has been banned by Valve’s anti-cheat service which lead to him being suspended from the team. With only one week to go until Dreamhack Winter 2014 Titan was in a pretty rough spot as the team was one player short and their fate in the tournament remained uncertain. Sadly, earlier today it was decided that Titan will no longer participate in the tournament as they have been disqualified because of the ban. Even more concerning is that they are not alone in this because yet another French professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player has been banned by Valve. The player in question is Gordon “Sf” Giry from Epsilon eSports, the second team that has been disqualified from Dreamhack Winter.
Valve’s tournament rules state that any player who gets VAC banned will no longer be able to participate in tournaments sponsored by them. Unfortunately the rules also say that teams that have banned players on their roster must be disqualified, so Dreamhack had no choice but to let them go. In order to replace Titan and Epsilon eSports, the organization will be hosting a “Last Call Qualifier” for Dreamhack Winter this Saturday. “Earlier today the CS:GO community learned that a Titan player and an Epsilon player were VAC banned,” a post on the Dreamhack website reads. “This has been confirmed and, as a result of the team members’ actions, Titan and Epsilon’s places in the tournament were revoked. As a result, the Last Call Qualifier was designed to fill those spots in the tournament.”
The LAN qualifier will take place at Inferno Online in Stockholm, Sweden and will feature four European teams that will duke it out to fill the two spots. Valve themselves will fund the travel and accommodation expenses for these four teams. Following this recent news, Groups B and D will undergo the following changes at the main Dreamhack Winter event:
Group B: Team Dignitas will receive the top seed and face Penta eSports in the first game while iBUYPOWER will meet a team from the Qualifier in their opening match.
Group D: Epsilon will be removed from the group and NaVi will meet a team from the Qualifier in their opening match. VP and myXMG stays the same.
Group A & C won’t be affected by this.
Source: http://www.loadthegame.com/2014/11/21/csgo-team-titan-epsilon-esports-disqualified-dreamhack-winter/
Articles linked in the above article:
http://www.loadthegame.com/2014/11/...ayer-hovik-kqly-tovmassian-gets-banned-valve/
http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw14/2014/11/21/dreamhack-winter-2014-last-call-qualifier-this-saturday/
Send me on VACation if old.
--
Other sources, in order of publication date:
http://www.hltv.org/news/13624-smn-banned-on-esea-for-cheating
http://www.hltv.org/news/13626-alternate-dismiss-smn
http://www.hltv.org/news/13636-kqly-handed-vac-ban
http://www.hltv.org/news/13638-titan-suspend-kqly-following-ban
http://www.hltv.org/news/13641-epsilons-sf-vac-banned
http://www.hltv.org/news/13642-titan-epsilon-disqualified-from-dhw
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13643-esea-more-to-come-soonESEA co-founder Eric "lpkane" Thunberg says that it was his organisation's efforts that led to the recent VAC bans in the top tier of the CS:GO scene.
Earlier in the week, ALTERNATE's Simon "smn" Beck was banned on ESEA for a year for cheating, with the German player then revealing on Facebook that there were more professional players out there resorting to the same kind of tools he had been using.
After rumours about professional players cheating online and even on LAN began to spread like wildfire, it did not take long for Valve to get in touch with ESEA to learn what could be done to stop this new workshop cheat.
In just 24 hours, a new VAC ban wave hit the CS:GO scene, catching the likes of Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian and Gordon "Sf" Giry, and ESEA's Thunberg believes that it will not end here.
"We independently banned a high profile cheater, a german player, then worked with valve and shared our specific technique so that more pro players would get banned," he wrote on ESEA's forum.
"The results are starting to roll out with vac bans tonight, more to come soon."
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13646-dh-this-has-to-be-a-clean-sportDreamHack Head of eSports Tomas Lyckedal has revealed that the organisation will take extra caution to prevent cheating acts during the upcoming Winter event.
