Twitch streamers Gale Adelaide and Brian “Kephrii” St. Pierre stand accused of teaming in the $100,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ReadyUp Invitational tournament. Many players claim that despite being on opposite teams, they fed each other high point kills to get to the top.
The point system for this tournament is based on individual skill instead of the team winning points, so individual players with high scores are the ones competing for the grand prize. The points fall as follows:
- Kill – one point
- Assist – two points
- Knife kill – five points
Because players can hear you running up behind them, a knife kill is hard enough to earn five points. Nevertheless, Gale got three knife kills (15 points) on Kephrii, and Kephrii got two knife kills (10 points) on Gale. Jake Lucky’s tweet showed a clip in which Gale easily killed Kephrii.
This, and the other kills, made many players suspicious.
A few players wanted to stop playing, but that would result in disqualification, so the game continued.
Kephrii maintained that he was innocent of any cheating scandal. In a tweet to Jake Lucky, he stated that he “genuinely did not hear [Gale].” He clarified that he hadn’t played CSGO in three years, so his rustiness showed.
As it is very easy to hear someone sneaking up behind you, it seems suspicious that two players could get five knife kills in such a short time. FACEIT began an investigation during the match and found Kephrii innocent of cheating after checking the alleged evidence.
Despite this ruling, Kephrii was later removed from the event over complaints.
It may seem unfair, but if he isn’t cheating, his Counter-Strike skill level is too low to be in the tournament as he was a pinata for points.
Jake Lucky tweeted that many players he spoke to remain skeptical despite the investigation’s redemption.
