CSGO is a game of hardcore skills where only the most competent players can reach to the highest levels of competitive play. Like cheating, many users in the past have tried to alter game files to gain a competitive edge over their opponents, but that is no way to compensate for lack of skills as shown again by an incident involving a popular YouTuber.

Many of the players banned were based in Poland.

Mefju23 is a Polish YouTuber who has quite the fame in his country for making CSGO related content. He has well over 280,000 subscribers currently on his YouTube channel. Through a video he had made earlier which is now taken down, he explained in details about audio exploit in CSGO which enables players to alter a game file to hear louder footsteps in-game.

The video showed that by editing the ‘soundmixers.txt’ file in the game directory and tweaking certain parameters, it was possible to hear footsteps more distinctly and loudly compared to the other gunsounds.

In the video, Mefju23 did explain that this method is quite risky since it relies on altering the game files and may get users banned, but his fans went ahead in an attempt to use the exploit anyways; FACEIT however, had other plans for them.

Soon after users began to use the exploit for gaining an unethical competitive advantage, FACEIT started banning them without a hint of mercy. April 25 witnessed FACEIT banning over 400 players from their platform, a lot of whom were from Poland.

Mefju23 soon came ahead and took responsibility for the incident and apologised for it. Through both his YouTube channel and Facebook page, he put forward a detailed apology from his side. While he wasn’t particularly happy about FACEIT handing out bans for such a minor audio exploit, he still apologised to all his fans who got banned as a result of the YouTube video. The video was later taken down by him to minimise further damage.

Hundreds of players being banned from FACEIT for a minor audio tweak is sure to serve as an example in future for players who think tweaking game files are okay in a competitive game such as Counter-Strike. It’s a reminder that players should be relying on their skills and skills alone in order to get better at the game.