Gryzor article about quad

Original: http://www.onlinegamer.se/2010/03/fraga-hur-val-fungerar-etf2ls-ac-grupp/?lang=en (scroll down for english)

Since the publication of this article I have recived a 1 year ban from ETF2L (http://etf2l.org/forum/user/380/) with the reason “ABUSE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION”.

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It is with some sadness I publish this article. It has been resting on top of my head for a while now, and a lot of it will probably blow up in my face. It might even blow up on other people, and some might even accuse me of trying to undermine the whole existence of TF2. This is of course not my intention. I have pondered many nights on the proper way of presenting this but not really ending up on a sensible conclusion. Oh well, the cat is out of the bag and i will be held responsible for this absurd “experiment” and the possible consequenses it might bring.

We turn back the clock a few weeks. To ensure someone knew what I was up to, I informed Onlinegamers editor-in-chief Max Collin of my idea. I asked for advice in certain matters but also noticed a certain eagernes to have the article published. I needed time to think over the whole thing however. Moral, ethics and all that stuff which some people seem to simply dump in the “bollocks” drawer at any given time.

Under my 18 months in ETF2L I read, wrote and heard a great deal of disturbing things, but few things were as “diffuse”, both internaly and externaly, as the “AC-group”. When i got enrolled, i joined two distinguished gentlemen named Jonni and Winneh. The labor was manual and the two tools available “experience” and “routine”. Blunt at best, but filling its function. In the long run it began to accumulate to a rather vast pile of work however, leading to a loss of quality. An anekdote with swedish relevance was when both Marjasin and Tocsix from Northwave  Gaming were flagged as beyond doubt cheaters, using triggerbots, based on STV-demos. Something i strongly opposed and got into a deep disagreement with Winneh about. This whole thing puzzled me, to say the least, which I also ventilated quite strongly.

To boost the quality of the AC-team it was decided to bring in a “big time, famous player” from the outside who would act as a failsafe on the material already concidered by the AC-team. This was done by moving our private file-area which was stored outside of ETF2L, to an “AC-approved” file-area, which then this external consultant could verify, to ensure a justifiable judgement. Byte was brought in to fill this position.

The whole thing collapsed catastrophicaly however when Byte at “The Community LAN” (ERRATA: Read F2s comment and the response [LINK]) began distributing these demo-files publicly. Jonni and Winneh went ballistic and I felt it was not really my thing to intervene. They both demanded Byte be immediatley exposed and placed in the pillory. A request which was denied by the head-admin on the grounds of Byte being too high profile and important person in the scene. After this, the AC-team went more or less inactive.

This is according to me, the day the functional AC-team died.

Six months later and a lot of bans to the left and right, I decided to try out my hypothesis. I logged in on one of the public servers I frequent, picked someone I knew played reasonably well, and recorded him. The result was about a 2 minute demo file. I sent this demo to the ETF2L AC-team without mentioning ANYTHING about what sort of cheat this person supposedly had used. I give AnAkIn a URL (http://hem.bredband.net/b306082/quad.dem — still works) and nothing else. I am shortly after contacted by another admin.

    (20:04:03) —› Query with (D2M)/(~d2m@93-97-188-173.zone5.bethere.co.uk) opened on (Friday, February 5th 2010, 20:04:03).

    (20:04:03) —› Total queries: (489)/(~0.6 per day)

    (20:04:03) —› Queries today: (3)

    (20:04:03) —› Common channels: (@#etf2l)

    (20:04:03) ((

    (20:04:03) (D2M) Gryzor are you there?

    (20:04:18) (Gryzor) what

    (20:04:33) (D2M) that ex.quad guy, what sort of cheating was he doing in the demo you linked?

    (20:04:38) (D2M) i just noticed iller asked on the forum

    (20:05:46) (Gryzor) ?

    (20:05:56) (Gryzor) i’ve sent it to anakin, who came to the same conclusion as me

    (20:06:00) (Gryzor) why are YOU asking me?

    (20:06:40) (D2M) because i was trying to do iller a favour. i’ll remember not to bother asking you anything in the future

Please note that our swedish representative in the AC-team, Iller, had reservations against this person having actually cheated. I know from own experience how difficult it can be to make yourself heard without being a half-megalomaniac person. I continued to appear oblivious and referred to my conversation with AnAkIn.

The week after a newspost was published where you could read, amongst other things, that ex.Quad had been banned 1 year for aimboting.

With a demo randomly recorded from a public server, on someone I have played with enough to know he is not a cheater. It becomes even more absurd when the demo is released and I notice it is in fact my own demo file. It is all done very unprofessionally in struggling english and is to no surprise, not well received at all. What might actually be a bit suprising, on the other hand, is that I did not send a copy of the demo to anyone but the AC-crew and the chances of someone figuring out the URL mentioned above and downloading it are unheard of. Perhaps someone from the inside tried to resist and fight back, I personally have no idea.

While I pondered on how to write this article, the whole thing took another absurd turn. On ex.Quad’s video, you could read that cc/compton apparently had received information from admins that “more evidence” against the player (see http://etf2l.org/videos/view/22889/). Something which seems rather unlikely concidering the ban is on a Division 6, danish player of whom nobody have ever heard of before this incident. I have tried to reach Compton without succeeding.

In the end, it is with some sadness I publish this article, as this is something kept behind dark curtains. The AC-business, almost holy, with unprotestable powers of judgement. During my time in ETF2L, i found the whole team struggling against internal struggles, things like ventrilo.exe and the inability of someone to take charge and head things up properly. That feeling has certainly been given a lot of momentum by this experience. To sum it up, the answer to the question in the title, “how well does the AC-team work?”, is both sad and frightening.

I would also like to extend my now worthless excuses to eX. and Quad who randomly became unvolontary test subjects in my rather reckless experiment.

Good luck out there, you will need it.
(Translated by Ulv)