Former NIP analyst provides key insight in ESIC ban reversal
Earlier today, Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu announced on Twitter that the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) had lifted his provisional suspension and did not intend on further sanctioning the Brazilian coach for his use of the incredibly rare "free-roam coach bug" in 2018 against The Imperial. As part of the case his lawyer presented to ESIC, peacemaker presented a video created by Canadian analyst and YouTuber Danny "mahone" Hsieh where he argued "there is no clear evidence that the Heroic players used any information that could be obtained through peacemaker's POV."
The crux of mahone's argument, which can be seen in full in his excellent video below, is that while he is unable to make a value judgment about peacemaker electing to fly around with the bug, everything that happened in the round was exceedingly normal at a pro level of play.
In the round, Heroic's players are seen reacting almost perfectly to The Imperial's Inferno Apartments hold, with Andreas "MODDII" Fridh avoiding the ambush before himself and Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer clear it thus setting up a 4v2 situation and a round win. Despite it appearing as if peacemaker is observing this situation and then possibly passing the information along, mahone points out that sound cues made by Rokas "EspiranTo" Milasauskas are more than enough to clue in a pro player of MODDII's experience that The Imperial duo were stacked up in Apartments.
Another piece of evidence mahone presents to show how the round likely played out as normal is that if Nikolaj "niko" Kristensen was really being fed info by peacemaker, his attempted wallbang would've been far more accurate and could have also prevented EspiranTo from charging down the stairs to kill MODDII, which was a definite possibility in that round based on their setup.
Overall with these two examples and other minor ones, mahone made a strong case for peacemaker being able to claim he was blindsided by the bug and did not use it to help out his Scandinavian comrades. The fact that he has been unbanned on this basis raises more questions than it answers however, as ESIC has previously been very firms in their rulings that they judge players based on their failure to pause the game immediately and report them rather than if the bug provided any acute or minor advantage. While ESIC have yet to comment on peacemaker seeming acquittal it is a rather confusing situation for the Commission to change their approach some dramatically in the three weeks since their last public update. This potential new approach is also likely to rub some coaches the wrong way who have argued for leniency based on gaining no advantage when the original coach bug was triggered in the past.
Unfortunately for ESIC, this is the latest in a long line of blunders, miscommunications, and missteps that have plagued the group since starting the massive undertaking of investigating the coach bug alongside the NA and AU matchfixing scandals.
