The Issuing of Unfair Bans - the plight of coaches like Guerri and Robban

 Preface 

    In the page about coaches being banned, I mentioned two cases where I felt that the coaches did not deserve to be banned. In this page, I shall go into detail about Guerri's and Robban's cases and explain why I believe they should not be banned. 

Case 1: Guerri

    As I said previously, Guerri was issued a ban of 4 months for allegedly abusing the bug on two separate occasions. Both occasions took place during season 7 of the Esports Champion Series (referred to as ECS Season 7). One instance was against compLexity Gaming on the map Mirage, and the other was against Luminosity Gaming on the map Train. Guerri uploaded a 35 minute youtube video explaining both instances, and though it is in Portuguese, there are english subtitles. From the video, here is what I have gathered. 

First match: Mirage against compLexity Gaming

    Mid on Mirage, photo courtesy of EarlyGame

     For the first match, which was against compLexity, Guerri's spectating position was in the middle of the map (the callout is called mid). He saw this, and realizing something was up (but not knowing what exactly was happening), decided to tab out of the game so that he could not see his screen. He chose to go stand behind his team and watch their perspectives from directly behind their screens. Throughout the game, Guerri kept coming back to his computer and checking to see if it had been fixed, but his perspective never moved from the middle of the map. 

    For this match, there are multiple reasons why I feel that he should not be penalized for experiencing this bug. 

    First off, you can tell from the video recording his perspective that he is tabbed out of the game and that the game is not up on his screen because the he can see the players are moving very erratically and slow (since the game is not up on his screen, the display glitches.) If you watch the video, you can see that for most of the match, the players movement seems robotic. The only times where normal movement can be observed are the few instances where Guerri tabs back in to check if it has been fixed. 

    Next, at no point during the match does Guerri tell his teammates what is happening in order to preserve the integrity of the game. There were times where Guerri tabbed back into the game to check if it had been fixed while rounds were ongoing. He saw the enemy teams' positions around mid, but he did not say anything to his team (if you want to see for yourself, it is around the 16 minute mark that Guerri shows this). This shows that Guerri possesses serious integrity and respect for the competitive scene. 

Lastly, his statement that he left his PC to go stand behind his players when he noticed what was going on can be corroborated by listening to the team's voice communications. You can hear Guerri's voice coming through the mics of his players rather than his own mic. This solidifies the claim that Guerri did everything he could to ensure there were no unfair advantages for his team. 

Second match: Train against Luminosity Gaming

    Bombsite A on Train, photo courtesy of Liquipedia

    For the second match that Guerri experienced the bug, it was on Train against Luminosity Gaming. This time, the camera position was located above bombsite A. Just like the match against compLexity Gaming, Guerri did not tell his team any info. During the pistol round (the first round of the game), Guerri's spectator position was above bombsite A. His team was going to bombsite B, and since Guerri saw no one on A, he knew that his team was going to be facing a full stack of players on bomb site B (as opposed to normal counter-terrorist play, where some players go to bombsite A and some go to B). Despite knowing that his team was about to enter a situation where they would be at a disadvantage, Guerri did not say anything to them. Furia managed to win the round, only it was because they outplayed the enemy team, not because of any unfair advantage. After the first round, Guerri urged his teammates to call a technical timeout. He didn't tell them why, which is more proof that Guerri holds competitive integrity in very high regard. You can hear the confusion and desperation in his voice when he was urging his teammates to call a technical timeout (around 27:50 in the video). Once the technical timeout had been initiated, Guerri restarted his game. Upon reentering the match, he saw that his camera position was now a third-person view behind one of his players, rather than what it should've been: a first person view. When he saw this, he immediately alt-tabbed out of the game so that he couldn't potentially take advantage of this camera position unintentionally. It was only for this round (which was the second round) that Guerri had the third-person view. Following this round, everything went back to normal.

Despite not using the bug to his advantage, Guerri was still issued a ban, even though he did all he could in order to preserve integrity within each match. 

Case 2: Robban

    Alternate perspective of Bombsite A on Train, photo

    courtesy of counterstrike.net

In the case of Robban, he was issued a ban of 5.5 months for allegedly abusing the bug against Astralis in 2017 during season 3 of the Esports Champion Series. Robban gave his side of the story in a TwitLonger post published to his twitter, you can see it here. This match took place on the map called Train, and much like in Guerri's situation, the spectator position was above Bombsite A. When Robban encountered the bug, he assumed that it would fix itself once the game started. Once the game started and he saw that nothing had changed, he decided to do what he thought at the time to be the best option: he informs his team of the glitch, and mutes his microphone for the entirety of the match so that there is no way his team could have an unfair advantage. This also may have put his team at a disadvantage - he could not communicate with them at all, even if he didn't talk about what he saw from his perspective. He did this because he did not want to risk the possibility of inadvertently giving his team an unfair advantage by saying the wrong thing. His team took a devastating loss - 1-16. It is very rare for matches to end in this fashion when both teams are top tier-1 teams, as there's usually much more competition. The fact that FaZe lost the match in such a clean sweep is evidence that the bug was not abused to give FaZe an unfair advantage. 

After this match, they played on the map called Nuke and nothing was amiss. This led Robban to believe it was just a one time occurrence. However, the next day, during another match, it happened again. Since he had already experienced it once, he decided to immediately talk to the administrator and explained the bug. After he spoke to the admin, he reconnected, and it was back to normal. He didn't experience the bug again. Following the match, he spoke to the administrator again and stressed that this bug needs to be examined ASAP, because he was scared that someone else may experience the same bug and would abuse it rather than play fair like he did. He was right, as made evident by the dozens of coaches who have been banned and are still being banned for abusing the bug. 

Conclusion

While there have been many coaches whose bans have been justified, there are coaches like Guerri of FURIA Esports and Robban of FaZe Clan whose bans are unjust due to them clearly not abusing the bug. More and more coaches are getting banned each day as matches are reviewed, who knows how many have been banned unfairly like Guerri and Robban?