Over the past few months the NSL has received reports of suspicious gameplay during gathers and matches lodged against Simple. This is a severe accusation. Not only is game modification to achieve an unfair advantage a serious offense, but the claim was being leveled at an important authority within NSL and a significant competitive figure in past NSL seasons. As such, a number of admins were assigned to investigate these claims.

We were recently introduced to a new way of detecting illegal game modifications and we were able to ascertain with a high degree of certainty that Simple had modified his game files while bypassing NS2’s detection mechanisms.

A NSL admin presented Simple with the evidence from our investigation last night (14th Jan) and Simple readily admitted to modifying his game for unfair advantage. The violations included aim assistance, pistol and lifeform scripts, and indicators which show player position and the direction of their current field of view. These were used on/off by Simple over several months.

Following this admission we took the following action.
With regards to Simple’s authority as an NSL admin we:
- Removed admin rights on ensl.org
- Removed all access to ensl.org servers
- Removed all access to ensl.org github repositories
- Confiscated and permanently banned his account
- Removed database access and checked logs

With regards to Simple’s role and possible cheating in previous seasons:
The admin team (minus conflicts of interest) will need time to convene and decide on the right process to audit and possibly amend previous official matches. This includes gathering as much information as reasonably possible and reviewing results from his matches from seasons 6 and 7. We’ll keep you updated on this process as it progresses.
- Season 6 - Lost first round of Division 1 playoffs with HBZ.
- Season 7 - Won Division 1 with Do it yourself.
- Season 8 - Did not play in any official matches.

This discovery is a huge blow to everyone on the NSL admin team. On a personal level, Simple was a prolific contributor and good friend to many of us. It is hard to reconcile his friendship and contributions to NSL with these revelations of cheating. As a team that acts as the stewards of the NSL, we’re deeply saddened that our integrity as a competitive community has been hurt. We feel a responsibility to put on fair competitions and it seems we may have failed the community. This is all the more painful because Simple was part of the team which is meant to uphold NSL’s integrity.

Over the last year Simple had played a major role in improving ensl.org, investing a lot of time into code auditing, optimising server performance and initiating the revamp of NSL gathers. He also gave important perspective in many difficult internal debates within the admin team. Sadly none of these contributions could ever excuse cheating. The NSL does not tolerate cheating in any shape or form; from benign enhancements to outright aimbotting and wallhacks.

If you have any questions please ask them here. As mentioned there is still work to be done to ascertain the scope of the cheating and how it impacted official matches.

Please be aware, given the sensitivity of the issue we will refrain from heavily moderating this topic as much as we can. However any inappropriate posts will be removed.

RIP

[*]

At the very least he should be removed from the hall of fame. That's all I have to say.

3rd

edit: 4th

Guess I don't have to watch my language in the gather chat anymore BOIS

BearJankins says

3rd

LOL.

ontopic:

RIP

Locklear says

At the very least he should be removed from the hall of fame. That's all I have to say.

Should be fixed right about now. He won't be removed from the History of NS2 tho, and I will be adding onto the existing history, someday.

"he has a fucking pistol script" every gather player 2015-2016

no hax just simple

It's really hard to tell how to react to all this. Simple has been a good friend to many, as Yaluzan said, and an even better friend to me. Whenever I was starting to overreact on some topic in the NSL forums he'd message me privately and tell me to calm down. He basically was my only contact to the NSL admins when I was mad at them and he tried to mediate between them and me. He helped me out with some irl issues and gave me advice. He was one of the good guys, I always thought.
It's really frustrating to see him go like this, with all the accusations that have been made over the years and me - usually not even reacting to it - but when I did, defending him. Because I never thought someone could go this far.

I guess this shows better than anything how you just can't trust people, no matter how close they are to you

anyone got any video evidence?

I relate to you, ENSL admins. When he hit bottom, he was pistol sniping man's skull like a crushed sparrow's egg, between my thighs... and I think, why you have to be so bad, Simple? Why can't you be more like good guy? Then I have moment of clarity... if simple is good guy, who will shoot man's skull like sparrow's eggs between thighs? And I say, simple you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are *bad* guy.

phonee says

anyone got any video evidence?

What video evidence we got was debated by some team members whether it was enough proof for cheating, the logs we made with the tool were the main reason. That and the confession after contacting him about it.
We might make a more condensed video of the most suspicious parts.

BearJankins says

It's really hard to tell how to react to all this. Simple has been a good friend to many, as Yaluzan said, and an even better friend to me. Whenever I was starting to overreact on some topic in the NSL forums he'd message me privately and tell me to calm down. He basically was my only contact to the NSL admins when I was mad at them and he tried to mediate between them and me. He helped me out with some irl issues and gave me advice. He was one of the good guys, I always thought.
It's really frustrating to see him go like this, with all the accusations that have been made over the years and me - usually not even reacting to it - but when I did, defending him. Because I never thought someone could go this far.

I guess this shows better than anything how you just can't trust people, no matter how close they are to you

From a personal standpoint, he is a nice guy. We worked together for a long time, played together in several games outside of NS2 to have a good time. He just made the wrong choice after finding the hole he later used for the cheats.

