The Real Story Behind the Unsportsmanlike Conduct Ban

We were supposed to play team 4not on de_tuscan two weeks ago, during the de_tuscan week. The scores were 3-0 for us before the server got hit by a DDoS Attack. As we all know, this has been a recurring theme and there is nothing in place to prevent this from happening, nor is there any way to play on a private IP.

We contacted 4not for a reschedule and set it up for last week at 9h30 on Wednesday night. Since the match scores were 3-0 for us, we needed an admin to Match Medic it. There is apparently only one person who can Match Medic servers: Shooter. We are told that the server will be set up for us, but that Shooter might be a little bit late (up to “15 minutes” I was told). We waited and waited and soon enough the time was 10h30. Team 4not was unable to play at that time so instead of playing it that night, we agreed to reschedule it to the following week.

This is where everything went down. We were all on and ready to play the match when Frozt was hit by an emergency. Not really an emergency, but real life problems instead. His mother was supposed to be picked up by his father from the airport. His father was stuck at work and was unable to pick up Frozt’s mother, so Frozt had to go do it himself. The flight ended up being delayed by an hour, which in turned caused Frozt to be delayed by an hour. During this entire time, he was in contact with us and we were in contact with Team 4not. We requested a match delay or reschedule, but they refused. They listed a bunch of excuses including “we have lives” and “we have to be up at 5h”. So what do they make us do? They make us 4v5 the match. Ok, no biggie. We told Frozt to step on it and we were starting without him.

In the ESEA CSS Rules, it says that the match must be started by 20 minutes after the scheduled start time. Great, we started by 9h50. No problems there. Monte lagged out during a 2v2 round which was leaning in our favour. In the ESEA CSS rules, it says that we are allowed 1x 5 minute pause during regulation rounds during the freezetime of the following round for a lag-out. Great, we paused the match and went live within 5 minutes, as soon as Monte reconnected to the server and to mumble.

During this entire time, Dazed was complaining about having fps drops to 30fps and as a result, his mouse movements were delayed and otherwise caused an unplayable scenario for him. At half time, we read the rules pertaining to breaks at half time. Nowhere in the rules does it say anything about needing to start the match immediately. We figured that it would be alright to troubleshoot his issues before we went live. During this time I was asking him if he had background programs open, if the mouse issue happened in windowed mode and fullscreen, etc. Dazed restarted his computer and came back and still had the issue. Again, there was nothing in the rules saying that we could not troubleshoot computer issues. I was speaking with SamBuca on Skype this entire time and was telling him that I was trolling them by saying “it must be you guys” regarding the ready up process. It got to the point where we just said “fuck it, let’s play” and typed “.ready”. By this time, the server had passed some point in time where it ceased to function; the server message when you typed “.ready” said that the match took too long to start and that we need to contact an admin to have it set up.

During this entire time that the server was bugged out and we needed to contact an admin, Team 4not was urging an admin to forfeit us. I do not know what conversation went on between them, but it seemed like the admins were looking solely at text logs and didn’t try contacting us at all. Not once did an admin tell us that we had to ready up, and not once did an admin ask for our side of the story. We spent half an hour asking 4not to speak to an admin to have the server re-assigned so that we could start 4v5 with Dazed’s computer issues. They flat-out rejected our request and kept pushing an admin to make a decision.

Was there any malicious intent to have the server do this to us? No. Did we even know that the server would do that from a 9 minute break? No, we did not. Should this be our fault or the fault of the ESEA server / client / admin? Apparently it is our fault. More specifically mine and Dazed’s for refusing to ready up in a 4v5 situation since it was more like a 3v5 situation.

The News post reads “Intentionally delaying the start of a match is a violation of the ESEA League Invite Conduct Policy, and will not be accepted. ESEA works hard with the community to increase the level of competition and professionalism in all invite divisions, and we strive to create a player and fan friendly league to further professional Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2.”

Please explain to me how forcing an Invite team that is in a race for seedings and playoff contention to play a match 4v5 “increasing the level of competition and professionalism”? Apparently troubleshooting computer issues is unacceptable but refusing to reschedule a match is professional and increases the level of competition.

What really bugs me is not that I am banned for any period of time, or that we lost the match to 4not, but rather that we did not deliberately break any rules (that don’t even exist, mind you) but got an “unsportsmanlike conduct” ban instead of “Invite Conduct Policy” which is a 5 day shorter ban, which would permit us to play our upcoming matches including the one versus Dynamic. How is ESEA “increasing the level of competition” by making a top seed team forfeit out their remaining 3 matches and losing a potential second seed spot?

Another excerpt from the ESEA News article reads “Torqued intentionally did not ready up for the second half of the match, and so ESEA awarded Team 4Not with a forfeit win in the match. steel_ and Dazed were issued an additional seven day ban for unsportsmanlike conduct because they did not attempt to ready up during the match and afterwards misrepresented why. The two players insisted that they attempted to ready up, but after careful review of server logs, there was no record of them attempting to do so.”

If I am reading this correctly, it is suggesting that we misrepresented why to an admin. This is a total lie. Dazed actually had fps drops during the first half and at half time and we were actually troubleshooting it. No chat logs can prove otherwise. Again, no admin even tried to contact us to ready up nor did they ask for our side of the story until after 4 of us were banned. If you want me to screenshot the skype conversation with SamBuca, granted his permission, I will gladly post evidence to prove that I was telling him I was just trolling with the ready up situation. It’s unfortunate that I was not recording a local xsplit file or mumble recording to excuse our actual conversations, but it is funny to see bans given out without being present and speaking to teams

This was part of the e-mail from shooter: “We feel that you abused the normal duration between halves”. I was unaware that there was a normal duration between halves — again, there was nothing in the rules about half-time conduct.