Robert Dahlström · @FaZeRobbaN
28th Sep 2020 from TwitLonger
My side of the bug abuse story
Hello,
I want to explain today's announcement from my point of view as I feel this is totally unfair.
When the news came out that there was a coach bug I was not worried at all, as I know I never cheated and never will.
I then heard I was under investigation of bug abuse. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what actually happened in 2017, and feel it's important for me to share with you what exactly took place.
I want to first share my opinion on something - and I think a lot of people will agree with me on this - abusing a bug is very different from being stuck in a bug that you did not try to get. If someone actually uses the bug to their advantage, provides their team with information from the bug, that is obviously straight up cheating and something I did not do.
So here is what happened:
I joined the server during an ECS match, directly joined the coach slot and I see that my point of view is stuck over A-Site on train. I am then reconnecting a few times and still stuck. The players join and the match is about to start and I think that my view will go back to my team when they start the match, as there is always a restart before the match goes live.
It’s not happening and I'm still stuck, so at that point I make what I consider to be an honorable decision and tell my team I have this view, mute my microphone and not talk at all during this full map.
We lost this match 16-1. It’s actually one of the few maps we lost that season as we ended up winning ECS Season 3 Europe.
After that map we moved on to Nuke and everything was normal. I thought it was a one time thing and either the Faceit anti cheat program bug or whatever, no idea.
The following day we have another match and I get this view again. I now figure it’s not a one time thing, it’s a real bug. I immediately write the admin directly that I had the same bug the match before, and now again. I clearly state exactly which view I had the match before and that I now have the same view. This time I reconnect after my players joined and it works fine. After this time, I don’t think I ever see it again. I also tell the admin immediately that they have to look into this, and that I’m worried that not everyone will play fair and some might actually abuse this. Yes, I have screenshots saved from this conversation.
I did not ask for this advantage and tried to get rid of this view before the match started. In the heat of the moment, I felt like the most fair decision was to mute my mic and not provide any info to my team, as I was stuck in that view and watched the match from this angle, which sucked as I couldn’t even say anything at all. I could not help my team.
For someone with an understanding of CS, you can see I’m not abusing this bug. The tactics is called in freezetime by our IGL and is not changed from the view I have.
Now, three years later, I am getting punished for a bug that I did not want, tried to get rid of before the match, muted myself in an effort to be fair, and immediately wrote about it with concern to the admin.
Unfortunately, some of you might still think I abused this bug. I’ve been around the CS community for 20 years more or less, see myself as a very loyal guy... and now my name is listed among others who actually abused and cheated, which makes me feel sick. I feel I’m being punished for something I did not do and that it should be obvious in my case.
Looking back on the situation, I could have made a different decision and either quit the game or tech pause, which would be the most obvious pick here. In hindsight I’m even asking myself why I did not do that as I would not be in this situation. But at the time, I truly felt the decision I made was fair and respectful.
I really hope most of you out there will understand. Apologies go to @FaZeClan for having our brand involved with this investigation.
RobbaN