NA players banned in betting scandal

Today a wave of bans from Valve sponsored tournaments swept through the North American region of CS:GO, thus affecting multiple NA teams.

This ban stemmed from the possibility of there being fixed matches from the former players of iBUYPOWER, a North American team that was formerly ranked in our poll as the number one team from the NA region in our database. Valve made their decision that the evidence on the players that were in question was worthy of a ban from all Valve sponsored tournaments. The players include Braxton “swag” Pierce, Keven “AZK” Larivière, and Sam “Dazed” Marine from the last iBP lineup. The other players that received the ban were Joshua “Steel” Nissan, and Derek “dboorn" Boorn from the team Torqued, as well as Casey Foster the owner of Netcode Guides.  

Apon hearing the Valve ban ESEA reacted by banning these players from playing in their tounaments as well as leagues. Also ESL made a public statement on reddit saying the following:

Like the blog post said, none of these players will be able to participate or contribute in any other form to ESL One Katowice or future Majors run by us, and we are currently finalising our verdict regarding other ESL leagues and these players We do not have any tolerance for match fixing, have always made clear in our rules that players are not to be involved with any kind of betting and will continue to work on a clean and fair competitive environment for CS:GO.”

Braxton “swag” Pierce also released a statement on twitter saying

First and foremost I want to apologize to all the fans and sponsors I let down. I was aware of what was happening and allowed it to happen without saying anything. Stealing from people is wrong, and I got what I deserved. I just wanted to reach out to people online and formally apologize because I feel like it is owed. I feel it is important people know that I was not the benefactor from this scandal like some of the other players were. I received very few skins in comparison to some of the other players and I honestly don't know why as I could careless about skins. If you've seen my inventory I still use half of the default skins.

I understand by taking one skin, I am wrong, and should be banned. I just wanted the public to know my level of involvement was no where near the person organizing this. This is very unfortunate for me moving forward but the ban was necessary in order to set a precedent for future players to come. I hope one day valve may have mercy on me and let me compete again. Until then I am deeply sorry to all my fans and everyone that supported me that I was involved in this, and not just because we got caught.”

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens in the next months in the North American Scene.

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