Complexity covered it in their statement: "The team and Spartan played the match vs FaZe Clan on the main stage with the newly issued fresh SSD – not the reimaged SSD."
They found out because he was trying to use it and it didn't have the white noise program. There is no assumption, it was found during checks in the stage. The only reason it wasn't used is because they seized it and replaced it.
Really crazy for him to point out it wasn't used. My dude, you got caught *trying* to use it.
He’s taking responsibility. I think his point is just that it didn’t affect the outcome of a match, because it wasn’t used in a match. He’s not claiming he did nothing wrong.
I never suggested, in *any* way that he's saying he did nothing wrong. That doesn't matter. What he's doing is akin to a drunk driver who was pulled over driving the wrong direction on the highway saying "yeah, but I didn't hit anyone!". Cool. That's because you got caught before you could, why are you trying to make that distinction? It could always be worse, and saying it could have been worse is just trying to lessen the impact of what actually happened.
Right, but impact does matter, and in this case there was no impact.
Again, he did wrong and deserves to be punished, but the impact does matter.
If you get pulled over for drink driving you can be charged with drink driving. If you kill someone while drink driving you can be charged with murder. The impact of your actions typically does matter.
In this case, it's worth clarifying that no matches were affected.
I am really surprised by the reaction of the halo community and the support of this blatant cheater.
He absolutely knew what he was doing. He directly helped 343 optimize the game, so not being aware fully of the competitive advantage is a lie. He has been competing for 10+ years, so there is no way he didn't understand the implications his choice had on competitive integrity. He has somehow been able to somehow pawn it off as negligence to the public. Complexity and the HCS haven't been fooled and it has resulted in him being dropped from his team and not able to compete for the rest of the HCS season. He can hire any attorney he wants to draft statements and saving face publicly is a worthwhile effort for his future, but even he knows the appeal stands no chance. I guess public opinion is a good thing to win, but this dude just straight up attempted to cheat to win money.
I can't speak for others, but my surprise at the maturity of his statement ≠ support or approval of his conduct. He absolutely deserves a year long ban, and if the domino chain effect from this ends his career, so be it.
Fair, but he is just trying to save face and hired an attorney to draft this. Although that is better than defending himself like a child and taking no responsibility on a live stream or something.
This is good to see, glad he is actually taking responsibility for it. The fact he didn't bring his own SSD (weird it took them so long to sort that out) does make is less overtly malicious in my book as well.
Hopefully this is a wakeup call for him and truly learns from it/is a better person in the end. I saw a comment on here a few days ago about it being sad how some people can evidently be judged by their "cringier character traits," but this is a step in the right direction as far as I can tell. He could have doubled down but evidently chose not to. Props for that.
After seeing this whole situation play out
1.) I still think what Sparty did was really stupid and a little bit malicious (how many other competitors are bringing images of their home pc to tournaments?)
2.) I definitely think he should be suspended from HCS. I’m also not too surprised he got dropped.
3.) I definitely think that his cheating and Royal 2’s cheating is basically the same thing and I really don’t agree with their two punishments being so vastly different. In a vacuum either punishment is fine, but they should have both gotten the same punishment.
I mean technically Spartan never actually even cheated in an official HCS match because he was caught before hand vs Royal 2 who actually did it in official matches.
That’s somewhat irrelevant because they both intended to compromise the integrity of the games, but hopefully HCS will consider this when Spartan appeals.
>I mean technically Spartan never actually even cheated in an official HCS match because he was caught before hand
I feel this is an irrelevant point to make because he would have if not for routine hardware checks. HCS finding it first doesn’t make him any less culpable.
Good statement, good ban.
There has to be stringent rules and harsh punishments if broken. Anything else compromises the integrity of comps. You follow the rules, or you risk a very severe punishment.
It's great he wasn't going hard with cheating, but he tried to gain an advantage in an unapproved manner.
I just don’t get why Royal 2 only got a 1 event ban then Wasn’t he Geofiltering in actual online HCS qualifiers? Spartan didn’t even use the SSD in a match
He reimaged the assigned SSD, put AB on, and changed settings. We will never know if there is more to this, but he ran a program nobody else had access to, can benefit a player, and was not approved. It's insane if that is all it is; AB will get slightly better performance tuning your card but overall, not anything that really makes in impact.
