Valve Initiates Online Map Ban for CS:GO Coaches, Faces Huge Amount of Backlash from the CS:GO Community

Valve, the renowned game developing company, has recently published a revamped version of its Counter Strike: Global Offensive Regional Major Rankings roster. The update includes major changes in the whole system, and inevitably affects CS:GO coaches the most.

According to Valve, its hands were forced because of the infamous coaching-spectator bug scandal from early 2020. Ohe of the most bizarre changes in the update has banned or disallowed CS:GO coaches from entering the same server or even the same game-room as their teams or players during a live or online map.

This ban or Valve’s decision to initiate it has not gone well with CS:GO coaches, players and fans alike. It has, in turn, triggered vast amounts of criticism and negative comments have been streaming in from the community ever since the announcement. 

This new rule, unjust according to many, has been deemed as an “overreaction” and is also being seen as an unfair method of judging coaches who have never cheated in professional CS:GO before and have taken on the profession as their passion. Moreover, the real culprits, or the coaches who enacted the cheating occurrences have already been banned by ESIC (Esports Integrity Commission), the global eSports governing body. 

Now with the ban from all the Valve Majors, the coaches who did absolutely nothing wrong, are the ones who are actually affected the most.

Danny “zonic” Sørensen, the CS:GO coach of Astralis and also a multiple-times “Coach of the Year” award winner, has deemed the occasion as “a sad day for Counter-Strike.”

Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, one of the superstars from Sørensen’s CS:GO team, has also gone on to ridicule the ruling from Valve and its confusing decision to penalize even the innocent coaches in the circuit. He also had a dig at Valve’s decision to include 100Thieves’ (North American eSports side) stickers within this latest update, although 100T has been pretty much inactive in the last few months, when it comes to competitive CS:GO action. They don’t even have an active CS:GO roster.

Faruk Pita, the former NiJ (Ninjas in Pyjamas) coach, who got his own ESIC ban shortened because of confession and cooperation, has also questioned the effectiveness of Valve, as the issues arising from this ban have not been resolved, even after he himself presented them to Valve. He also drew parallels of Valve, with how organized and systematic things are at Riot and their own first person shooter title Valorant.

Wilton “zews” Prado, from the CS:GO roster of Evil Geniuses, has marked the decision from Valve as purely “heartbreaking and infuriating” and mentioned how sad it is to be punished even after being honest all the way through.

This isn’t the first time the pro CS:GO has gone through something like this, though. Coaching decisions from Valve have infuriated the global CS:GO fraternity many times in the past as well. The reactions of the latest ban are still flooding gaming channels and different social media platforms. It will be extremely interesting to see how the teams perform in the new setup in the Majors at Stockholm, Sweden. The two million US dollars worth tournament is set to start from October 23 and end on November 7 this year.