Wherever there’s competition and money involved, you can bet there’ll be people looking for shortcuts. And as we all know far too well, Counter-Strike is no exception.

This week, we’ve hit the jackpot. On one side, an alleged match-fixing scandal out of China, and on the other, fresh accusations of radar hacking deep in the jungle of online CS.

Both stories are a mess, but we’ll try our best to break them down for you.

So, let’s start with somebody we used to know. Sorry, we had to drop that one in.

It all began with a now-deleted Reddit thread, which outlined claims made by a Chinese whistleblower. He exposed an alleged match-fixing ring in Chinese CS, with former Rare Atom and TYLOO player somebody and his cousin Cheng Peng (Mr. C) at the center of it.

According to the whistleblower, somebody tried to recruit multiple players into the scheme. One of them was BOROS, who later came forward to confirm that somebody approached him with an offer to fix matches.

Mr. C was said to be the mastermind behind the operation, an already notorious name in the Chinese scene for all the wrong reasons. He reportedly pulled the strings behind two organizations previously hit with match-fixing bans: Wings Up and, more recently, ATOX.

Match-fixing, bribery, and illegal betting have long been problems across Asia, so these revelations aren’t exactly shocking.

And as if a massive match-fixing scandal wasn’t enough to show just how rotten competitive Counter-Strike can be, we also got a fresh dose of radar hacks to really brighten the mood.

The drama exploded on Twitter when birdfromsky, Keoz, and kONO’s coach Juve accused SENZA of cheating, backing it up with a long list of very suspicious clips.

Things escalated when a photo surfaced, allegedly showing byek’s setup, with a phone running a radar tucked under the monitor.

The org quickly denied everything, claiming the photo was fake and that the player on the broadcast cam wasn’t actually byek, but some unknown person. What the f-ck?

Unsurprisingly, the Twitter detectives weren’t buying it, so they got on the case.

Apparently, byek was running a fake webcam setup. A friend sat at the PC, broadcasting a screencast to make it look like he was playing, while the real byek used radar cheats freely.

In response, SENZA announced an “internal investigation”, later removing the player from the active lineup and fining him for $30.5k.

Overall, these are just two examples of the all-too-common practices that plague the game we love and further hurt an already fragile system.

But as long as whistleblowers and those willing to investigate and expose these scandals exist, there’s still hope.