Valve Suspends 19 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Pro Players

The Counter-Strike Global Offensive professional scene has seen a drastic shake up with 19 players being banned for potential match fixing.

After claims that professional players had been fixing matches in order to win placed bets Valve opened an investigation. As a result of their current findings 14 players will be ineligible to play until, at least, 2016. These players have received the indefinite suspensions from Valve are:

• Kevin “Uzzziii” Vernel
• Joey “fxy0” Schlosser
• Robin “GMX” Stahmer
• Morgan “B1GGY” Madour
• Damian “DiAMon” Zarski
• Michal “bCK” Lis
• Jakub “kub” Pamula
• Mateusz “matty” Kolodziejczyk
• Michal “michi” Majkowski
• Karol “rallen” Rodowicz
• Mikolaj “mouz” Karolewski
• Grzegorz “SZPERO” Dziamalek
• Pawel “innocent” Mocek
• Jacek “minise” Jeziak

Five further players are still under investigation and whilst it is still ongoing they will also be ineligible to play in professional games. The extra five who will miss the upcoming ESL One Katowice event are:

• Robin “r0bs3n” Stephan
• Tahsin “tahsiN” Sarikaya
• Koray “xall” Yaman
• Ammar “am0” Cakmak
• Antonin “TONI” Bernhardt

As a result of the bans, three separate Counter-Strike Global Offensive professional teams, Epsilon eSports, ESC Gaming and WinneR, will not be able to compete in the offline qualifiers for ESL One Katowice 2015. As a result, ESL One and Valve has determined teams to take the empty places. 3DMAX and LGB eSports will take WinneR’s place. While they would have played in a third place match they will now both qualify. A last chance tournament has been scheduled by ESL One for February 8^th to determine the teams that will take Epsilon eSports and ESC Gaming’s positions, within the Katowice tournament.