Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen presented evidence to Danish television network TV2.dk today that seems to support his recent claims that some of his Heroic teammates knew he was exploiting the coach spectating bug, which led to him being banned alongside 36 other CS:GO coaches in 2020.
One part of the evidence that TV2.dk got access to shows a conversation between HUNDEN and Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen, a member of Heroic during 2020 who’s now playing for OG. During the conversation, niko said that all of the players knew HUNDEN was using the bug that allowed coaches to place their in-game camera anywhere on the map to gain an unfair advantage.
“Everyone on our team knew it,” niko said. “Maybe not the first time. But after. Everyone knew that.”
Another piece of evidence is the server logs from the second of two matches in which HUNDEN abused the coaching bug in May 2020. The logs reportedly show René “TeSeS” Madsen, who’s still playing for Heroic, helping HUNDEN get into the position he placed his camera in against Team Spirit at Home Sweet Home Five. HUNDEN sat in Dust II’s mid for 12 rounds during that game.
At the time HUNDEN was abusing the bug on Heroic, the Danish team was composed of TeSeS, niko, Casper “cadiaN” Møller, Martin “stavn” Lund, and Johannes “b0RUP” Borup. The latter is now playing for MAD Lions, while cadiaN and stavn are still a part of Heroic alongside TeSeS.
HUNDEN told TV2.dk that all of this evidence, along with the extra material he has, has been handed out to the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), who banned him for abusing the coach spectating bug and recently banned him for two more years for trying to share Heroic’s strat book with another team ahead of IEM Cologne in July.
“The reason why I come up with this now is that it’s time to get the truth out,” HUNDEN told TV2.dk. At the time he was caught, the 30-year-old said he acted alone and that the players weren’t aware of it. The ESIC also recently revealed that it wasn’t presented any piece of evidence that HUNDEN claimed to have. Neither niko nor TeSeS answered TV2.dk’s request for comment.
Heroic’s CEO Joachim Haraldsen, though, has spoken to TV2.dk on behalf of the organization. “I have honestly had enough of HUNDEN’s attacks on all the boys he has coached,” Haraldsen said. “I think he should start growing up and take responsibility for what he did.”
Haraldsen claims that HUNDEN hasn’t submitted the evidence to the ESIC and that Heroic can help the investigation by providing its own material. “But we no longer want to enter into a public discussion about accusations that ‘someone’ knew ‘something’ when it is based solely on isolated fragments of information without any context,” Haraldsen said. “This is not the way to prove or disprove anything.”
Now that the evidence has been brought to the public, it’s up to the ESIC to verify it and judge if the information is correct. If that’s the case, it’ll certainly result in consequences for Heroic and all of the players who were aware of the bug, with Valve most likely stepping in to handle suspensions.
