Following an investigation by the Daily Dot that exposed two top professional Counter Strike teams in a match fixing scandal, Valve has banned said teams from all further sponsored activities.
The bans prevent all players from teams iBUYPOWER, NetCodeGuides.com, and Team Torqued from participating in any Valve-sponsored events. The players in question include:
- Duc “cud” Pham
- Derek “dboorn” Boorn
- Casey Foster
- Sam “Dazed” Marine
- Braxton “swag” Pierce
- Keven “AZK” Larivière
- Joshua “Steel” Nissan
Valve also issued a warning that “Professional players, their managers, and teams’ organization staff, should under no circumstances gamble on CS:GO matches, associate with high volume CS:GO gamblers, or deliver information to others that might influence their CS:GO bets.”
The bans come at a particularly inconvenient time for Team Torqued, which consists of many former iBUYPOWER members, as eSports organization Major League Gaming had recently partnered with them. Torque were the first professional Counter Strike team to partner with MLG to exclusively stream through them, but in light of the above developments, that is likely to change.