Drain the swamp.

While the top of Counter-Strike is a magical place full of fantastic individuals and other… lies, below the tip of the iceberg is a festering hellhole beneath the water.

Nobody will be surprised by this, and neither will they be surprised by ESIC’s slow, frustrating and occasionally bizarre rulings.

Few will be upset by the banning of former Akuma player SENSEi, who was a controversial figure even before this. He was a suspected cheater on Akuma, who has actually been banned for offences that occurred before he rose to prominence in 2021.

Timely ban as ever, ESIC.

THRONE, DarkS1DE (terrible name by the way) and nat1ve were the other of his teammates banned. We don’t know who they are, and we couldn’t really care any less. You get what you fu…

All of them were caught for attempting to engage in match-fixing activities at “several LAN events”, and have been banned for two years. Good riddance.

So why, pray tell, has joel not been banned for as long?

The Swede was suspended provisionally, and ‘failed to provide evidence to the contrary’ of the charges levelled against him, but apparently he’s a nice lad and helped them investigate his cheating, so it’s all good.

He still got banned, though. All the way ‘til the 6th of January. 2024. A whole month. Oh, and five days.

He’s basically been given Christmas off. He’s done the classic Kevin Nolan fifth yellow on the 19th December to get Boxing Day off.

In the pursuit of fairness, you should read joel’s full confession and explanation, instead of only our classically sardonic spiel.