OpTic Gaming Have Second Place Finish at IEM Katowice Stripped Away Amid Bug Abuse Allegations

It’s always a sad affair when a player is caught abusing game mechanics to obtain an advantage over their opponents. At IEM Katowice’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Invitational, Officials have retroactively stripped points earned by OpTic Gaming in the eighth round after it emerged that one of the players had abused a bug to view through a wall.

The player, Ian “Bahawaka” Crowe, can be seen in the clip putting away his weapon and approaching the wall, before manoeuvring himself to force his camera to clip outside the wall and give him a view beyond. Bahawaka took to a reddit thread that arose surrounding the clip to defend himself, stating that he had “hopped in the corner to get as close as physically possible to their car rotation to track it’s movement”, however IEM Officials found the actions to be in violation of point 5.6 of the Official Rulebook “Intentionally changing your character’s angle to look through a texture or object is prohibited” and have made the decision to strip OpTic Gaming of the points they earned from that round.

With the removal of the points, OpTic Gaming have retroactively slipped out of second place and into the fifth spot, and the teams that were behind them have moved up a notch, giving second place, and the prize money that comes with it, to Cloud9.

For more Battle Royale action, check out the teams that will be competing in the H1Z1 Pro Leagues first season, and to read the official decision for yourself, check out the ruling post from IEM Katowice, here.