donk cautioned for offensive shouting

While no one can contest that Danil "donk" Kryshkovets is one of the most exciting young prospects in CS2 right now, not everyone is thrilled about his LAN antics. Natus Vincere coach Andrij "B1ad3" Ghorodensjkyj told HLTV in an interview that he needs to "fix his behavior" and he is "screaming really bad words". Now, ESL is thinking the same thing.

In a YouTube vlog posted by Spirit a few days ago, donk was warned that he could face a fine if he continued to shout in an offensive manner. In the vlog, Spirit's team psychologist, Alexander Kuznetsov, told donk and Leonid "chopper" Vishnyakov in a conversation that an admin told the Spirit staff that donk was shouting too offensively.

Spirit's coach told donk to not shout words like "assholes" or "cocksuckers", according to the English subtitles in the vlog. chopper then chimes in with an easy solution, "Don't shout offensively, just something else. We'll pay anyway."

Dust2.us spoke with Spirit staff who explained that donk called someone an "idiot" once or twice during the Apeks match, but never did anything similar after that game. The conversation happened prior to the game against TheMongolz.

ESL provided the following statement to Dust2.us:

We appreciate the competitive energy from the teams participating in the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice. We talked with Team Spirit after their first match, as their player, donk, was very vocal. We asked them to be cautious in what they are saying towards their opponents. No team at the tournament is being punished for this, and it was more of a friendly reminder to be cautious and not cross any lines.

According to the ESL Rulebook, players can be fined for insults during a match. While insults and general banter are harmless and not considered to be worth a punishment, depending on the nature and severity of the insult the penalty will be assigned to the player or to the team.

Outside of a warning for a little rough banter, Spirit have been absolutely electric in IEM Katowice 2024, with donk leading the charge as the Russian team have claimed wins over NAVI, Complexity, and FaZe in recent days to lock in a spot in the semi-finals at the Spodek.