After the review of six and a half hours of footage, the admin team has come to the conclusion that the player marshmellow has, beyond reasonable doubt, cheated on multiple occasions during official matches.
The evidence against him was mainly taken from the FPOV that was submitted by himself and reviewed by the admin team and multiple trusted players from different teams and backgrounds.
We decided to make this as transparent as possible.

Ultimately the decision was made by the admin team based on votes

The voting was 3 to 0 with 1 abstention.

Partakers of the voting were:
-Espa
-Omega
-infamous
-Pelargir

DCDarkling did not partake as it will be his job to handle marshmellow's right to appeal.

Based on our Rules for "Sanctions and Appeal Process" Title I Chapter II Point 2 (https://www.ensl.org/articles/1070) the Ban for Cheating is permanent and immediate.

He has been informed about his right to appeal according to our "Sanctions and Appeal Process" (https://www.ensl.org/articles/1070):

"Any appeal from a decision rendered by an Admin based on a violation of the Code of Conduct can be brought before the Executive Admin."

It is unfortunate that this decision had to be reached, but we must ensure a level playing field for all players.

The evidence videos are currently hosted by marshmellow.
Review notes with links and timestamps can be found in the following doc.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yxk1Rng04P65RspNfWk4RXELhdG-FVSIFLr17r1x9Cw

In case he should decide to take the videos down, I we will reupload them for evidence purpose.

-Espa
-Omega
-infamous
-Pelargir

In the name of transparency and impartiality an open statement from these people would be good, as would a list of the people you consulted to make the decision.

Yeah theres some weird actions in the video, but some of the descriptions on the timestamps are biased in their wording or completely inconsequential, and others are limited to the most cherry picked moments. No mention of random 180s or shaky movement outside of engagements.

There is no attempt in the document to establish timestamps that would point to the players normal pattern of mouse movement to compare against what it assumed as assisted movement. I hope the admins and the esteemed consulting team went into the vods with that unbiased view in mind and didn't just fast forward to each timestamp.

You're next on the list bruno for cheating and lag/rate hacks

So :

-Espa (???)
-Omega (???)
-infamous
-Pelargir

Only 2 players who knows how high level ns2 is played, nice.

Once again, disappointed by the lack of evidences in these clips.
And I'm not saying that marsh doesn't cheat in these clips, I'm just saying that based on these images it should be objectively impossible to prove.

And proof is required if you're gonna ban someone and convince a bunch of people that he did cheat. You can't ban someone based on assumptions.

bUt heY wHo LiKes mArSh AnYwaY rIgHt ?

Marsh has appealed, so his appeal has started.
This will not be a short process as it is potentially his last chance.

Yes, the procedure does include watching all the footage in detail. Not skipping to moments.
The names of anyone who reviewed will not be revealed. (They can themselves if they so wish.)
It just creates drama of people pointing and disagreeing on each other.
I prefer people just look at the footage and comment on that on their own, unofficially.

So some people who have been admins for all of 5 minutes being dictated to by a hidden group of people many of whom had an open dislike of marsh.

no accountability, no transparency, what an absolute joke

To be honest the last video in 0:13:55 is really weird where he kills starcetereus anf then somehow flicks on the center of the tunnel after a short stutter. That looks extremly weird....

Definitely cheats.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/668084882

VOD review

vod is muted during one part - all the stuff i said in muted parts was that the clips shown are not suspicious at all

With these one frame flicks you have to keep in mind that the recording is 30 fps. For the tunnel flick his fps was 100+, so there are a ton of frames missing from the recording.

Don't worry too much marshmellow. Just come back in a few years if NS2 is still alive and you will be welcomed back, just ask all the other cheaters.

wow, this rippled some waves. high enough to reach me :)
didn't look into all the footage, maybe 20-30 min of it, and i don't see undeniable cheats there
also, why so serious? it's the same 50 people playing the game, who cares?

Team Awesome would like to advance in season 12 vs Pell-Mell to face off in the finals. As evidenced above, the events taken place on Feb 18th 2018 were naturally directly effected by this cheater. This cheating had a direct physical and mental influence and as result directly affected our future loss of moral and quantifiable fortitude.
Thank you.

APPEAL & VERDICT
The appeal is now over.
After input from many reviewers on both the defence and accused side & after careful consideration, the decision has been made to NOT lift the ban.
The appeal has been denied.

