Two players accused of cheating during CS:GO ReadyUp Invitational
1 August 2022
During the Twitch ReadyUp Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that took place on July 30th, two players have been accused of cheating and consequently removed from the tournament. The two players in question, Americans Gale “Gale” Adelaide and Brian “Kephrii” St. Pierre, were taken off the roster after evidence suggested they were cheating by giving each other points in the form of easy kills. It was the well-known esports journalist Jake Lucky who first discovered the cheating behavior and publicized his findings in his Twitter account last weekend.
Unique points-based system for individual players
“In a $100k CSGO tournament, two players, Kephrii and Gale, are being accused of teaming and feeding knife kills to the other”, Lucky wrote on Twitter, accompanied by in-game recordings supporting his claims, “This tournament is unique in that prize money is awarded to individual players based on points. 1 kill = 1 points, 1 knife kill = 5 points”. This points system is different to the usual CS:GO scoring system and encourages players to risk more to get more kills and therefore, more points.
The Twitch ReadyUP Invitational was organized by Sony and boasted a considerable $100k prize pool. As it was an invitational, the event featured various professionals esporters and famous streamers, including the previously mentioned two players. The tournament is entirely based on individual merit and the players are not allowed to team up in order to manipulate the scoring. This is called teaming, and it’s what Gale and Kephrii are being accused of.
What is teaming exactly?
In esports events and tournaments based on individual skill instead of team achievements, individual players compete for the biggest chunks of the prize pool. When this is the format, it is naturally forbidden for players to secretly team up and feed each other points, or in the case of the ReadyUp Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Invitational, kills. Gale and Kephrii are being accused of feeding each other knife kills, worth 5 points each, so they could accumulate more points and thus a bigger part of the prize pool.
The alleged unfair playing behavior came to light after Gale got three knife kills worth 15 points on Kephrii and Kephrii got two knife kills worth 10 points on Gale. This is very suspicious as knife kills are quite rare in CS:GO, as players can quite easily hear opponents running up behind them when they try to execute a knife kill. Despite the damning evidence posted by Lucky, Kephrii took the time to briefly respond to his Tweet.
“I genuinely did not hear him”, Kephrii wrote in regard to the suspicious knife kills on him, “I haven't played CS in about 3 years. Afterward I begged my team to swap me to A side since he kept going B. This tournament gives 1 point for an Elim, 2 Points for an Assist, & 5 Points for a Knife. I am a huge anticheat advocate; I sadly just suck”.
More news about the alleged cheating will surely follow over the coming weeks, but as we wrote earlier, both Gale and Kephrii were already removed from the ReadyUp CS:GO Invitational after Lucky’s Tweet.