CS2 Pro “nifee” Handed 4-Year ESIC Ban for Match Fixing

A professional Counter-Strike 2 player has been handed a four-year ban for match fixing at the ESL Pro League by the Esports Integrity Commission after the conclusion of an investigation.

21-year-old Ukrainian rifler Dmytro “nifee” Tediashvili of Inner Circle was subjected to an investigation where his repeated deaths to Molotovs and grenades were found to be too strange for competitive play. Expert reviewers confirmed that these decisions were designed in line with the betting market odds, where suspicious bets were placed from new, inactive, and high-value accounts around the time of the incidents.

Inner Circle was quick to distance itself from the actions of nifee after the verdict was passed by ESIC. They have claimed these were isolated events that took place in the player’s personal capacity, and therefore assert that the organization or the team was unaware of his intentions during the game.

From initially denying all the allegations and rejecting legal representation, nifee cooperated with ESIC, which helped cut his ban from an initial 5 to 4 years. The ban will now prevent nifee from playing at any ESIC partnered events for the next 4 years, which essentially kills his CS2 career moving forward. He had what many dreamt of, but his talent will be remembered as nothing more than a cautionary tale.

Counter-Strike 2 is arguably the biggest esports title in the world, and its clean image often gets tainted by actions like this; not only does it impact the ecosystem as a whole, but it also ruins the integrity of honest players and organizations who were caught in the crossfire.