Kash says

I relate to you, ENSL admins. When he hit bottom, he was pistol sniping man's skull like a crushed sparrow's egg, between my thighs... and I think, why you have to be so bad, Simple? Why can't you be more like good guy? Then I have moment of clarity... if simple is good guy, who will shoot man's skull like sparrow's eggs between thighs? And I say, simple you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are *bad* guy.

I did not understand one word of this.

Topic: RIP, many People already assumed that simple is cheating but I never thought that he really was, i always thought he was just good at the game :( really sad News boys.

F

took u guys only 5 years to ban him its all fine

Kash says

I relate to you, ENSL admins. When he hit bottom, he was pistol sniping man's skull like a crushed sparrow's egg, between my thighs... and I think, why you have to be so bad, Simple? Why can't you be more like good guy? Then I have moment of clarity... if simple is good guy, who will shoot man's skull like sparrow's eggs between thighs? And I say, simple you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are *bad* guy.

what the fuck did I just read

Nightsy says

Kash says

I relate to you, ENSL admins. When he hit bottom, he was pistol sniping man's skull like a crushed sparrow's egg, between my thighs... and I think, why you have to be so bad, Simple? Why can't you be more like good guy? Then I have moment of clarity... if simple is good guy, who will shoot man's skull like sparrow's eggs between thighs? And I say, simple you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are *bad* guy.

I did not understand one word of this.

Topic: RIP, many People already assumed that simple is cheating but I never thought that he really was, i always thought he was just good at the game :( really sad News boys.

I paraphrased Zangeif from Wreck it Ralph.

Basically I was saying that simple is a bad guy for cheating, but just because he was a bad guy that doesn't make HIM a BAD guy... simple was a nice dude, he just made a bad choice.

Shit... Admins can detect cheats??

You know what's ironic? Somebody in this thread probably cheats too.

Wow Bubba, right on target.

Keep simple as an admin and have him ref while toggled on.

Bubba bringing in the HMGs

I would not have worked on ensl.org or done the revamped gathers page if it wasn't for simple bringing me on board and actively encouraging me to get things done. He also played a big part in training TAWtoise twice a week for the last month as a guest coach, asking for and watching all our replays and writing me looong messages about things we can do to improve. He's an archetypal computer science scholar, always interested in tinkering and always been "the Brain" in the ensl slack #website channel.

I'm guessing he started fiddling with the lua code back when ns2 was just an intellectual curiosity to him. Over the last year he made a lot of good friends in ns2 and helped a lot of people out. I bet if he could start again and decide whether or not to crack and modify his local game files, he would avoid it if only to remain part of the ns2 community.

But what's done is done. Everyone including him knows why there's a strict no cheating rule and why he has to leave. A lot of people will be conflicted to see him go. He's done a lot of good, but made a massive mistake in judgement at the end of the day.

I really don't understand what bring such people to cheating... Bauer, sad but true.

At least this topic brings me faith in justice. I hope some time all cheaters will be punished.

If you reading that post and you are cheater, pls think about people that trust you: your teammates, companions and just people that respect you. They did not deserve such an attitude. That's just dirtily. Pls stop or leave the game so nobody will know.

“Over the past few months the NSL has received reports of suspicious gameplay during gathers and matches lodged against Simple “

I notified him in Septembre 2014, more than one year ago. At the time admins conclued to “very very suspicous but no evidence to ban him”. Yet, you gave him resbonsabilities in the ensl.

The same goes for his premdiv teammates. You accepted a player who went from bottom div to prem div in a few months and with a suddent 45% when his cheat was even more obvious (too bad we can't access to ns2stats logs anymore). But maybe accuracy was your number one priority.

Both him and Evilbot were notified to the ensl when they were playing in their lower division and played months despite the reclamations ( for evilbot we notified him more than one season before the actual ensl post from elpheer). Both were actually banned when they played against higher div players. I'm not accusing anyone in particular, admins changed a lot since then and it's too late to change anything since the comp scene is barely alive. But i'm expressing regrets to the way these situations were handled. I think “you” didn't gave enough importance to reclamation coming from lower teams, giving us this huge delay between the first notification and the actual ban. It's easier to ban them when don't hide the cheat and haven't done any damage yet.

I played with Renegade against evilbot, with iswear against simple. We told you they were cheating, they got banned when these team were already disbanded...
(and btw some players in iswear stopped playing out of frustration because they neither banned the obvious aimbot. the team disbanded after... so yeah " nice guy, good for the community")

Lol, pretty sure I was one of the first people to accuse Simple. I have accused him right to his face numerous times although we have gotten to know eachother over the last year and hes a cool guy. I always knew he was a cheat though. When you play at the highest level season after season you know what is and isn't possible or reasonable. He was just shooting so well and had too much information all the time that exceeded players on my team and myself who trained everyday for hours. I rarely saw simple practice or scrim so I was perplexed at his high skill level. Well finally justice has been done. Now we just need to perma ban Nezza and I know there is at least another cheater in our midst. Some people are a lot better at hiding it.

Nice job by everyone involved in detecting and investigating this. I'm glad that proved cheating is grounds for a complete severance here. There are many games where cheaters run rampant with nothing being done about it. This is the first time that i see a cheater being taken care of in an official manner by the ENSL staff. The claims about players cheating is something that flies left and right in this community. People who are dead certain of who is/was a cheater. It's difficult to know who's actually telling the truth. So it's good to see that there are official ways for you to detect and deal with cheaters. Keep it up!