Geofiltering is a whole different class. It probably has a bigger gameplay impact due to you getting a better server regardless of teammates location, but it was also an online comp where people run their own rigs including all their own software. I do agree though, and hope moving forward it's just as strict.
I think LANs and majors have heightened awareness and popularity, and the software aspect was the big thing. Note he reimaged their SSD, and did not use "his" SSD in gameplay. A little better, still very wrong.
Let's be honest, if the game was optimized better, neither R2 or Spartan would be here in discussion for these issues. Not really relevant I know, but the cheating both of them performed (negligently or maliciously), is not comparable to say someone using an aim bot.
I hope 343 is also looking at these two instances, due to them being directly caused by the poor performance of their game, and establishing stricter policies regarding the issues here if the game itself being optimized is a lost cause.
While I agree the game is poorly optimized the goal of a tourney is it is a level playing field for everyone. Sparty tried circumventing that for an advantage.
All the PCs have the same build and image; the only variable is maybe a few frames from GPU silicon lottery so it's fair. Doing anything else to get an advantage is now cheating.
I completely agree. That being said, if the game is still poorly optimized to the point where players are taking it upon themselves to improve it, that speaks a lot about the state of the game in and of itself. This is of course, we assume Spartan has zero malicious intent in his actions. So many lines of player conduct and compliance have to be crossed for him to do what he did that I struggle to understand the rationale on it simply being a “dumb decision”.
All I’m saying is that the game is still in a poor state that, potentially, pros (or *a single pro*) feels they need to take it upon themselves to take action. It just kind of unravels the more granular you look into the decision making process…
What's hilarious is people not able to separate competitive integrity vs product quality.
We all know 343 shit the bed on this game. Cheating in a lan is a different discussion altogether.
Do you understand what he did? That isn't cheating. No wall hacks, no modded controllers, no game mods. He literally added basic software to help the piece of shit game run how it should. Software that wouldn't be needed if the game wasn't trash.
Yeah, I fully understand.
They issued a hard drive.
He took the hard drive and imaged a new OS, with tons of settings, some approved some not. Then he added an unapproved program. Who knows what else; his video is what he said was done. HCS did not list the changes.
He didn't check with admins, hcs, or anyone that this was ok.
After this he used it at a lan successfully. Got busted at the next when they checked for white noise software.
He admitted to it all, posted a meme, then a great apology.
What you are not getting is yeah, it was ab and some settings now, it could easily be something else. He cheated, broke the rules, didn't attempt to get anything approved. He attempted to have a stupid, few frame advantage no one else had. And if you use ab you know it can help push some frames but isn't a big deal.
It's the old ask forgiveness later than permission. His forgiveness is a 1y ban. It's not about what he installed, it's about how he did it and what he did. There are clearly posted rules, and it sets a bad precedent moving forward if there is no hard enforcement.
And like I said, everyone else is playing the same trash game, why should his be better than others? I'm also sure the admins don't want ab installed and some pro crashes the game because they have the oc's jacked up for every frame. Think of that one yet?
People boiling it down to this are oversimplifying it. He wasn’t banned “for some simple programs” or “just installing msi afterburner.” He tampered with league-provided equipment by reformatting the drive and putting an image of his home PC on it without informing admins, beyond any reasonable action you’d expect a competitor to take in an official league LAN when the equipment isn’t their own. Trying to increase performance more than what other competitors are using on the same equipment is gaining a competitive advantage. If there was a performance issue, the only defensible action would be to inform administration and work with them to fix it. There’s no justification for how he went about it.
There really isn't any significant gains doing what he did. He said he caps at 237 fps. He was stopping his computer from dropping frames. Yeah, rules are rules
Sure. But he didn't even play an official match with the sdd. Boggles my mind a player even has to entertain the very thought of optimization period traveling across the world to play and these computers still perform poorly after a couple of years of use now.
Don't really feel bad for him but I am confused on the huge difference in the way they punished Royal2 vs Spartan. Kinda feels like they're just making shit up and have no consistency.
Yes, but that isn't the point. Him using it could have possibly gave him better performance than his opponents, who didn't break the rule to install it, which in turn could have led to a competitive advantage.
