More decisive evidence and punishments would come half a year later, after an expository article was published by esports journalist Richard Lewis.
[1] The event resulted in the bans of six North American players along with one associated person by the game's developer and organizer of Counter-Strike's Major tournaments, Valve.
The introduction of the Arms Deal update to Global Offensive in August 2013 added cosmetic items termed "skins"[4] to the game.
Skins became a form of virtual currency, with some items like special cosmetic knives worth thousands of United States dollars.
Outside of the United States, several sites arose to allow users to bet with direct cash funds on the result of matches from games like Global Offensive.
Other match-ups against the same team had resulted in victories, and the decisive nature of the loss drew attention, particularly regarding the strange strategies employed by iBUYPOWER, such as attempting to carry out kills with the knife, a weapon usually only used as a bad manners move.
Other contemporary analyses blamed travel issues — iBUYPOWER had just played at the ESL One Cologne 2014 major tournament, and could have been exhausted after — and unfamiliarity with the map.
In January 2015, the case resurfaced when a former girlfriend of an iBUYPOWER player posted a string of incriminating text messages between herself and Derek "dboorn" Boorn.
The messages also revealed the identity of the individual who placed the bets on the team: Duc "cud" Pham, a player who was prominent in the trading and skin gambling communities.
[11] On 26 January 2015, Valve issued a blog post on the official Counter-Strike webpage, titled "Integrity and Fair Play", which announced the permanent bans of six players - cud, dboorn, DaZeD, steel, swag, AZK, as well as another part-owner of the NetCodeGuides.com platform, Casey Foster - from all future Valve-sponsored professional tournaments.
Valve's official release confirmed that "a substantial number of high valued items" were transferred from accounts owned by Pham to iBUYPOWER players and Foster.
[20] DreamHack followed suit for its own events, except for Valve majors, on September 6, bringing itself in line with guidelines issued by the Esports Integrity Coalition.
[23][24] swag was signed by Cloud9 as its new analyst and streamer, occasionally playing as a stand-in player during non-Valve tournaments; he was part of the team until August 2017.
Steel in particular found major success in VALORANT, playing under organizations such as 100 Thieves and T1, helping claim multiple tournament victories for the teams.
[citation needed] The event is considered by many in the community as having had a negative impact on North American professional CS:GO landscape.