As esports watchdog tackles widespread match-fixing, critics fear it can’t do the job

For months, esports fans, players and journalists have been mostly deferential to ESIC. In September of 2020, the Commission garnered acclaim when it released a landmark ruling on coaches in “Counter-Strike” taking advantage of an in-game exploit. The Commission’s report was the culmination of a months-long investigation by Michal Slowinski, an esports referee, and Steve Dudenhoeffer, a software development manager at ESEA. Pursuing a tip, the two pored over reams of data to pinpoint whether coaches had exploited a bug to appear in-game unbeknown to anyone else, thereby allowing them to feed useful information to their players during matches. The work took up the time of a second full-time job, according to Slowinski and Dudenhoeffer.