Welcome to the Refrag CS2 News Round-Up! Every Monday, we plan to bring you a recap of the latest news around the Counter-Strike 2 scene.

NA Team Banned from ESL Challenger League

On July 30th, ESL announced that Perseverance Gaming would be disqualified from ECL and barred from EFG competitions for two months.

The initial announcement via X was quite short in length, and besides a mention of falsifying a request to reschedule, there were no further details revealed by ESL. Further investigation by Mnmzzz of Dust2.us confirmed that the infraction had to do with rescheduling a match, and details reveal that the situation had become something far larger than a small white lie.

The team alleged that due to inclement weather, Cory “shutout” Frymark would be affected by a potential power outage, and were requesting an emergency reschedule of their match against Mythic. In an attempt to convince ECL admins that this risk of power outage was legitimate, they had allegedly forged a text message from shutout’s power company that read as a warning to customers about inclement weather, and provided a weather radar screenshot of of the surrounding area.

The more you look at the evidence given of the alleged risk of power outage, the more you begin to see that it doesn’t add up, and ECL admins agreed. Overall, the evidence just didn’t hold up to scrutiny, and as a result, Perseverance Gaming was handed an immediate disqualification from Season 48 of ECL, in addition to barring them from any EFG events for 2 months.

In response to this, the Perseverance Gaming organization released the roster effective immediately, and further condemned the actions of its players in an announcement on X.

The Perseverance roster contained:

Nelvin “⁠nooz⁠” Gonzalez
Cory “⁠shutout⁠” Frymark
Gabriel “⁠Gabe⁠” Shah
Collin “⁠CoJoMo⁠” Moren
John “⁠mds⁠” Marin

Upcoming Swedish talent banned for cheating

Joel “⁠joel⁠” Holmlund once again finds himself in the midst of controversy.

During CCT Season 2 Europe Series 7, Akros anti-cheat detected and banned joel for cheating. The ban comes not even 12 months after he was suspended by ESIC for match-fixing allegations during the young Swede’s time with the GODSENT organization. The suspension was ultimately lifted after 7 months due to his compliance with ESIC’s investigation and no “compelling evidence” of match-fixing being found.

This cheating ban comes mere hours after Akros pushed an update to their anti-cheat which is being used primarily for online CCT play, but it’s unknown at this time if this was the reason behind the ban. BC.Game made a statement regarding their young player, stating that they are currently conducting their own investigation internally, and additionally, “want to support joel through these suspicions until the evidence is presented to [them] in black and white.” BC.Game makes it clear in the rest of their statement that they, like us fans, are completely in the dark as to if the ban is legitimate.

BLAST Premier Fall Groups concludes

The initial group stage has just concluded for the Fall edition of BLAST, and there were plenty of surprises.

Liquid looks firmly entrenched in a honeymoon period, taking down the likes of NAVI (twice) and Virtus.pro on their way to playoff qualification. While jks didn’t post a pretty stat line, something just seemed to click with this rendition of the roster, with the Canadian duo of NAF and Twistzz leading the way for the blue team. Is NA CS back?

Spirit, G2,and Vitality all had similar success, claiming their ticket to the Fall Final with relative ease.

On the other side of the coin, FaZe has never looked worse, barely managing a victory over Cloud9 before being 2-0’d by the new-look Ninjas in Pyjamas, who seem to be hitting their stride at just the right time.

Many of these teams will be competing at IEM Cologne, but one European mix will be missing a key piece of their roster.

degster to miss start of IEM Cologne

Visa issues strike once more.

HEROIC’s newest addition, degster, will have to extend his wait to join his team on LAN for at least one more day, as due to more visa issues, he will miss the start of IEM Cologne. It’s currently unknown how many matches the Russian AWPer will miss.

This is the third tournament in a row that degster will miss due to visa issues. He missed IEM Dallas and the BLAST Premier Group Stage, both of which fielded unique substitutes, nicoodoz and sAw. HEROIC captain kyxsan turned to X to defend his teammate, saying he applied for the visa 2 months ago.

FACEIT gives verdict on SOCD

FACEIT have given official word on SOCD usage on their client within their July Patch Notes.

The official verdict on SOCD has been given through social media already, but FACEIT has made their stance clear in this July update. Players are allowed to use technologies that are embedded in keyboard firmware, such as Razer’s “Snap Tap” or Wooting’s “Rappy Snappy,” in addition to null binds created by the user in a config.

However, FACEIT makes it clear that usage of the null bind configs specifically is not allowed in ESEA Leagues, as well as any events that use the EPT ruleset. They go on to state that this policy is not final and will be continually reviewed as developments are made, under the guise of both the community and Valve.