Coach Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen has now been banned for 2 years. He is accused of leaking his team’s secret plans, Heroic, to a competitor during a tournament in Cologne. Allegedly, he had been preparing for his transfer. This is the second major scandal in the e-sport of CS:GO within a few months.
This is the coach:
- The 30-year-old Dane Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen was a professional in Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for 11 years before becoming a coach in 2020.
- As a coach, it did not go well; he received a ban in September 2020 for allegedly exploiting the “Coaching Exploit”. This was a major e-sport scandal in CS:GO.
- Shortly after the ban expired, he was fired by his team Heroic. Serious allegations have emerged against him.
This was the accusation from his team: We reported on MeinMMO in July 2021 that Heroic has fired their coach Hunden and intends to sue him.
The accusation was: Hunden transferred secret strategies of his team to a competitor during the IEM Cologne in Cologne, a tournament with a prize pool of $972,000. He had blocked access to the folder with the team strategies for his own team members.
HUNDEN denied this. He said he never did such a thing.
2 years exclusion from major tournaments in CS:GO
That is now the verdict: The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) has dealt with the case. They conducted an investigation.
They have concluded that HUNDEN will be banned for 2 years. He can no longer participate in tournaments organized by members of the ESIC. He is banned from ESL, Dreamhack and BLAST tournaments.
In principle, this amounts to a professional ban for the CS:GO coach.
Coach allegedly wanted a job at a new team – and betrayed his old team because of it
What did the investigation reveal? The investigation found that HUNDEN apparently planned a transfer to another team and wanted to share the strategies of Heroic with the other team.
The name of the team is not public. However, the e-sports site Dotesports reported that the team could be Astralis, who allegedly had HUNDEN in mind as a coach.
This is what HUNDEN says: In an interview, HUNDEN felt he was unjustly banned. He said the committee did not listen to his side of the story and threatened to ban him for 5 years if he appealed the ruling.
The committee denies this. They state that HUNDEN failed to counter the evidence against him in any way, although he was given the opportunity to do so.
This is the aftermath of the case: HUNDEN seems to want to take revenge on his team Heroic. He claims that the team members were aware of the “Coaching Exploit” for which he and other coaches were banned (via dotesports).
However, the team denies this.
The “Coaching Exploit” was the last major e-sports scandal that shook CS:GO. It was just a few months ago. Such scandals seem to threaten the integrity of e-sports:
In CS:GO, 37 coaches are banned for cheating – it’s already being referred to as “The Purge”