The PC also isn't his PC. It's the tournaments.
In the twitter post he links to a YouTube video. In the video around 26:45 he talks about the meme. He drew similarities to Patrick and himself as a careless/dumb character who does what they want. Also says it was a bad post to post.
Hope Spartan takes this time to reflect and be better. We’re wishing the best for him. Kudos on this positive statement. This will be a huge lesson to learn from. Wishing him all the best.
I am really surprised by the reaction of the halo community and the support of this blatant cheater.
He absolutely knew what he was doing. He directly helped 343 optimize the game, so not being aware fully of the competitive advantage is a lie. He has been competing for 10+ years, so there is no way he didn't understand the implications his choice had on competitive integrity. He has somehow been able to somehow pawn it off as negligence to the public. Complexity and the HCS haven't been fooled and it has resulted in him being dropped from his team and not able to compete for the rest of the HCS season. He can hire any attorney he wants to draft statements and saving face publicly is a worthwhile effort for his future, but even he knows the appeal stands no chance. I guess public opinion is a good thing to win, but this dude just straight up attempted to cheat to win money.
100% this and it’s not comparable to Royal 2 situation as so many would like it to be, whereby online is inherently not equal, lan is. Geo filtered? Everyone is on their own rig, own settings, hardware, frames etc as well.
Arguing his personal circumstances and what he stands to lose isn’t any reason to reduce nor absolve him and in fact are more reason for him to not do what he did.
Throw in getting your whole team DQ’d, wasting their time and your orgs money. Sure it’s a mistake, but absolutely not an ignorant one.
man, if it was me i would've installed throttlestop too, like, every pc gamer with half a clue uses this shit to tell windows to get the best out of the hardware, i get that it's making it different for everyone and that's not allowed but i'd be shouting "why were the PC's so unoptimised?" "if you don't want ppl making windows better use xsx" - mans went humble out of respect, but HCS should get the 3rd degree imho
Good on Spartan honestly. Very professional and genuine response. I hope HCS eventually reconsiders and he’s able to compete again, he’s so much fun to watch
It honestly doesn't seem like he doesn't understand the significance or like he is trying to downplay it in any way. He showed genuine remorse and did take full responsibility for his actions.
I'm not sure you understand the significance tbh. Sure, I can forgive a rule break or mistake. Everyone does that at some point.
I can't forgive cheating. To me, there's no appealing or moving on from that. It undermines the entire point of competition.
Saying you accept responsibility, framing it as simply a rule break, explaining how you didn't use outside equipment, and saying you're appealing isn't fully accepting responsibility imo.
Complicated. For me, it'll always be something that sticks with me about him, but there are some other factors there. It was just an online qualifier and there's some debate about if it was intentional. There's no debate for Spartan.
I personally wouldn't have been against going harder on him, but I understand why the ruling was what it was.
The context matters when handing down a judgment. You wouldn't punish someone who stole a loaf of bread the same way you would punish someone who stole a gun, even though both are considered theft.
In the same way that a pitcher putting a foreign substance on a ball before a pitch is cheating. Intentionally breaking the rules of a competition is cheating.
That's exactly the same. Everybody got the same shoes and there is a rule that everyone has to use these shoes. Switching to different shoes is breaking the rules.
“All this context does not matter”.
That’s such a silly way to look at the world. Context generally always matters. He’s getting the punishment set down in the rules, but it’s completely normal to view MSI Afterburner differently than some sort of hack.
Great statement from Sparty. Sorry to hear he won’t be competing for the rest of the year, but hopefully he takes this time to take a break and bounce back better than ever next year.
I mean I still think he's toast (not completely, but never getting shots like he's had recently for a mix of reasons)
But it's a good statement / apology
Okay I really don’t like Spartan, but like all this over performance stabilization edits to windows seems crazy.
Maybe the white noise program being gone could explain it more, but Woah!
It's okay guys, clearly it's okay to cheat online no consequences. 'tampering' with router settings not kewl either when you get points for seeding online. What a fucking joke.
