Spoofing scandal rocks India’s CS2 scene

India is once again on the receiving end of negative publicity in the gaming community following another alleged cheating incident.

AFKGaming recently reported that Chintan “BuNTz” Shukla, a CS2 player for MARCOS Gaming, allegedly spoofed during the online-only Skyesports Masters 2024.

Spoofing is a cheating tactic defined as masking the identity of a player to resemble that of another player’s. 

In the case of BuNTz, Tejas “Ace” Sawant and Agneya “Marzil” Koushik of Grayfox Esports alleged BuNTz was spoofing following their match against MARCOS.

Marzil himself is no stranger to these incidents, as he was a former teammate of the infamous cheater Nikhil “forsaken” Khumawat in the ill-fated OpTic India squad where forsaken was caught cheating in a LAN tournament and set the standard for the decline in India’s reputation in competitive gaming around the world.

Even after the forsaken incident our countrymen just want to continue shoving our reputation down the drain. This time with ID Spoofing by @MarcosGamingIN for Day 1 of the Skyesports Masters Qualifiers.
Please @skyesportsintl ban this Buntz guy and anybody else that knew this 🙂

— Agneya Koushik (@officialmarzil) March 29, 2024

Ace shared a video post on X regarding BuNTz’s alleged spoofing.

I hope you look into this @skyesportsintl @SkymastersIP @shivanandysky https://t.co/Wc4sJfxreT

— Tejas Sawant (@rite2ace) March 28, 2024

In response, Skyesports founder Shiva Nandy said they automatically took measures to try and address the situation, such as player cams, mid-round video calls, and even verifying the owner of the internet cafe where BuNTz and his colleagues were playing.

“We called up the cafe owner (who had collaborated with us for Skyesports Masters 2023 – Cafe qualifiers) to check on the player for which he confirmed that there were no other player in his PC throughout his session,” Nandy said in a statement posted on X.

He also added that “no alien players were found” in the team voice comms.

However, Ace disputed the player cams claim, saying, “the guy was accused day1 of the qualifiers and when we asked the admin if he is providing feed of himself playing + face/body cam he said YES which was not the case.”

Nandy responded, “as a default rule for a broadcast game, players mandatorily have to be on face cams through their series. Since Buntz was playing from a cafe he was not able to provide an angle which gave both himself and the PC’s view.  Moving forward, 1. We’ve hired an admin to physically be present during the matches in three cafe, and 2. ⁠[we] assked to provide a camera angle covering both the player and the PC.”

Akhil Kavuturu, MARCOS Gaming’s CEO, also tweeted last March 29th, “Whatever skyesports asked for we have provided in future also we will provide the same if there is a malpractice Marcos as an org doesn’t support it but we dont pass judgement on X so let TO take the decision.”

However, despite the allegations, the tournament organizers did not disqualify MARCOS Gaming, and even reached the upper and lower bracket finals. MARCOS eventually ended up in third place.

Nandy explained, they did not want to both jump into conclusions based on what they called “mass reports,” as well as not letting allegations slide.

“It is our responsibility to take the right measure to tackle such sensitive situations as it questions the integrity of a player and an organization. We wouldn’t want to jump into conclusions based on mass reports but at the same time we wouldn’t want this matter to slide too,” Nandy said.

Nandy also said that they are talking to a team of “industry specialists” regarding the issue and will inform the community of any updates once available.