As esports becomes bigger business, it's beginning to deal with the issues faced by more mainstream sports. That includes betting and match fixing scandals. The commissioner of the Esports Integrity Commission says that they're now working with law enforcement, including the FBI, to help combat the problem in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
A group of North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pros are under investigation from the FBI, according to the Esports Integrity Commission. The ESIC is being assisted by law enforcement on multiple levels in tracking down offenders who fix matches in the FPS game.
Speaking with YouTuber Slash32 (ta, Kotaku), Ian Smith, the commissioner of the ESIC, says the commission is on the trail of "a relatively small but significant group of players." These pros have been perpetrating what he'd describe as "classic match fixing" in North American tournaments, and the level of organisation, and length of time, has led to involvement from the FBI.
"To some extent we're working with law enforcement and the FBI, who only recently have had a sports betting investigative unit within the FBI," Smith explains. "They're good, but they're inexperienced, because sports betting has never been a big thing in America until recently, so everybody's kind of finding their feet on that one." This is for the North American branch of the ESEA MDL in particular, where esports gambling is relatively new, and laws can vary by state, making it even more difficult.
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One quick email about a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive bug was all it took to get Italy updated and subsequently removed from the game. It's something I'll regret for the rest of my life.
That might sound dramatic to the average player who probably never even found themselves playing Italy, a little-known hostage map that was created by Glen 'GlenC' Cooper and Jaison 'DigiChaos' Greene for Counter-Strike Beta 6.5, but for me and my friends, the removal of the the Italian map broke our hearts. And you know the worst part about it all? Deep down, I think it was all my fault.
I've invested so much time into CS:GO over the years - far more than I want to admit - but it's allowed me to meet some incredible people that have had a profound affect on my life. So, when an innocent bug report written by me was addressed by a Valve level designer and patched, my squad were delighted. The months that followed, however, will haunt me forever.
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Remember those guitars that would pop up in the STALKER games, which lone survivors would sit and strum by the fire throughout the Zone? Sadly, they weren't really playable for anyone other than NPCs in the FPS games, but the good news is you can now live out that dream in another popular shooter thanks to a new CS:GO mod.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fan DepoSit has posted a new creation on the multiplayer game's Steam Workshop, which adds a STALKER-like scene complete with a playable guitar. "Once loaded you find yourself in a small lowland, the time overboard is about 5am, and a bonfire can be seen nearby, close to which two stalkers are sitting," the modder explains. If you hover over the guitarist and hit your action button, the camera will shift and you'll get to take control of the tunes yourself.
The way it works is via a pop-up command wheel, which has six different chords. Using mouse and keyboard controls, you can then put a a little diity together. There are additionally controls - accessed via a box near the fireside sitters in the map - for adjusting the guitar's pitch, which works by speeding the game up - so, upping the tempo.
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Valve has announced that all Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players will now have access to Operation Broken Fang's premium queue, Broken Fang Premier. With the operation set to end on April 30, this gives players a whole month to sink their, well, fangs into the game mode.
As stated in the announcement post, Broken Fang Premier "introduces a pick/ban phase to the start of a competitive match." The mode covers the entire Active Duty map pool - the maps utilised in official Valve tournaments - allowing players to "test their mettle" in the same competitive environment as the pros.
According to the accompanying patch notes, players who either already have the Operation Pass, or possess a Prime account will be matched together in a separate queue to free players. Presumably, this is a measure to try and prevent cheaters from infiltrating paid access games.
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