Cheating in Battlegrounds tournament costs team $12,000

Cheating in Battlegrounds tournament costs team $12,000

While it might be difficult to use cheating programs in officially sanctioned tournaments, it turns out it's not too difficult to use glitches that are present in the main game. It's inadvisable though, as it can lose you several thousand dollars in winnings if you're caught out. That's exactly what happened to OpTic Gaming, which lost out all of its team winnings from a recent second-place placing in an ESL Battlegrounds Tournament where one of its players used a wall glitch.

The player in question was Ian "Bahawaka" Crowe, who moved next to a wall in a manner that allowed him to peek through it. Although he denies that that was his intention -- instead claiming that he was trying to get a better audio solution on a moving vehicle due to distortion in his headphones -- the ESL has ruled that he was indeed attempting to cheat and therefore invalidated not only his own part in the tournament but that of his entire team, losing them their entire winnings.

You can see the wall glitch in action on a recording of Bahawaka's gameplay footage here:

Although it doesn't appear as if looking at the hill beyond the wall made much of a difference to him, it seems hard to imagine that such a move was an attempt to acquire clear audio and it's clear why the ESL ruled as it has done.

Although OpTic gaming only lost the points from that particular game, that dropped their overall team rating from second to fifth, where there was no prize money rewarded, as per Kotaku.