12 more competitive PUBG players have been issued bans for cheating

After issuing three-year bans to four competitive PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players in late December, the PUBG European League is banning 12 more competitors.

Representatives from the PEL announced the 12 banned players in a TwitLonger post today. Through an investigation into active competitive PUBG players, the company found that the 10 players had received in-game bans for using cheat programs. (Two were banned for being cheat-adjacent.) Six of the players were discovered to have used the third-party applications during “online professional matches” and will receive three-year bans. Four of the listed players used cheats in non-professional matches and have been handed two-year suspensions. The final two players have been issued three-year suspensions for knowing their teammates were using cheating programs during PEL matches.

Teams implicated in the competitive ruling include Pittsburgh Knights, Red Diamonds, and Sans domicile fixe. The latter team will lose its Contenders League spot since all four players were issued suspensions, two for cheating in professional matches and two for knowing about the cheat programs. “We believe that condoning the cheating activities of teammates to share the common benefit should be as severely punished as performing the activities itself,” PEL said in a statement. The organization will be permitted to participate in subsequent events with a new roster. Another EU West seed will be opened up to replace Sans domicile fixe.

The four other players suspended for three years for cheating in professional matches are PlayerOne LATAM’s Americo “PAPAYA” Quintero, Dragões eSports’ “Cabecao,” and eSuba’s “swalker” and “zuppaa.”

Related: Four PUBG players banned for three years from PUBG Corp.’s esports program

Pittsburgh Knights and Red Diamonds must both replace their suspended players—Can “TEXQS” Ozdemir for Pittsburgh Knights and a player called “S1D” for Red Diamonds—to retain their PEL spots. (Both players were issued two-year bans for cheating in public games.) PEL said that it has no knowledge that any other players have used cheating programs in professional matches.

PEL’s investigation into its player is ongoing. The official Contenders League qualifiers will be postponed to ensure a thorough investigation. PUBG Corp. will continue to investigate other regions in its competitive circuit, too.

“In the future, before any official esports competition, all participating players will go through a comprehensive background check on all their accounts, and any player with incriminating evidence of having used an unauthorized program will be suspended and prevented from competing,” PUBG Corp. said in a statement.