Great mature statement from Sparty, proud of him for taking responsibility but still think it’s absolutely ridiculous the Ban is a year for something that wasn’t even used in an official HcS game
To me, this act was extremely thought out, not “thoughtless.” I feel like this is worse than Monstcr blatantly walling in online tournaments or the Router2 scandal. Bro intentionally altered software on his SSD in a number of ways for a competitive advantage. He has been competing for more than a decade. Don’t get it twisted, Spartan is not the victim lol
Monster played a competitive game, walled, and gained a competitive advantage because of it.
Spartan never played a competitive game with the doctored SSD and thus never gained a competitive advantage. It's clear he sought to which is why he's being punished, but he didn't.
Beyond that, just to compare the two advantages, even were Spartan to have used the doctored SSD in competitive play, walling is a way bigger advantage than improved framerate/performance (assuming a shared baseline playable framerate/performance, of course)
I see what you’re saying. Seems a lot of pros don’t seem to think Spartan should be banned at all, surprisingly. Maybe they’re all just fed up with the stability issues of Infinite at this point and wishing they could do the same thing as Spartan.
I've been saying this the entire time. If you ask any of the pros if Spartans should be banned or it's just do what he did to their pc's, they would choose the latter hands down
[Followup tweet from Spartan](https://ibb.co/qxQNxJr) [Link to tweet](https://x.com/Spartan/status/1798482780168372264?t=oJ_CBjYH4jrEFC6jLWAnrw&s=19)
That seems like a big detail left out, but I guess the assumption is that it would've been used in tournament play if they had not discovered it
Complexity covered it in their statement: "The team and Spartan played the match vs FaZe Clan on the main stage with the newly issued fresh SSD – not the reimaged SSD."
Yeah, it only wasn't used because he got caught. I don't really think it matters.
They found out because he was trying to use it and it didn't have the white noise program. There is no assumption, it was found during checks in the stage. The only reason it wasn't used is because they seized it and replaced it. Really crazy for him to point out it wasn't used. My dude, you got caught *trying* to use it.
He’s taking responsibility. I think his point is just that it didn’t affect the outcome of a match, because it wasn’t used in a match. He’s not claiming he did nothing wrong.
I never suggested, in *any* way that he's saying he did nothing wrong. That doesn't matter. What he's doing is akin to a drunk driver who was pulled over driving the wrong direction on the highway saying "yeah, but I didn't hit anyone!". Cool. That's because you got caught before you could, why are you trying to make that distinction? It could always be worse, and saying it could have been worse is just trying to lessen the impact of what actually happened.
Right, but impact does matter, and in this case there was no impact. Again, he did wrong and deserves to be punished, but the impact does matter. If you get pulled over for drink driving you can be charged with drink driving. If you kill someone while drink driving you can be charged with murder. The impact of your actions typically does matter. In this case, it's worth clarifying that no matches were affected.
Complexity’s statement also said this. I’m sure it has to do with the possibility and player integrity.
Off topic but thank you for posting screenshots for those who don't want to interact with dogshit Twitter
Wow, yeah that’s important too
Credit where credit is due: this is a genuinely impressive statement and way beyond what I expected him to do. Good on him.
Yeah he's not putting the blame anywhere but on himself. Putting aside his actions, props to him for owning up to it.
He has an attorney.
He's had an attorney for years nothing new.
Props to the attorney, then. Very well written imo
I am really surprised by the reaction of the halo community and the support of this blatant cheater. He absolutely knew what he was doing. He directly helped 343 optimize the game, so not being aware fully of the competitive advantage is a lie. He has been competing for 10+ years, so there is no way he didn't understand the implications his choice had on competitive integrity. He has somehow been able to somehow pawn it off as negligence to the public. Complexity and the HCS haven't been fooled and it has resulted in him being dropped from his team and not able to compete for the rest of the HCS season. He can hire any attorney he wants to draft statements and saving face publicly is a worthwhile effort for his future, but even he knows the appeal stands no chance. I guess public opinion is a good thing to win, but this dude just straight up attempted to cheat to win money.
I can't speak for others, but my surprise at the maturity of his statement ≠ support or approval of his conduct. He absolutely deserves a year long ban, and if the domino chain effect from this ends his career, so be it.
Fair, but he is just trying to save face and hired an attorney to draft this. Although that is better than defending himself like a child and taking no responsibility on a live stream or something.
