Every ESIC, Valve and tournament CS sanction, in one table

37 rows, 2014 to 2026, from three kinds of issuer. 32 are ESIC rulings, 2020 to 2026: twelve are betting or match-fixing cases, five are pure spectator-bug exploitation rulings, two are hardware- or account-sharing cheating, one is the anti-strat file-sharing case, five are investigations that closed without a sanction or remain unresolved, and seven are fines, non-disclosure charges or non-cooperation penalties that don’t fit those categories. Five more rows predate ESIC’s coverage on this page entirely — two Valve match-fixing bans and a VAC cheating ban from 2014-2015, a tournament organiser’s roster disqualification tied to one of them, and one further ESIC ruling from 2018 that falls outside this page’s 2020-2026 ESIC window. The longest sanction among the 32 ESIC rows is a tie: two rows carry a lifetime ban, covering four people (three ATOX players and one repeat offender). The shortest fixed term is seven months, for the one player ESIC’s own statement credits with cooperation, contrition and entering treatment. One appeal changed the calculation method for every coach caught by the spectator-bug investigation — and reversed zero verdicts. Every figure below was re-read from the issuing body’s own statement on 22 September 2026, not carried over from the site’s individual write-ups.

This site has published twenty separate pieces on ESIC Counter-Strike rulings, each one close-reading a single statement, plus two further pieces covering five older Valve, VAC and tournament-organiser rulings that predate ESIC’s involvement in Counter-Strike entirely. Read one at a time, they don’t compare. A 30-day-per-round tariff and a $15,000 organisational fine and a lifetime ban share no unit. This page puts every ruling in one table, in the same columns, so the comparison the individual statements never make — length against violation, mitigation against aggravation, resolved against still-open — can actually be read across.

The ESIC table, 2020-2026

Before ESIC: five Valve, VAC and tournament-organiser rulings, 2014-2018

Every row above is ESIC. These five are not — three predate ESIC’s involvement in Counter-Strike integrity cases entirely, one is ESIC but from 2018, two years before this table’s window starts, and one is a tournament organiser’s roster-level call rather than an integrity ruling at all. They were previously spread across two other pieces on this site; they’re re-checked here against the same standard as the 32 rows above — the issuer’s own statement, or a contemporary report that quotes it directly.

By issuer, all 37 rows: ESIC 33 (32 in the 2020-2026 table above, plus forsaken’s 2018 ruling here), Valve 3 (the two 2015 match-fixing bans and the KQLY VAC ban), DreamHack Winter’s organisers 1. By type, these five: match-fixing 2, cheating 2 (one machine-detected, one an ESIC finding), roster-level tournament disqualification 1. 33 + 3 + 1 = 37.

What “length” means in this table

Every ESIC statement states a term in whatever unit fit the case: months, days-per-round, or the word “lifetime.” The “Length” column above converts every fixed term to months so the rows can be sorted and compared directly — something none of the twenty individual statements do, because each one only has to compare itself to nothing. Lifetime bans are flagged as life rather than forced into a number; day-rate and per-round tariffs (the two spectator-bug variants from the 5 May 2022 release) don’t reduce to a single figure because ESIC never published the final months for the affected participants, only the rate.

Two comparisons the conversion makes visible: the Third-Person spectator bug’s 30-days-per-round rate is the only usage-metered tariff in the set — everything else is a flat term regardless of how many matches or bets were involved. And Holmlund’s first sanction (7 months, cooperation) is shorter than ATOX’s negligent non-reporting charge (8 months) — the code’s stated distinction between “negligent” and “fraudulent” non-disclosure is worth four months (12 vs 8) by ESIC’s own text, but Holmlund’s cooperation discount on a betting charge still beat it by one month.

By violation type

This breaks down the 32-row ESIC table only; the five Valve/VAC/tournament-organiser rows above are summarised separately, in their own section. Every row below is counted in exactly one category. Rows that combine a bug-exploitation charge with a separate authority (Valve’s 27 January 2021 translation table) or with a later appeal on the same population (5 July 2022) are counted under spectator-bug exploitation, since both are about that same ruling cluster rather than a distinct offence.