In a matter of days, the CS:GO community suffered a number of heavy blows as three players of the upper echelons of the competitive scene, Simon "smn" Beck, Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian and Gordon "Sf" Giry, were all VAC banned.
More serious than the bans handed to these players, however, are the implications that they will have in the professional teams and the air of suspicion that is now surrounding them, just days before DreamHack Winter's $250,000 tournament.
DreamHack's Head of eSports has now commented on this case, stressing that special measures will be put in place to prevent teams from cheating during next week's event.
"It’s never fun when things like these happen, but at the same time it’s the reality we have to face," Tomas Lyckedal told Aftonbladet.se.
"I don’t think a pro player has been banned like this since 2001. Of course people have been caught cheating but it’s always been semi professionals, never established players. And it’s a shame it has to happen so close before the tournament,
"I really hope that this doesn’t happen to more teams, but this has to be a clean sport so if it happens then so be it.
"We discussed doing this even before these news broke, but now when there will be a lot more eyes focused on us we will take special precautions. I don’t want to say what we’re gonna do, because that will only be counter productive."
Question about Titan's situation, the DreamHack chief did not rule out the possibility of stripping the French team of their DreamHack Stockholm title.
"We haven’t had time to discuss that yet. We’re just trying to solve this current situation," he added.
http://www.hltv.org/news/13648-epsilon-release-sf
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13649-teams-for-dhw-qualifier-announcedDreamHack has announced the names of the teams who will attend Saturday's last-chance qualifier for the Winter event.
Inferno Online Stockholm will on Saturday play host to the last-chance qualifier for DreamHack Winter, with four European teams vying for the two places in the upcoming major.
The two finalists of this qualifier, which will use a single-elimination format, will replace Titan and Epsilon, both of whom were disqualified from DH Winter following VAC bans.
With very little time to make arrangements for the qualifier, DreamHack decided to invite Nordic quartet London Conspiracy, 3DMAX, FlipSid3 Tactics and Copenhagen Wolves.
All four teams were recently in action in DH Winter's European closed qualifier and will travel to Stockholm on Saturday, with Valve covering their expenses.
Below you can find the match-ups as well as the timetable of the qualifier:
CPH Wolves vs. 3DMAX 13:00
FlipSid3 vs. London Conspiracy 16:00
Grand Final (for seeding purposes) 19:00
Stay tuned to HLTV.org for full coverage of the DreamHack Winter last-chance qualifier.
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13650-kqly-removed-titan-criticize-valveTitan have released an official statement explaining that Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian has been dismissed from the team and furthermore criticizing Valve for lack of communication, as well as for not being given a chance to find their way back into DreamHack Winter through the LAN qualifier.
Following yesterday's VAC ban that hit Titan's player Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian, an official statement by the organization was just released explaining that he was removed from the squad after having admitted to using third party software.
KQLY out of Titan
According to team's manager Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries Tovmassian admitted to using the software for a 7-day period in August "outside of a competitive context and on another Steam account".
"We haven’t yet fully grasped the magnitude of what is happening. It’s a huge blow to the players who have been preparing for this specific goal for weeks now… More than 3 months of work just vanished.
Obviously, we firmly condemn the act Hovik has been accused of comitting. As a professional player, it’s simply unthinkable to bahave in such a way.
Our huge disappointment is further reinforced by the decision not to allow any possibility for the team to attend this major. The players but also the partners, staff, and management of Titan have invested a great amount of work into this project; it is very hard to see everyone pay the price for an isolated case.
My thoughts go out to all the supporters too… The disappointment is huge but I know that we will come back stronger and even more determined following the hardship we are going through today." - Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries, team manager on Titan's website.
In addition to the release of Tovmassian, the statement addressed Valve's lack of communication towards the organization and calling out for "egregious misuse of power not allowing the chance to compete in the resulting qualifier":
"As an organization we represent our players in all matters related to their professional careers – we are their employers and when our employees falter, the responsibility to act still rests on our shoulders. Finding a way forward past this tragic situation was therefore our number one priority when the news broke, doing right by our fans and the CS:GO community, as well as our remaining team members.