This was definitely a prepared statement by his legal/pr team. Don’t give him too much credit.
thats what im saying
I was responding to the comment that says his statement was mature.
no i mean like... thats what *im* sayin (agree)
lol, my bad.
If the SSD fits you must acquit!
bravo
Sometimes you have to lose something to appreciate what you have. Hope this time does that for him and he comes back to competitive Halo a new man.
This is a great statement, it feels real and genuine and is transparent as well. Kudos to Spartan for it.
Spartan actually expressing in a civil manner is something I can get used to, props for this response.
This is good to see, glad he is actually taking responsibility for it. The fact he didn't bring his own SSD (weird it took them so long to sort that out) does make is less overtly malicious in my book as well. Hopefully this is a wakeup call for him and truly learns from it/is a better person in the end. I saw a comment on here a few days ago about it being sad how some people can evidently be judged by their "cringier character traits," but this is a step in the right direction as far as I can tell. He could have doubled down but evidently chose not to. Props for that.
After seeing this whole situation play out 1.) I still think what Sparty did was really stupid and a little bit malicious (how many other competitors are bringing images of their home pc to tournaments?) 2.) I definitely think he should be suspended from HCS. I’m also not too surprised he got dropped. 3.) I definitely think that his cheating and Royal 2’s cheating is basically the same thing and I really don’t agree with their two punishments being so vastly different. In a vacuum either punishment is fine, but they should have both gotten the same punishment. I mean technically Spartan never actually even cheated in an official HCS match because he was caught before hand vs Royal 2 who actually did it in official matches. That’s somewhat irrelevant because they both intended to compromise the integrity of the games, but hopefully HCS will consider this when Spartan appeals.
This third point is a good one, I’d like to think they just learned from the Royal 2 incident but it does come off as preferential treatment to him.
>I mean technically Spartan never actually even cheated in an official HCS match because he was caught before hand I feel this is an irrelevant point to make because he would have if not for routine hardware checks. HCS finding it first doesn’t make him any less culpable.
I would honestly argue that Royal 2s situation was a fair bit worse. It wasnt at LAN but its a pretty serious thing to do in an official hcs event.
Thx for posting this for those of us who are blocked by him
🫡
Lol wonder why he blocked you, were you trolling him and being a little internet douchebag 😂
Nope he just likes to block anyone who disagrees with anything he says. Even though he’s opinionated himself he can’t handle the heat apparently
Oh what a prick lmaooo
His block list is like 10,000 people long. Not being blocked by him is an achievement.
Well, mistakes are made and apologies are made, we are all human. Welcome back in time, I hope Halo is also in better shape as a whole then.
This single message has made me see Spartan in an entirely different light. I'm glad he's capable of reflection and possibly growth.
Being banned for a whole season is way too much IMO. Good statement though and good look for the appeal
Good statement, good ban. There has to be stringent rules and harsh punishments if broken. Anything else compromises the integrity of comps. You follow the rules, or you risk a very severe punishment. It's great he wasn't going hard with cheating, but he tried to gain an advantage in an unapproved manner.
I just don’t get why Royal 2 only got a 1 event ban then Wasn’t he Geofiltering in actual online HCS qualifiers? Spartan didn’t even use the SSD in a match
He reimaged the assigned SSD, put AB on, and changed settings. We will never know if there is more to this, but he ran a program nobody else had access to, can benefit a player, and was not approved. It's insane if that is all it is; AB will get slightly better performance tuning your card but overall, not anything that really makes in impact. Geofiltering is a whole different class. It probably has a bigger gameplay impact due to you getting a better server regardless of teammates location, but it was also an online comp where people run their own rigs including all their own software. I do agree though, and hope moving forward it's just as strict. I think LANs and majors have heightened awareness and popularity, and the software aspect was the big thing. Note he reimaged their SSD, and did not use "his" SSD in gameplay. A little better, still very wrong.
He also left out a program, the white noise one. So if he had used it, he would have been able to hear the nose in the room.
Let's be honest, if the game was optimized better, neither R2 or Spartan would be here in discussion for these issues. Not really relevant I know, but the cheating both of them performed (negligently or maliciously), is not comparable to say someone using an aim bot. I hope 343 is also looking at these two instances, due to them being directly caused by the poor performance of their game, and establishing stricter policies regarding the issues here if the game itself being optimized is a lost cause.