During appeal it was noticed that:
* Ban process was followed with one exception.
- The exception was that there was public talk by a NSL staff member about the investigation. This is bad because it either a) burns someone's reputation while innocent or b) makes a cheater more careful.
* Ban process is flawed.
- Mistakes were made in interpretation of reviewer input.
- Ombudsman was involved because of the mentioned problems in the process.

The appeal has showed that in general the following will need to be improved:
* Ban process needs to be reworked. It should not allow for interpretation mistakes.
* There should never be public talk about any investigations.
* Reviews should be optimized to decrease bias.
* Think of ways to possibly make the accused anonymous in footage. It is unclear if we can do this properly.

REVIEW OF EVIDENCE
Due to the misinterpretation of reviewers, evidence review was redone. Better said, what was used in the ban was not the same as the reviewers reported.
Feedback was asked & the appeal was continued on the feedback given.
defence part of the appeal started after this long process was concluded.

ADDITIONAL POINTS FOR THE defence
* Quality of video
Comments were made in regard to video quality. This includes things like unrecorded frames, dropped/lost frames, video bitrate. Resolution and Field Of View were also mentioned.
To see how valid these concerns were, tests were performed in various settings of all of the above. Various moments were carefully analysed to spot any of the mentioned issues or to even try reproducing them.
Some recording issues found in the original footage could be reproduced in the test videos. These moments were not used for any accusations.
The accusations made could not be disproved with these tests.

* Matching videos
Videos from different players were compared in the same timeframe and context after feedback from the defence, the accusing side & the reviewers.
Overall view was not changed with this comparison.

* Bias in community
To reduce the bias in reviews groups were asked to review for the defence & the accused. Care was taken to supply arguments to not only judge how biased a review was, but also if it matches up with the comments of other reviewers.
The alternative to having a large review pool is doing it only in admin team or only via the Executive Admin. In the ideal sense appeal checks if the end result matches all available evidence rather then redoing everything.
The groups of reviewers were used in this appeal.

MATERIAL NOT USED
During appeal many come forth with new videos, statistics, opinions and other information.
People claiming to have made hacks or knowing people to have made hacks have also come forth. Interestingly this happened both for the view of 'Guilty' as for 'innocent'.
Any information not backed up by actual facts applicable for NS2 was discarded and not used.

MATERIAL FOR defence
To show there are no cheats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB_QAIe25wE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1xFafYdQ_4&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYsj7mFwzmc&t

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai3nNQPtBn4&feature=youtu.be

Other players having similar aim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iQoGmVotW4&feature=youtu.be&t=1723

Full vid:
https://youtu.be/XFmr8-zSH_U

Timings provided by marsh claiming what it shows for his defence:
1:44:56 (flicks)
1:45:19 (aimsnaps on marine though a wall)
1:47:40 (aimsnaps on marine during fight)
1:47:54 (flicks + crosshair is staying perfectly on marine at one moment)

The same thing as above. (Same clips and timings)
1:44:56 https://youtu.be/XFmYk1UqROE
1:45:19 https://youtu.be/WVToT6WILP4
1:47:40 https://youtu.be/BcFWbQrkeNU
1:47:54 https://youtu.be/OkR2b4Z3cJw

Marshmellow:
0:07, at the end of video, he very fast and perfectly flicks to skulk, It looks like aim lock for a second with some slight shakiness (Same type of thing lome kept claiming was proof of me aimbotting).

Also at the beginning of the video, the rt only just dies as he enters the room and he doesn't see the skulk cross and just pre fires the skulks when you can't even see it.
https://youtu.be/Eau-UrOC6a4

Marshmellow:
"aimlocked on lome`s skulk during the fight"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cANrGYs3xUM&feature=youtu.be

Statistics
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1xKDs_LNJneeKbU6UohQlQvr3NJY2B_9JKl4_uZkU0/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fq-6Tmm8VN25Y6siiDBZ2ARXEV80yikhNrcuyEnMtZk/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xfzU039D7WPrwYbT3-X8FnZ6v-ezh1BVmit3o_C-roE/

FINAL COMMENTS:
Both the ban and appeal process are supposed to be open. This does not mean we make reviewers public. Nor that we tell if and whom we have under investigation. Rather that the results and process should be known and open.
If you have any questions in regards to the process, please let us know. We require no feedback on the flaws mentioned above in the process. These are now known. So questions about the process can be directed @DCDarkling.
Suggestions to improve the process are always welcome. Please keep them realistic.