Sadly in this, however, we found ourselves going up against the Valve brick wall.
Upon learning of our player’s VAC ban we immediately reached out to Valve, trying to start a dialogue regarding not only the ban but more crucially its impact on the rest of our team. After an initial email exchange, however, all communications from Valve’s side ceased. Even with these attempts being facilitated by DreamHack, the response to our enquiries regarding our DHW slot and a potential replacement fifth were still met with dead silence. Much to our surprise - instead of reaching out to us directly, once an initial decision had been made - Valve instead opted for a public press release, letting us know we had been disqualified by allowing us to read it ourselves at the same time as the rest of the community.
From our side of things, we were fully open to any and all discussions, be that in regards to a replacement fifth to keep the original invite, or the possibility of getting a new fifth and fighting our way back into the tournament through the announced November 22nd qualifier. At no point in time, however, did Valve call on us to take part in any dialogue surrounding their decision making.
The actions of an individual were instead needlessly allowed to affect an entire team. Valve opted for a unilateral decision, handing out collective punishment with complete disregard for team involvement in the problem solving process.
To compete in a Major is the end goal of each season and while the road to DreamHack has not been easy, both the organization and the players have invested time as well as money in getting there. As it now stands DreamHack and Valve have announced that a new qualifier will be held on Saturday November 22nd. As we understand it, going by the continued silence from Valve, coupled with their official press statement, Titan is not invited to take part in this alternate route back into the competition. There is no rule which can be cited that backs this decision up, and Valve has in no way attempted to justify their reasoning behind disqualifying the team as a whole.
It is to us an inexplicable ruling to exclude the team based off of the actions of one, and an egregious misuse of power not allowing us the chance to compete in the resulting qualifier. This in turn makes it seem as though the entirety of the team was guilty of an infraction, whereas the remaining team members were victims of circumstances."
Had they been invited to the LAN qualifier scheduled for tomorrow at Inferno Online Stockholm, Titan would use Jeremy "ioRek" Vuillermet, the team's coach, as a stand-in.
The team has previously secured a slot at ESEA Season 17 Global Finals set to take place in early December, but it is still unknown if they will be allowed to participate.
Via http://www.hltv.org/news/13651-kqly-ban-was-justifiedFormer Titan member Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian has admitted that his VAC ban was justified and that he tried a cheating software for a week.
Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian was on Thursday handed a VAC bac, which cost him his place on the team and resulted in Titan being disqualified from DreamHack Winter.
In a statement issued on his Facebook page, Tovmassian apologised to his fans and to his team and admitted that he tried a cheating program after being convinced by its developer that many professional players were using it.
KQLY apologised to his fans and to Titan
However, the French player stressed that he only used it for a week, and it was before joining Titan, thus rejecting suggestions that he had used it in competitive tournaments.
"As you saw yesterday, I was banned by VAC and unfortunately it was justified," he wrote on Facebook.
"I wanted to say that I'm really sorry to all the people who supported me, I am aware that with this bullsh*t my career is now over and my team are a very bad position. They did not deserve that.
"At the end of August, I was contacted by a supex0 progammer, who built a strong case and told me that a lot of pros were using the program.
"Instantly, I became curious. He gave me access to the program for seven days. Like an idiot, I fell into temptation, which was too great. I wanted to see what it looked like on public servers and matchmaking.
"I did not use it after that. I was going to join Titan and I did not need to take unnecessary risks while I had all that I needed: a top team, with a solid structure behind it. My curiosity failed me and now my career is over CS after 12 years.
"I lost everything and I do not expect any compassion, I made a mistake and I will pay it for it. Unfortunately everything ends here. Once again, I'm really sorry to have disappointed everyone."