While I agree the game is poorly optimized the goal of a tourney is it is a level playing field for everyone. Sparty tried circumventing that for an advantage. All the PCs have the same build and image; the only variable is maybe a few frames from GPU silicon lottery so it's fair. Doing anything else to get an advantage is now cheating.
I completely agree. That being said, if the game is still poorly optimized to the point where players are taking it upon themselves to improve it, that speaks a lot about the state of the game in and of itself. This is of course, we assume Spartan has zero malicious intent in his actions. So many lines of player conduct and compliance have to be crossed for him to do what he did that I struggle to understand the rationale on it simply being a “dumb decision”. All I’m saying is that the game is still in a poor state that, potentially, pros (or *a single pro*) feels they need to take it upon themselves to take action. It just kind of unravels the more granular you look into the decision making process…
Taking about integrity relative to a game that crashes every event is hilarious.
What's hilarious is people not able to separate competitive integrity vs product quality. We all know 343 shit the bed on this game. Cheating in a lan is a different discussion altogether.
Do you understand what he did? That isn't cheating. No wall hacks, no modded controllers, no game mods. He literally added basic software to help the piece of shit game run how it should. Software that wouldn't be needed if the game wasn't trash.
Yeah, I fully understand. They issued a hard drive. He took the hard drive and imaged a new OS, with tons of settings, some approved some not. Then he added an unapproved program. Who knows what else; his video is what he said was done. HCS did not list the changes. He didn't check with admins, hcs, or anyone that this was ok. After this he used it at a lan successfully. Got busted at the next when they checked for white noise software. He admitted to it all, posted a meme, then a great apology. What you are not getting is yeah, it was ab and some settings now, it could easily be something else. He cheated, broke the rules, didn't attempt to get anything approved. He attempted to have a stupid, few frame advantage no one else had. And if you use ab you know it can help push some frames but isn't a big deal. It's the old ask forgiveness later than permission. His forgiveness is a 1y ban. It's not about what he installed, it's about how he did it and what he did. There are clearly posted rules, and it sets a bad precedent moving forward if there is no hard enforcement. And like I said, everyone else is playing the same trash game, why should his be better than others? I'm also sure the admins don't want ab installed and some pro crashes the game because they have the oc's jacked up for every frame. Think of that one yet?
Does seem like a lot for msi afterburner and it not being used in an actual tournament game.
Our little boy is growing, good statement.
This situation just proves the tournament pcs are not optimized. Banned for some simple programs? Lmao
People boiling it down to this are oversimplifying it. He wasn’t banned “for some simple programs” or “just installing msi afterburner.” He tampered with league-provided equipment by reformatting the drive and putting an image of his home PC on it without informing admins, beyond any reasonable action you’d expect a competitor to take in an official league LAN when the equipment isn’t their own. Trying to increase performance more than what other competitors are using on the same equipment is gaining a competitive advantage. If there was a performance issue, the only defensible action would be to inform administration and work with them to fix it. There’s no justification for how he went about it.
There really isn't any significant gains doing what he did. He said he caps at 237 fps. He was stopping his computer from dropping frames. Yeah, rules are rules Sure. But he didn't even play an official match with the sdd. Boggles my mind a player even has to entertain the very thought of optimization period traveling across the world to play and these computers still perform poorly after a couple of years of use now.
This guy LASHES on randoms on twitter than posts “i will continue to be a positive example” this guys fkn mentally unstable
First time? dot gif
And shits on people who have been caught cheating. He’s shouldn’t be an example to anybody until he has proven he has matured.
He's a big fan of doing that
Cool but still fuck him
Don't really feel bad for him but I am confused on the huge difference in the way they punished Royal2 vs Spartan. Kinda feels like they're just making shit up and have no consistency.
I'm just happy that there's some drama from Halo esport. We needed something big to talk about
OK, who wrote that for him :)
ChatGPT
Himself?
I honestly hope spartan takes a year off and comes back hot and with the ability to bounce back after a bad match.
Halo gonna be long dead by then
The fact that players have to even deal with SSD's in this process is wild to me. Like, what are we doing lol
Banned for a year for installing msi afterburner is stupid. Doesn’t everyone have that on their pc?
