Recently, the Youtube channel INSITE released an interview with the commissioner of the ESIC organization - Ian Smith, in which he discussed the beginning of the collaboration between Riot Games and ESIC. According to the representative of the organization, the companies are currently discussing potential player bans and future cooperation.
Ian Smith states that ESIC will begin screening Valorant players to detect violations. Interestingly, according to him, the companies are discussing the possibility of banning former CS:GO players who were banned for participating in match-fixing and have since moved to Valorant. In the professional scenes of both disciplines, it's a common practice when professionals from one game switch to another due to poor performance or rule violations. We recently wrote about one such player, steel, a former 100Thieves player, who moved to Valorant because he received a ban from Valve from participating in tournaments. You can read more about it in our article.
The news can be perceived in different ways: on one hand, it's a big plus for Riot, as ESIC will improve the community and can root out dishonest players. On the other hand, if the developers do penalize players who received a ban in CS:GO, it may negatively impact the professional scene. Since there are quite a few such esports players in Valorant, these disciplines have their own rules, so most likely, such a decision will not be taken.
What is ESIC?
ESIC (Esports Integrity Commission) is an organization that ensures adherence to esports ethics. It was founded in 2016 with the goal of monitoring professional players and ensuring compliance with official rules. Despite only having 5 employees involved in the investigations, the company is well-established and is most known for its work in CS:GO. ESIC investigated coaching errors, and recently announced a new wave of bans due to the use of a bug allowing observation via a coaching camera.
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