Summary: There are more than one coaching bugs. This particular bug I’m writing about has been found in professional CS:GO matches.

Hello!
My name is Simon Engstrand and I’m a journalist at Swedish Public Television (SVT). I’m creating a documentary about the esports industry and during my research I found information that I feel should be made public.

The story starts with Swedish software engineer Marcus ”Softarn” Höjvall. Following the coach bug scandal, he wrote a script that breaks down demos to find suspicious behavior among coaches. More specifically, the script searches for coaches that are located in the same position for long periods of time, such as when using the observer bug.

Marcus, together with Jessica Kersia, a Brazilian coder and CS enthusiast, have used the script and reviewed roughly 600 demos of mainly South American matches. That’s when they stumbled upon yet another bug. This one allows coaches to view their players from a third-person perspective. This means the coach can help the players all the time, over the entire map. This bug was found in two professional Brazilian matches.

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Before going any further, I want to say that this post is not to accuse anyone of cheating or exploiting the bug. All I’m saying is that this bug has been found in pro matches. It’s up to the admins of these tournaments to judge beyond that. As you will see, the coaches themselves says they didn’t take advantage of the bugs.

The coaches involved in these matches are Nicholas ”guerri” Nogueira (FURIA) and Matheus ”Kaos” Nicolau (Inflames).

Clip 1 (Inflames vs Team Reaper on Dust 2, HLTV link)
Clip 2 (Inflames vs Team Reaper on Mirage, HLTV link)
Clip 3 (LG vs FURIA on Train, HLTV link)

I have reached out to both guerri and Kaos to comment this.

Guerri has not responded since I first contacted him three days ago. Should he want to comment this further I will update the post. He does however talk about the third-person bug at 28:20 in this video. He says that he knew something was wrong and Alt+tabbed away from the game.

Kaos responded:– It happened to me in the past a few times, but I never abused it. Everytime it happened I restarted the game or quit because i couldn’t fix it.

What about the Mirage clip where the mouse is clearly moving?– Same thing, the coach of the other team has already reported that I didn’t take advantage of any bugs against them. I only watched this round because there was no time to fix it. It was clear that I didn’t pass on any information.

I have also spoken with Michal ”michau” Slowinski. Michau has been informed about the third-person bu (and since I spoke with him, michau has talked about the third-person bug on HLTV Confirmed). As it turns out, this is just one of several new bugs that has been discovered lately. When I spoke with Michau on Monday, he said he is investigating 3-4 instances of coaching bugs, including the original one.

So what happens now?

Marcus Höjvall tells me that for every new bug that we find, a new script has to be developed and every single demo needs to be analyzed again.

Marcus is currently developing a new script to detect the third-person bug. This won’t be easy since this bug is harder to distinguish from a false positive. At the same time, Michau says they have their own a solution in place.

Jessica Kersia believes thay they will find more cases of the third-person bug used in pro matches, even in tier 1 games.

So that’s pretty much where we’re at now.

Personal comment: If ESIC, Michau and Steve Dudenhoeffer are gonna review 25 000 demos, and they have to re-do it for each new bug found. All I can say is godspeed fellas.

TLDR; There are more bugs out there, and one has been found in pro matches.

Over and out,
Simon.