GUERRI FREED

FURIA's coach, Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira, has been unbanned from Valve events, allowing the 32-year-old to potentially return to the Major stage after missing the past three Majors, including IEM Rio 2022. The shock announcement today sees guerri let off early from what many considered a draconian ban from Valve, which would've seen guerri remain banned until after the second Major of 2023. Alongside guerri, Alessandro "Apoka" Marcucci and Anton "ToH1o" Georgiev have also seen their bans commuted, allowing the duo the ability to compete at Majors as well.

guerri was among eight coaches banned in early 2021 from participating from Valve-sponsored events due to their connection to the Coaching Bug Scandal, which saw dozens of coaches face sanctions for use of a bug that gave teams unfair advantages in game. While the community largely agreed that the bans were justified to punish cheating and protect the integrity of the game, a common complaint in the wake of the bans was the uneven enforcement and application of ESIC's demerit and concessions systems.

Using guerri as an example, due to a variety of concessions, guerri's ban from ESIC was reduced by 60%, seeing the Brazilian coach return to action in ESL and BLAST events after four months, However, due to Valve ignoring ESIC's concession systems, leading to guerri receiving a five-Major ban. Likewise for Apoka, while his ESIC ban was only for 5.4 months, due to Valve ignoring all concessions and just considering demerit points, he received a permanent ban from the publisher.

The stark difference in how the bans were applied by Valve relative to ESIC's original intent, the duo filed a legal challenge against the independent appeals body ESIC used to apply bans. While the Brazilian duo were successfully in adjusting how the appeals body calculated demerit points, at the time Valve ignored the change, continuing to base Major bans off of the original demerit points.

This now has seemingly changed as per the announcements today. Due to Valve nor ESIC commenting on this newest wave of commutations, it is unknown if Valve made the change following an internal review or external pressure. Dust2.us reached out to ESIC for comment but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.