A quick word to everyone on this issue, I've had a sleep on it now, and am going to post the announcement from Discord once more.
A_E — 03/17/2021
@everyone Two bans, and three apologies
ML BANS
Seeking - For playing on the Deadbolt account after an initial one tourney ban for boosting on 29th of Jan, Seeking will be temp banned from ML for one year until 1st March 2022. I feel it's in our best interests to have a hard line on this account sharing due to Deadbolt being shown to be map hacking.
Seeking is not being perma-banned for map hacking as there is no 'smoking gun' evidence that can't be disputed as "game sense" etc. It has clearly been shown that the 100% obvious map hacking was done whist it was Deadbolt playing. Should firm evidence of map hacking be found of Seeking in the future however, obviously this will be revisited.
Deadbolt - (Seeking's irl uncle) has been shown to be using hacks in replays that are 100% obvious he is of course therefore banned.
APOLOGIES
I apologise to Seeking that all attempts were made to not handle this privately; in hindsight they should have been. I selfishly protected myself by ensuring speculation was minimised through transparency but created an unfair process. I'm a firm believer in 'innocent until proven guilty' therefore Seeking shouldn't be known as a map hacker. I will be making a video on this as it’s only fair that it's given equal platform.
I apologise to ML players that the procedures in the ML are not robust enough to offer a due process when evidence is reported, we're offering real money to play for here so I feel it's time to get real and iron out our processes and procedures. No point saying "but we're an amateur league" when we're offering real money. The @Referees and I will be working hard to write and vote on procedures that will protect us all in the future.
I apologise to the community that I rushed this out and brought this to everyone's attention thinking it was conclusive, however it's now time to deal only with facts and act based on facts.
I stand by this action 100%, I think Seeking playing on an account of a player that has now shown to be using map hacks in and around the build up to tournaments is something that in other gaming communities wouldn't have even been given a second look...
If anything we've been very lenient here, and tbh I even had it in the back of my mind that if Seeking and I talked it through it could have been less than a year ban. I'm not just saying this to look good now, it did genuinely occur to me.
Therefore I don't think the person that leaked the private PMs out of context to Seeking has helped this situation, stupid initial emotional reactions are not intended to be viewed publicly as an official response and I think it made Seeking feel like he had "an ace" to play, this closed down channels of communication at a vital moment. Very unfortunate.