What changed on appeal, and what didn’t

Two named players — Alessandro “Apoka” Marcucci and Nicholas “Guerri” Nogueira — filed an out-of-time appeal in July 2022, arguing that Valve’s later “translation” of ESIC’s demerit points into Major ineligibility had made the combined penalty disproportionate to what ESIC intended when it wrote the original tiers. ESIC agreed, and moved where concessions were applied: originally, the demerit count was converted to a ban and only then reduced by a confession or cooperation concession; after the appeal, those concessions are folded into the demerit count itself before the tier is assigned. ESIC’s own statement says the practical effect is that “no offending party to date has missed more majors than they otherwise would have under the Original Calculation Methodology” — the order of operations changed, the outcome for every affected coach did not. ESIC asked Valve to adjust its own, separately issued Major ineligibility to match; Valve’s initial response, as ESIC records it, was to decline.

Two cases still open

NOMERCY (interim suspension, 23 April 2026) and Northern Lights (interim suspension, 22 October 2025) are the two most recent Counter-Strike cases on ESIC’s docket with no final ruling. Checking ESIC’s Sanction Outcome archive page by page — four pages, covering everything posted from September 2020 to 10 September 2026 — turns up no later statement resolving either team as of 22 September 2026. Northern Lights’ sibling case, Team SENZA (interim 10 October 2025), was resolved on 30 April 2026 with a $20,000 fine and six Rejection Orders, which is the fastest interim-to-final turnaround in this table at just under seven months; NOMERCY and Northern Lights have already run past that. ESIC’s Sanctions Register, which would show whether either case has a non-public disposition, returns a reCAPTCHA check this page could not get past — so “no ruling found” describes the Sanction Outcome feed specifically, not every record ESIC holds.

The three coaches charged in May 2022 — peacemaker, hally and zakk — sit in the same unresolved state, four years on. ESIC’s own charge statement said the “Intended Sanction” figures were notified to the participants directly and would be finalised “post reply window.” No later statement naming any of the three turned up in the same four-page search.

What this dataset does not cover

Rulings that surface only inside another case’s statement, without their own dedicated release, are named in the sources above but not given their own row: Gokushima’s cooperation is credited with helping produce a lifetime ban on Egor “Zly” Polyakov and 5-year bans on Alexandr “Ruler” Maximov, Dimitriy “Propleh” Senigov and Peter “damiel” Markheev, but the Gokushima statement that names them gives no dates or independent sourcing for those four rulings, so they are not treated as verified rows here. Swabry “MAJOR” Iddi’s FIFA ban, sanctioned the same day as Monkeylay under an identical process paragraph, is excluded because this table is Counter-Strike only. Rulings on other games are tracked separately — see Dota 2 and StarCraft II match-fixing rulings, by who issued them for the same treatment applied outside Counter-Strike.

Sources

Every row above traces to one of these ESIC statements, re-opened and cross-checked against its own text on 2026-09-22:

