A young player in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has now filed a lawsuit against Valve. Because of a youthful indiscretion, a permanent ban on his professional career is in the way. He is seeking damages from Valve.
Where does the information come from? The information is based on a report from the site DBLTAP. They say they have documents regarding the lawsuit of the 18-year-old Finnish player Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen against the Valve Corporation. They also obtained a statement from the players’ association.
Account sold when he was 14, preventing pro career
This is the situation: The player says that in 2015, when he was 14 years old, he bought a second copy of CS:GO to play along with a friend at a LAN event. After the LAN, he sold the secondary account to his friend. However, that account later received a VAC ban.
A “VAC ban” (Valve Anti-Cheat System) affects the player as a person, not the account, and excludes him from playing on official servers in the future. This ban is permanent and non-negotiable.
4 years later, in 2019, Jamppi had the opportunity to sign with OG and become a pro in CS:GO. OG is a professional Danish esports team that wanted to enter CS:GO after successes in Dota 2 and was looking for a team.
But because Jamppi had this old VAC ban, he could not sign with OG, and they hired another player for the AWP position.
This is the player’s lawsuit: He says he reached out to Valve to clear his name and to get rid of the ban on the sold account. But Valve informed him that the ban would remain in place and Jamppi would still be excluded from tournaments supported by Valve. Further attempts by Jamppi to contact Valve have failed.
According to the report, the player is now suing Valve for damages for the money he lost due to the missed professional contract.
This is what Valve says: Nothing at all. They are not making a statement.
Fairness of the game vs. youthful indiscretions
This is what the players’ representation says: The statement from the players’ association, CSPPA, shows the difficulty of the situation:
- On one hand, the “integrity of the game is of utmost importance” – everyone wants a fair game
- On the other hand, they desire fair punishments: Some players made mistakes at a very young age, and this should be taken into consideration
However, the players’ association wants to stay out of the specific case because it does not know all the facts and because Jamppi has decided to hire a Finnish lawyer as an individual.
Where Jamppi wants to go, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliw has been for several years. He is considered one of the best CS:GO players in the world. Nevertheless, even such a world-class player has his problems: s1mple has been repeatedly banned by Twitch and cannot understand why.
The title image is sourced from win.gg.
