Forsaken, the player responsible for the worst case of cheating in Counter-Strike history, has now been unbanned, after being put on professional suspension by the Esports Integrity Commission five years ago.
Counter-Strike has always had to deal with the issue of cheating, it's part and parcel with online gaming. And given the amount of money in Counter-Strike's esports scene, it's no wonder that the problem has also affected the competitive environment. But if you ask any fan of Counter-Strike esports what the very worst instance of cheating has been, you'll always get the same answer: forsaken and his "word.exe" file.
Forsaken Unbanned After Five Year Suspension
Five years ago on October 24, 2018, Indian CS:GO player forsaken was issued a five-year ban from participating in ESIC events for cheating. He had been caught red-handed during the 2018 eXTREMESLAND Asia Finals by one of the referees. That's right, forsaken was brazen enough to try and use cheats on a tournament PC while he was live at an event. Cheating online is one thing, but this was borderline insane.
The clip is legendary:
You can see how the referee has to hold forsaken's hands back to prevent him from deleting the evidence. It's still unbelievable that he thought he could get away with this.
Forsaken absolutely deserved that ban, but we are happy to say his time has now been served and forsaken can play again!
Where Is Nikhil "forsaken" Kumawat Now? Will He Return To CS?
We tried to reach out to forsaken, but he deleted all of his socials years ago when he was first caught. We will continue looking, but for now we don't know where forsaken is. But wherever he might be, we feel confident in assuming he will no longer play Counter-Strike professionally again. No team would take him, and even if they did, in the last public interview forsaken gave he seemed convinced it was time to move on.
If I could go back I would probably delete the day when I first played counterstrike. I lost everything when putting CS above everything and today I lost CS too. The only thing I never lost is my family and my girlfriend and I hope to never cheat on them.
We hope forsaken has changed his ways, and we wish him all the best. If nothing else, he gave us one of the funniest clips in CS history.
It might be the end of the road for some, but others the grind continues: