Steve Dudenhoeffer and Michal Slowinski awarded Panel's Choice award at Esports Awards 2020
The Esports Awards for 2020 concluded last night and of the 32 categories awarded two of the three representatives from the CS:GO community were Steve Dudenhoeffer and Michal Slowinski, who received the Panel's Choice Award for their work preserving the competitive integrity of CS:GO throughout this year. Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill rounded out the CS:GO contingent, he took home the prize for Esports Analyst of the Year.
Dudenhoeffer and Slowinski are responsible for sifting through thousands of hours worth of data to uncover coaches that abused the game-breaking bug in official matches. The exploit enabled the spectator to sit frozen at a fixed position on the map and move their camera around to see what was happening in real time, regardless of the line of sight of their players in the server.
37 coaches have been banned for abusing the bug, with Sergey "lmbt" Bezhanov being the only one who was able to successfully appeal after providing sufficient evidence that he self reported all of the incidents and disconnected from the four matches that he was flagged for in a timely fashion. No North American coaches have been implicated in the scandal to date, though the investigation remains "open and transparent" according to a report by HLTV.
Dudenhoeffer, a software development manager at ESEA, neglected to take any payment from tournament organizers, the GoFundMe, or anyone else for his efforts, citing what he believed to be an ethical conflict of interest with his full-time position at ESEA as his reasoning.
He instead requested that his share of the donations either be given to Slowinski, who was previously the head referee for ESL CS:GO but is now an unsalaried freelancer, or donated to Gamers Outreach.