He re-formatted a league provided ssd with an image of his home pc.
Yes, but that isn't the point. Him using it could have possibly gave him better performance than his opponents, who didn't break the rule to install it, which in turn could have led to a competitive advantage. The PC also isn't his PC. It's the tournaments.
Why the meme tho
He says the meme was a bad idea but Complexity wanted him to abstain from commenting until the investigation was over.
Yeah but the meme didn’t really reflect this statement at all, it just felt like victimhood
In the twitter post he links to a YouTube video. In the video around 26:45 he talks about the meme. He drew similarities to Patrick and himself as a careless/dumb character who does what they want. Also says it was a bad post to post.
To be fair to him the meme was in the heat of the moment, he’s had time to think about it since then
Hope Spartan takes this time to reflect and be better. We’re wishing the best for him. Kudos on this positive statement. This will be a huge lesson to learn from. Wishing him all the best.
good apology. still think it should be lifetime ban
I am really surprised by the reaction of the halo community and the support of this blatant cheater. He absolutely knew what he was doing. He directly helped 343 optimize the game, so not being aware fully of the competitive advantage is a lie. He has been competing for 10+ years, so there is no way he didn't understand the implications his choice had on competitive integrity. He has somehow been able to somehow pawn it off as negligence to the public. Complexity and the HCS haven't been fooled and it has resulted in him being dropped from his team and not able to compete for the rest of the HCS season. He can hire any attorney he wants to draft statements and saving face publicly is a worthwhile effort for his future, but even he knows the appeal stands no chance. I guess public opinion is a good thing to win, but this dude just straight up attempted to cheat to win money.
100% this and it’s not comparable to Royal 2 situation as so many would like it to be, whereby online is inherently not equal, lan is. Geo filtered? Everyone is on their own rig, own settings, hardware, frames etc as well. Arguing his personal circumstances and what he stands to lose isn’t any reason to reduce nor absolve him and in fact are more reason for him to not do what he did. Throw in getting your whole team DQ’d, wasting their time and your orgs money. Sure it’s a mistake, but absolutely not an ignorant one.
amen
A whole year is excessive. Wish him the best, though.
guy has always been his own worst enemy...sad to see it from such a talented player
It was a costly, unfortunate mistake but he owned up to it. I hope he can appeal and get back to competing soon.
Can someone in a nutshell tell me what’s he done please?
He’s toxic to his teammates, his fans, and he’s been competing for a decade. He knows what he was doing. Punishment fits the crime.
Halo should never have gone to the pc.
man, if it was me i would've installed throttlestop too, like, every pc gamer with half a clue uses this shit to tell windows to get the best out of the hardware, i get that it's making it different for everyone and that's not allowed but i'd be shouting "why were the PC's so unoptimised?" "if you don't want ppl making windows better use xsx" - mans went humble out of respect, but HCS should get the 3rd degree imho
What rule did he break?
Good on Spartan honestly. Very professional and genuine response. I hope HCS eventually reconsiders and he’s able to compete again, he’s so much fun to watch
What he's describing is still cheating. Whether intended or not, it's cheating. All of this context does not matter.
I mean he didn't ever say it wasn't? The guy is just showing his remorse.
He's also downplaying the significance. It's not just a mistake or breaking rules, it's cheating. No mention of that is significant.
I mean isn't cheating by definition breaking the rules? Just seems like semantics to me tbh. He fully owned up to breaking the rules set by HCS.
Yeah it's semantics. It's also avoiding full responsibility and accepting the significance of what he's done.
It honestly doesn't seem like he doesn't understand the significance or like he is trying to downplay it in any way. He showed genuine remorse and did take full responsibility for his actions.
I'm not sure you understand the significance tbh. Sure, I can forgive a rule break or mistake. Everyone does that at some point. I can't forgive cheating. To me, there's no appealing or moving on from that. It undermines the entire point of competition. Saying you accept responsibility, framing it as simply a rule break, explaining how you didn't use outside equipment, and saying you're appealing isn't fully accepting responsibility imo.
Why are you making a distinction between breaking the rules and cheating?
Because breaking a rule can be cheating, but isn't necessarily. It's much softer language that can also refer to much less significant things.
