Evil Geniuses player tied to accounts banned for cheating and ban evasion
Evil Geniuses' recently signed women's team have been highly successful in the group stage of ESL Impact League Season 2 North America, with the team seemingly set to clinch a spot in the Jönköping LAN finals. However, the team's work may unravel due to ban evasion and cheating charges affecting one of their players — Kiki "PiggyKiki" Long.
Sources from within the women's scene informed Dust2.us of three accounts tied to the player that currently have permanent bans for ban evasion on FACEIT. The first account, which is tied to the Steam account PiggyKiki uses for ESL Impact League, was banned two years ago in early October, Dust2.us understands.
The second account, which appears to have become PiggyKiki's main account, was recently banned in late September. Importantly, this steam account is friends with the first Steam account and has also pugged with a number of EG Female members including coach Louis "onter" Contreras and Anna "garden" Gutierrez.
There is also a third FACEIT account with a ban dating back to October 2020. While Dust2.us is unable to definitively verify it is PiggyKiki's, this third account is friends with the account PiggyKiki uses for ESL Impact (Account #1). This third account also played at least eleven matches on FACEIT with PiggyKiki's first account, which likely rules out any chance encounters between the two accounts.
While the presence of a ban for ban evasion on FACEIT doesn't explicitly confirm that PiggyKiki's accounts were cheating, Dust2.us has confirmed with sources within FACEIT that these type of bans are only applied in response to cheating bans on alternative accounts. Additionally, FACEIT's support page states "Any user caught evading a cheating ban shall be permanently banned from playing or making a new FACEIT account."
Outside of the moral and ethical dilemma of employing a player who has been credibly accused of cheating, PiggyKiki's future as an Evil Geniuses' player may be limited by the recent completion of the ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) merger. When ESL and FACEIT's acquisition by Savvy Gaming Group was initially announced in January, ESEA announced in a blog post that ESEA and FACEIT would mirror bans on both platforms. At the time of publication, Dust2.us understands from sources within ESL that conversations have not started on mirroring bans, however it is a long-term goal of EFG.
While the bans haven't been merged, there is some precedent for the punishment potentially carrying over. In the general rulebook for ESL Impact, clause 1.4.3 notes that while bans from outside the ESL Impact League "do not normally apply towards ESL Impact CS:GO events, except when the punishment has been awarded for cheating."
Dust2.us reached out to PiggyKiki for comment on the player's ties to these banned accounts. PiggyKiki responded with:
Idk actually
After asking if she would like to make a more detailed statement to explain the banned accounts she did not respond by the time of publication.
Dust2.us also reached out to Evil Geniuses for comment on the player's ties to the banned accounts. A representative of Evil Geniuses told Dust2.us the organization was unavailable for comment by the time of publication.
ESL was also reached out to for context regarding the ban and how it could impact Evil Geniuses Female's eligibility. ESL did not respond to comment by the time of publication.
