CSGO Coaching Bug Explained

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the past few months, chances are that you’re already aware of the infamous ‘spectator bug’ that has made it to the headlines on multiple occasions recently and is the reason behind the bans of several renowned CSGO coaches in the professional scene.

WHAT IS THE COACHING BUG?

The coaching bug allowed coaches of CSGO teams to be stuck as a spectator in certain parts of the map while a match was underway, providing them with full vision around the area. Coaches abusing the bug could gain information on the enemy team’s whereabouts, economy, and tactics which would otherwise be unobtainable.

Needless to say, this bug could easily give players of one team an unfair advantage against the other. Coaches from big organisations were accused of abusing the bug on one or more occasions, which led to an elaborate investigation by the ESIC.

CONSEQUENCES

Coaches who abused the bug didn’t go off unpunished. On September 1st, ESL announced that they were temporarily banning “dead”, “HUNDEN”, and “MechanoGun”, who are the coaches of MiBR, Heroic, and GamerLegion respectively for abusing the bug in tournament games.

But the wave of bans was just starting back then. On September 4th, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) launched investigations into the abuse of the spectator bug in CSGO and worked alongside Michal Slowinski, the discoverer of this exploit, to hunt down coaches who abused the bug in professional games. Few weeks after the announcement, on September 28th, the ESIC issued bans 37 CSGO coaches who were found to have abused the bug in the past.

What’s even more shocking is the fact that according to ESIC, only 20% of the investigation has been concluded till now, which means, there are possibly a lot more bans to come. ESIC claimed that they’ll publish a detailed report towards the end of October to close the investigation.

Here’s a list of all the coaches banned in the investigation as of yet (Source: HLTV)

Sr. NoNameDuration
1Slaava “⁠Twista⁠” Räsänen 15.75 months
2Peter “⁠casle⁠” Sørensen 10 months
3Rodrigo “⁠dinamo⁠” Haro10 months
4Arno “⁠ArnoZ1K4⁠” Junior10 months
5Allan “⁠Rejin⁠” Petersen 19.8 months
6Eliomar “glou” Hernandez10 months
7Arthur “⁠prd⁠” Resende10 months
8Alexey “⁠NooK⁠” Kozlovskiy7.5 months
9Henrique “⁠rikz⁠” Waku10 months
10Alessandro “⁠Apoka⁠” Marcucci 5.4 months
11Aleksandr “⁠zoneR⁠” Bogatiryev36 months
12Germán “hellpa” Morath10 months
13Egor “fuRy^” Morin7.5 months
14Aset “⁠Solaar⁠” Sembiyev10 months
15Nicolai “⁠HUNDEN⁠” Petersen8 months
16Ricardo “⁠dead⁠” Sinigaglia6.5 months
17Nicholas “⁠guerri⁠” Nogueira4 months
18Faruk “⁠pita⁠” Pita 10 months
19Erik “⁠AKIMOV⁠” Akimov 7.5 months
20Ivan “⁠F_1N⁠” Kochugov8.75 months
21Bruno “⁠ellllll⁠” Ono10 months 
22Pedro “⁠peu⁠” Lopes5 months
23Robert “⁠RobbaN⁠” Dahlström5.5 months
24Mariusz “⁠Loord⁠” Cybulski6 months
25Anton “⁠ToH1o⁠” Georgiev10 months
26Andrey “⁠Andi⁠” Prokhorov10 months
27Milan “⁠pepik⁠” Gellebra 10 months
28Morgan “⁠B1GGY⁠” Madour7.5 months
29Christian “⁠chrille⁠” Lindberg10 months
30Sergey “⁠starix⁠” Ischuk10 months
31Alexander “⁠ave⁠” Holdt6 months
32Jasmeet “⁠RoSeY⁠” Gill10 months
33Sergey “⁠lmbt⁠” Bezhanov7.5 months
34Henrik “⁠FeTiSh⁠” Christensen3.75 months
35Mikołaj “⁠miNirox⁠” Michałków 3.75 months
36Nikolay “⁠pNshr⁠” Paunin3.75 months
37Casper “⁠ruggah⁠” Due3.75 months