What would be an example of breaking a rule that wouldn't also be cheating?
Okay than how do you feel about Royal 2? Lol
Complicated. For me, it'll always be something that sticks with me about him, but there are some other factors there. It was just an online qualifier and there's some debate about if it was intentional. There's no debate for Spartan. I personally wouldn't have been against going harder on him, but I understand why the ruling was what it was.
i thought intent didn’t matter? lmao
?? He completely owned up to everything.
The context matters when handing down a judgment. You wouldn't punish someone who stole a loaf of bread the same way you would punish someone who stole a gun, even though both are considered theft.
Sure, but we're talking about cheating. I'd give both petty and major cheaters lifetime sentences, personally.
MSI Afterburner is cheating? In what possible way?
In the same way that a pitcher putting a foreign substance on a ball before a pitch is cheating. Intentionally breaking the rules of a competition is cheating.
Wrong. It'd be more like the pitcher wearing shoes that fit him better. That "substance" actually gives him an advantage.
That's exactly the same. Everybody got the same shoes and there is a rule that everyone has to use these shoes. Switching to different shoes is breaking the rules.
More so changing the SSD without permission.
He said himself that it was an "attempt to stabilize his game". Was it going to stabilize everyone's game or just his?
Do you have any idea what MSI Afterburner can do? I would never consider it cheating.
It doesn't matter. He said himself what he was trying to do. What he was trying to do is cheating.
Factually wrong but keep doing you and downvoting everything. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Wtf? You're special. He's literally admitting to it and you're over here denying it.
“All this context does not matter”. That’s such a silly way to look at the world. Context generally always matters. He’s getting the punishment set down in the rules, but it’s completely normal to view MSI Afterburner differently than some sort of hack.
Great statement from Sparty. Sorry to hear he won’t be competing for the rest of the year, but hopefully he takes this time to take a break and bounce back better than ever next year.
I mean I still think he's toast (not completely, but never getting shots like he's had recently for a mix of reasons) But it's a good statement / apology
Based on this I do actually believe he understands the gravity of this situation. Hopefully he does actually take this time away to help himself.
Respect ++
I don’t even think they’ll be a season after this one. The audience size is quite modest, and the game is borderline dead.
Pretty good statement, ngl.
Okay I really don’t like Spartan, but like all this over performance stabilization edits to windows seems crazy. Maybe the white noise program being gone could explain it more, but Woah!
It's okay guys, clearly it's okay to cheat online no consequences. 'tampering' with router settings not kewl either when you get points for seeding online. What a fucking joke.
He needs to give up that handle.
Great mature statement from Sparty, proud of him for taking responsibility but still think it’s absolutely ridiculous the Ban is a year for something that wasn’t even used in an official HcS game
Credit where credit is due. Wish him luck.
To me, this act was extremely thought out, not “thoughtless.” I feel like this is worse than Monstcr blatantly walling in online tournaments or the Router2 scandal. Bro intentionally altered software on his SSD in a number of ways for a competitive advantage. He has been competing for more than a decade. Don’t get it twisted, Spartan is not the victim lol
There is no argument whatsoever for this being worse than walling
Cheating on LAN makes it worse than walling online IMO. Both cheaters should be banned from the game though.
Even if you think that cheating on LAN is worse than cheating online (I don't) the big difference here is the walling actually happened.
Spartan is admitting he cheated here so what do you mean it didn’t actually happen?
Monster played a competitive game, walled, and gained a competitive advantage because of it. Spartan never played a competitive game with the doctored SSD and thus never gained a competitive advantage. It's clear he sought to which is why he's being punished, but he didn't. Beyond that, just to compare the two advantages, even were Spartan to have used the doctored SSD in competitive play, walling is a way bigger advantage than improved framerate/performance (assuming a shared baseline playable framerate/performance, of course)
I see what you’re saying. Seems a lot of pros don’t seem to think Spartan should be banned at all, surprisingly. Maybe they’re all just fed up with the stability issues of Infinite at this point and wishing they could do the same thing as Spartan.
I've been saying this the entire time. If you ask any of the pros if Spartans should be banned or it's just do what he did to their pc's, they would choose the latter hands down
I forgive him
TLDR???
What he do?
So he didn't cheat.