In a new finding, renowned esports journalist, Dexerto’s Richard Lewis has found documents that prove that Heroic did indeed try to make the roster sign an NDA. This confirms the allegations made by HUNDEN just a few weeks ago after being banned by the ESIC, where he claimed that the org tried to make him sign an NDA along with the players.

Apparently, the NDA would prevent the players and the coach from talking about any cheating allegations or even the use of the Bug for 15 years and would result in a half a million dollar fine if breached.

This COMPLETELY contradicts the claims made by the coach that he worked off his own accord when he was first found guilty, as it is clear that the organisation knew about it every step of the way. In addition, the Heroic org never tried to come forth themselves even after knowing about such a bug, and the fact that his team made use of it.

What is more as per the report, is that HUNDEN and the Chief Gaming Officer of Heroic, Erik Askered can be seen conversing about the bug and the punishment and how the coach was seemingly ‘taking a bullet for the team and would be remembered for his actions.

Heroic also tried to keep HUNDEN involved as a coach as much as possible while he served his ESIC ban and were even willing to let him coach them for non-ESIC sanctioned events. These new findings absolutely reek of zero competitive integrity by Heroic and prove that they were doing their level best to keep the Bug in play without anyone knowing. Heroic already seem to be in trouble as they lost all their sponsors recently.

This is the first claim of HUNDEN that’s come true, after he first accused players ‘niko’ and ‘TeSeS’ of knowing about the bug, which is still under investigation by the ESIC.
More about the report can be found here.

The new operation has brought with it, a ton of changes to the gameplay. A lot of them will affect the Professional scene, no doubt but Valve hasn’t forgotten about their huge (nearly 900k) player base either, and Operation Riptide has something for all of the weekend gamers out there.

Private Queues

The new update allows players to privately queue for games on official Valve servers. In layman’s terms, you can play 10-man PUGs now without making the use of Faceit hubs or any other third party service.

Valve allows players to queue for a match AMONGST themselves, be it in wingman form or the regular 5v5 game mode.

It also enabled players from a single Steam Group, to host Valve servers so the members can play games with each other as well, this is done through a unique code generated for each group or player if the queue is private.

Shorter Competitive Matches

Your average Competitive CSGO game lasts for at least 40 minutes and more often than not it can be too much, especially if you’re crunched for time. This problem has also been brought up by Pro players, especially for games that go overtime.

Operation Riptide allows players to queue for a new game mode titled ‘short matches’. In this mode, the players get the whole competitive game experience, just in lesser time. Regular matches last for 30 rounds at max but the new mode has 16 rounds at max, with 8 in each half, allowing for a quick 20-25 minute game. The old mode is still there of course, but the new one freshens things up quite a bit.

Free For All and Team Deathmatch

Valve DM has been stale for quite a bit and most players shifted to Community servers, hosted by third parties to warm up.

Valve enabled Free For All DM on official valve servers, allowing players to shoot everyone insight and get the full experience without any community servers.

Team Deathmatch has also been added, a mode present in many games such as Valorant, PUBG and Call Of Duty. Players are divided into teams and jump into the server just to get some kills and help their team win.

Riptide Case and Collections

The new operation also has a new case – the Riptide Case which drops knives with a gamma Doppler finish. It also includes 17 other weapon finishes for players to splurge on.

It also includes 4 new collections –the 2021 Dust2, Mirage, Vertigo and Train collections which include 19 skins each that can be redeemed from Operation Stars that players collect after completing missions.

The new operation will last for 16 weeks with new missions each week, bringing us new content along the way.