Overwatch Pro Players Removed from $100,000 CS:GO Tournament

Professional Overwatch players pulled out of $100,000 CS:GO tournament due to fraud allegations. Brian 'Kephrii' St. Pierre is involved in the case. The esportsman has been excluded from the ReadyUp CS:GO Invitational. Viewers suspected a covert interaction between Kephrii and Twitch streamer Gale Adelaide. They repeatedly killed each other with a knife.

This fact was strongly disliked by the community because the format of the tournament implies a special reward for killing with a knife. ReadyUp CS:GO Invitational is an unusual tournament that takes into account the individual points of each player. A kill gives the player one point, an assist two, and a knife kill five points.

Gale Adelaide and Kephrii made three and two knife kills on each other respectively. This is similar to 15 and 10 kills made. Given that this directly affects the result of esports players in the standings, this fact outraged the community and, as a result, the organizers excluded the players from the event.

Kephrii claims that he really did not hear his Gade and repeated knife deaths were allowed only because he had not played CS:GO at an acceptable level for the last three years. For what reason he made two kills with a knife, the cybersportsman, of course, did not report.

FACEIT conducted their own investigation into this matter and found the 28-year-old player not guilty. Despite this, the player was still removed from the tournament so that the competitive process would not stop and the rest of the championship participants could continue their struggle in peace.

Brian 'Kephrii' St-Pierre began playing as a professional Overwatch player in July 2016 under the Team Eggplant tag, after which he played for Team Liquid, GE Pantheon KR and Global Esports. The biggest achievement in the esports career was the 5th-8th place at Overwatch Contenders 2018 Season 3 Pacific and the victory at Fusion Showcase TooManyGames 2018. Kephrii has been inactive since February 2020. So far, he has not announced his retirement from Overwatch. For all the time, he almost managed to reach the mark of $5,000 in prize money earned.