Invictus Aquilas · @InvictusAquilas
15th Oct 2017 from TwitLonger
Official Statement on ELEAGUE European Open Qualifier by CEVO
Hello everyone,
First of all, I would like to thank everyone that responded and came to our side yesterday regarding the legitimacy of the ban on “CIOCARDAU” by CEVO. When it comes to events and organizers, it feels only we as a community coming together can become the pressure than requires them to actually analyse the situations before rushing to a decision.
I would like to talk about what has happened over the past few days in regards to not just our team but rather how many teams have been treated and ignored. How because of a rushed decision based off what people thought looked “unnatural” we have been denied any chance to qualify for the EU Minor.
Yesterday during the EU Minor Qualifiers, our team was winning 15 – 8 when CEVO manually banned our player Ciocardau. Now, we stand firm against the accusations of our player however we will say one thing, if a player was to be cheating or suspected of cheating. We would expect that once the game ends, an admin would pause the bracket, download and analyse a demo with multiple others then act / make a decision together after having everything in front of them. Instead, they acted out in the game during a point where we had a chance to win and progress. CEVO seemed to be under the “pressure of professional players from an opposing team” as well as community members who are making decisions that a player cannot have his own style because he is “unknown”
We believe this is a huge breach of trust and responsibility from CEVO towards not only the community but also ELEAGUE in regards to hosting the qualifiers for one of the only two majors of next year. This act not only affects us but if it happens to us, what about other upcoming possible players who have dedicated years to practice unknown? These players could be banned. Now, yes, we do feel we are victims in this regard because the whole event has become a circus, even after the CIS Minor where banned players were allowed to play. We would like you, the community to view our players POV demo from the entire tournament sets. Anyone and everyone can watch it and review it. We welcome anyone to attempt to find clear evidence that our player is cheating.
At the same time, yesterday we provided some demos from multiple other games without context. We would like to apologise for this. Our aim was to provide examples of Ciocardau using this style in multiple matches. This is just naturally how he plays and we failed to convey this clearly yesterday. Like we’ve said above, we appeal to you the community to view this and speak out. If it comes to light that in fact our player was cheating, we would be without a doubt the first to act and remove the player however we stand behind his unique style and we have observed his growth for a long time, we believe in him and we hope you come to believe in him in the future and support us too.
Since the incident has occurred, we have approached multiple sites to get our voice out there and it has been made aware to us that certain people have been in fact informed this ban was not a “Manual ban” yet CEVO refuses to publicly make this claim and back it up with evidence. When we were made aware of this, this was something that upset us profoundly because you can clearly see by the way it took place that it was a manual ban much like other bans during the qualifier. I would like to ask you the community and any professional, how can a claim be made privately to influential people but not stated publicly when it affects the entire career of a player.
We would like to give a huge thank you to everyone that has supported us so far, a few examples are here:
-NBK – https://twitter.com/G2NBK/status/919251494737797122
-BX3 player – https://twitter.com/rosehcsgo/status/919278330351931392
-RegnaM & LDLC Alex - https://twitter.com/RegnaM/status/919515344737316864
-Devilwalk - https://twitter.com/DevilwalkCSGOD/status/919548860317470720
https://twitter.com/Hypecsgoo/status/919287449691488257
https://twitter.com/kalinkaN1/status/919265922233356288
https://twitter.com/TheMaelk/status/919292206585925632
We are fully aware that the chances of us proceeding forwards within the tournament are low and that CEVO are unlikely to respond to the accusations, it’s the least of our concerns. We want the community to come forwards and make a stance against an organiser being able to pull such a stunt during the qualifiers for one of the biggest events of the year. We also want to remind you that while all these “Bans” are happening in the EU Qualifier, the disputes that took place in the CIS qualifiers have also yet to be addressed. Valve, ELEAGUE and Gfinity, we ask you address these concerns because from this time…. There isn’t a single team that feels the qualifiers are a success in these two regions and we’re suddenly going backwards in the level of events that our scene provides.
Mihai Uzum
CEO & Founder
Invictus Aquilas