CS2: Rank 1 Player On FACEIT Gets Banned For Cheating

Ukrainian player Dmytro “Wonderful_Y” Horkusha has been permanently banned from the FACEIT platform for cheating in matches. He was the highest-ranked player in Europe. 

Though they come from the same country and have very similar names, do not mix Wonderful_Y with Natus Vincere’s Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov!

Who Is Wonderful_Y?

Horkusha played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professionally, only playing for Tier 3-4 teams and having zero Tier 1 presence. During his time playing for such organizations, people were already suspecting him of shady activities, such as match-fixing. 

Since Counter-Strike: 2, Wonderful_Y has not played in the professional scene but is actively playing on a competitive third-party platform, FACEIT, used by all professional players. Before his ban, he was the number one-ranked player on the FACEIT leaderboard, having a higher ELO than Danil “donk” Kryshkovets and Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov. 

However, that “skill” turned out to be cheated, as the platform banned Wonderful_Y’s account from playing any more matches in the FACEIT Pro League.

STYKO Thought He Was An Amazing Player

Literally one day before the announcement, former Apeks player and CS:GO veteran Martin “STYKO” Styk made an educational video analyzing his gameplay. The video is titled “The Best FACEIT Player is not who you think it is…” 

In the video, the player-turned-YouTuber spent 20 minutes analyzing two of Wonderful_Y’s matches and highlighting how good he was. Unfortunately, the video did not age well, as we knew what happened next. 

The timing is 😬…

… but less than 24h after publishing my Demo Review of Wonderful_Y on my YouTube, he got banned for cheating.

This only means one thing —

FACEIT admins & devs watching my content 🤔

I don’t support cheating in any way, I am not sure he cheated in games I…

— STYKO (@STYKOcs) April 24, 2024

The Ban Hammer Has Been Dropped

On April 24, it was publicly announced that Wonderful_Y had his FACEIT account permanently banned for cheating. When the ban hammer was dropped, he was at the top of the European leaderboards and had been a member of FACEIT since December 4, 2015.

CS Pro Player and #1 on FACEIT “Wonderful_Y” was banned for cheating, tried to say it was for using the SV cheats exploit, then FACEIT admins brought the heat💀 pic.twitter.com/VolBtgPd5Z

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) April 24, 2024

Sv_cheats Bug?

Wonderful_Y took to Twitter to explain his side of the story. According to the Ukrainian, he was banned for using an “sv_cheats” bug on FACEIT servers. At the time, players could enable CS2’s legal cheat commands, which shouldn’t be a bannable offense since it is a bug on Valve’s side. 

In his story, his friend dropped the news that players could use the sv_cheats command on FACEIT to use Valve’s cheat commands, some including X-Ray and wallhack-like commands. Wonderful_Y couldn’t believe it, tried it out, and saw that it worked. He played for two rounds and disabled the sv_cheats command immediately. 

In his final Tweet, he denied all accusations of using illegal cheats and mentioned he would have been banned ten times already had he actually used hack clients. He closed his message by saying he was about to leave FACEIT to pursue real-life activities, and this ban gave him a “good time to go.”

FACEIT Admins Step In

A well-known FACEIT admin named Darwin quoted Wonderful_Y’s tweet, denying the reason the now-banned player provided:

“All players detected for using the sv_cheats exploit were banned shortly after the exploit occurred. There have been no bans issued since.”

In this statement, Darwin claims that all players abusing the sv_cheats command had already been banned, and Wonderful_Y was banned after the wave was issued. So, the reason for the ban was not an exploitation of the sv_cheats bug.

Community Reactions

With the Counter-Strike fanbase being a competitive and passionate community, people who have been exposed for cheating have always been made fun of. 

It already raised eyebrows that a rather unknown player like Wonderful_Y could have the highest ELO in the FACEIT league, which is filled with every active professional player in the scene. He was ranked above every Tier 1 professional player. 

Everyone in the community was convinced that Wonderful_Y was cheating, and nobody believed him when he claimed it was the sv_cheats bug that got him banned. 

Wonderful_Y, the player who got banned on FACEIT claims he used the bug (console cmd), I DOUBT. X https://t.co/DqrNdT1gPa

— Thour CS2 (@ThourCS2) April 24, 2024

Natus Vincere Major winner Justinas “jL” Lekavičius poked fun at the situation since Wonderful_Y and his teammate Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov had similar names and came from the same country. 

from major champion to getting banned for cheating smh..

i knew all those top tier pros aren’t clean pic.twitter.com/nJlIjigVfJ

— NAVI jL (@jLcsgo_) April 24, 2024

Jérôme Coupez, the CEO of The Prodigies, told his story working with Wonderful_Y. The 23-year-old had a trial period under The Prodigies and participated in one event. However, Coupez decided not to sign Wonderful_Y following several allegations. He is thankful for making the right choice, as he was banned months later. 

A lot of people contacted me about wonderful_y, so a quick tweet.

Yes, he played for approx 2 weeks on trials under The Prodigies and participated in 1 event.

Then I decided to shut down the project and not validate the players to the academy or Prodigy, due to several reasons;…

— Jérôme Coupez (@Jerome_Coupez) April 25, 2024

A Twitter user by the handle of @mgmtcsgo pointed out something very interesting. One of Wonderful_Y’s friends was ranked #276 on the FACEIT European leaderboard, which is incredibly high. Since Wonderful_Y’s ban, this player has dropped to Level 9 on FACEIT, losing almost half his ELO. He went from 3,530 points to 1,760 very quickly. 

wonderful_y got banned yeah w/e, unlucky for his mate going from #276 in EU to level 9 pic.twitter.com/LZNh9u97O5

— james (@mgmtcsgo) April 24, 2024

FACEIT is known to have more robust anti-cheat software than Valve, but it has raised concerns that a cheater like Wonderful_Y could achieve rank one on the leaderboards without being detected for a long time.