Optic player found cheating during Pro match

It was a sad day for the Indian CS:GO scene as a player from Optic’s Indian team was found using cheats at Intel Zowie Extremesland 2018. The player in question, Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat was using a CS:GO mod he installed in their knockout match against Revolution, allowing him to see other players through walls and objects. This is known in the gaming community as “Wall Hacking“, providing a view similar to that of the spectator view in CS:GO.

The player in question has faced cheating accusations in the past. When he was on Team SemperX and they won an extremely close match against Team Iyati, ESL took action against the player. There was evidence of the player obviously cheating which resulted in an ESL India Ban.

However, ESL later reduced the ban after consultations with ESIC. Nikhil was able to convince ESIC that he was not the owner of the said account and that the entire team had access to the account. In a statement from ESL regarding the reduction in the ban, this is what Nikhil had to say:

I started playing professionally in India near January 2017 when I was asked to join this mixed team called Shooting Monkeys by my friend Swapnil. I got involved in account trading near September 2016 because of mainly 3 reasons that I needed a break from CS:GO, I needed some money during my college time and I was not completely aware of Valve’s terms of service on account selling or trading but I know that’s not an excuse to do something illegal or unethical or violating Valve’s terms of service and I must serve punishment for this.

Nikhil “Forsaken” Kumawat

However, we now know that this was an excuse to get rid of the ban on his account. The player’s audacious behaviour was evident when he tried to cheat again at Intel Zowie Extremesland 2018.

Nikhil dropped from the Optic India lineup

Needless to say, Optic India was quick in removing Nikhil from their roster. There is no place for cheaters in a professional team and for Indian fans, this presents a very sad day as it is definitely a huge setback for the esports scene.

Forsaken even tried to prevent the admins from checking his PC. He deleted the files, later recovered by the admins, in the hope that he would not be caught.

For many professional players from the scene, this was a bittersweet moment as they had been complaining about Nikhil for quite some time. Well known players such a BnTeT had suspicions about Nikhil’s gameplay in the past, however multiple anti-cheat platforms such as Sostrong, ESL and FaceIT were unable to detect these hacks.