• ESIC — Findings from investigation into CS:GO Spectator Bug Exploitation, 28 September 2020 — the 37-coach sanction, the tier method and concessions
• ESIC/ESEA — sanctions against seven CS:GO players, 23 October 2020 — the MDL Australia 12-month bans
• ESIC — stream sniping statement, 11 November 2020 — the closure of open cases and zero-tolerance line
• ESIC — sanctions against 35 individuals, betting matrix, 22 January 2021 — the five-level matrix and the Smida/Mayker revisions
• ESIC — Vitality stream sniping fine, 23 January 2021 — the $10,000 organisational fine
• ESIC — HUNDEN 2-year ban, statement dated August 2021, Internet Archive copy — the anti-strat file-sharing ban; the live esic.gg URL now 404s (confirmed 2026-09-22)
• ESIC — declassified report into complicity allegations, 18 October 2021 — the referral HUNDEN sent, and ESIC’s decision to investigate anyway
• ESIC — press release on historical spectator bug charges, 5 May 2022 — the Third-Person and Free-Roam variant tariffs
• ESIC — Issues Charges Against Three Coaches, 6 May 2022 — peacemaker, hally and zakk’s provisional suspensions
• ESIC — Independent Appeals Panel spectator bug appeal outcome, 5 July 2022 — the reordered demerit calculation and its stated effect on majors missed
• ESIC — Holmlund disciplinary action, first statement, 20 September 2023 — the original betting charges
• ESIC — Holmlund provisional sanction outcome, 30 November 2023 — the seven-month effective ban
• ESIC — Monkeylay disciplinary action, 9 November 2023 — the two-year ban to 6 September 2025
• ESIC — SENSEi, THRONE, DarkS1DE, nat1ve disciplinary action, 29 November 2023 — the four two-year bans over the Bulgarian LAN and other events
• ESIC — Gokushima original disciplinary action, 11 April 2024 — the original two-year order
• ESIC — Roheen Goon sanction outcome, 23 April 2024 — the nine-month early-plea ban
• ESIC — Astralis br0 substitution investigation, 27 November 2024 — the $15,000 fine and prize forfeiture
• ESIC — Ganginho three-year ban, 6 March 2025 — the 390-bet figure and the referral to Valve and Riot Games
• ESIC — Holmlund disciplinary action, second statement, 3 April 2025 — the hardware cheat and lifetime ban
• ESIC — ATOX public report, page dated 15 May 2025 — all seven ATOX sanctions and their stated bases
• ESIC — Team SENZA interim suspension, 10 October 2025 — the opening categories of alleged conduct
• ESIC — Northern Lights interim suspension, 22 October 2025 — the five named players, still unresolved
• ESIC — Gokushima informant sanction reduction, 10 October 2025 — the 18-months-13-days revised term and the four sanctions it helped produce
• ESIC — nifee four-year sanction, 1 April 2026 — the prop-bet market case
• ESIC — Team SENZA final sanctions and $20,000 penalty, 30 April 2026 — byek’s ban and the organisational fine
• ESIC — NOMERCY interim suspension, 23 April 2026 — the three named categories of concern
• ESIC — Sanction Outcome category archive, pages 1 through 4 — checked in full on 2026-09-22 for any later ruling on NOMERCY, Northern Lights, or peacemaker/hally/zakk; none found. ESIC’s Sanctions Register would not load past its reCAPTCHA check and could not be checked directly.
• ESIC — press release announcing forsaken’s 5-year ban, 25 October 2018 — the two-event evidence chain, the level-four classification, and the reasoning against a lifetime ban
• GosuGamers — Valve’s statement clarifying the iBUYPOWER bans as permanent, quoted in full, 5 January 2016 — Valve’s own wording that the bans “are permanent”
• HLTV — Epsilon and ex-ESC handed Valve bans, 6 February 2015 — the “found guilty of match-fixing… banned indefinitely” wording, the 14 named players, ScreaM’s exclusion, ALSEN’s inclusion, WinneR’s disqualification
• Destructoid — Valve and ESL retract the ex-ESC ban, 8 February 2015 — the statement lifting the ex-ESC restriction and confirming no comment on Epsilon or ALSEN
• HLTV — steel’s Valve ban set to elapse in January 2025, 26 October 2023 — the full seven-name iBUYPOWER ban list, the “Integrity and Fair Play” statement title, and steel’s own account of what Valve told him privately
• HLTV — KQLY handed a VAC ban, 20-21 November 2014 — the ban appearing on his Steam account and the Titan roster context
• HLTV — Titan and Epsilon disqualified from DreamHack Winter, 20-21 November 2014 — both teams’ removal confirmed by the organisers the same day, and the replacement qualifier
• HLTV — KQLY’s statement on his VAC ban — his own words: “I was banned by VAC and unfortunately it was justified”
• HLTV — Titan removes KQLY from the roster — his removal after admitting to third-party software

Two pages already published on this site cover the five rows above in more depth: CS Match-Fixing Bans: iBUYPOWER, Epsilon, OpTic India, and Titan Paid for a Week of Cheating They Never Saw. Only forsaken’s ruling among those five came from ESIC — Valve, ESL and DreamHack Winter’s organisers issued the other four directly — which is why all five are broken out in their own section above rather than folded into the 32-row ESIC table.

Related

• Dota 2 and StarCraft II match-fixing rulings, by who issued them
• Everything else we have on Counter-Strike