No less than 15 players were caught and disqualified for abuse in the TSL ladder stage. Some of these were big, respected and known names. This is unacceptable, and GosuGamers bans them all for six months from all our events and rankings.
The first one to get caught was F91. When accused he admitted and the whole ordeal was handled well by his team Duskbin who immediately went out with an official apology through their manager, Ash.
After the ladder stage finished and TSL admins started to sort through the players' game lists, more names were soon discovered. Considering the high level names of these players this might be the biggest cheating scandal in foreign Brood War.
| Caught Cheaters | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Player | TSL "Rank" | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Yosh | 5th* | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Dimaga | 9th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Advocate | 17th* | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fraer | 19th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Reason | 20th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mercury | 27th* | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pomi | 35th* | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Sarens | 35th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 RiboRibo | 43rd* | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vasilisk | 46th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 aQp_JuanJo_O | 50th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| aQp_JuaChi | 76th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| HappyZerg | 88th | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 F91 | N/A** | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Scan | N/A** | |||||||||||||||||||||||
There are far too many trusted and respected players on this list. Players like, for example, Yosh and Advocate were always believed to be above this. Yosh used to give lectures at the StarCraft classes of UC Berkely, now he is caught for cheating. For what? Almost all the players caught had the skill to take a top 48 placement with no sweat at all, and that is what makes all this so hard to understand. The most ironic one of them all is probably aQp_JuanJo_O, who if he had just played it straight would probably have ended up among the top 48 thanks to all the other cheaters. It is fascinating to see how many players were willing to break the rules with so little gain, just because they believed they would not be caught.
However, TL.net staff has done a tremendously good job searching through matchlists and trying to find out cheaters. GosuGamers applaudes this work, and trust in TL.net's good judgement. Therefore each and everyone of the caught cheaters above are banned for six months as none of them have been caught before (Vasilisk was caught in the ICCup purge, but that list was not deemed trustworthy enough). They have not map hacked, therefore they do not face the normal one year ban, but they have actively cheated in a $20,000 tournament which cannot go unpunished. If they are caught for any form of abuse in the future they will be facing life bans.
Some people will think this is too harsh, some will think it is too lenient. But this is the decision GosuGamers staff has come to.
GosuGamers has also decided to release TT1 from his ban. He has stayed clean for a long time and will now be allowed to play and take part in GosuGamers events and rankings again.
*These ranks are calculated from the ladder score their accounts had at the end of the season, counting against this list (including its cheaters).
**Ending score not available
Links
TeamLiquid.net - TSL Official Forums
TeamLiquid.net - TL.net Announcement
