Former North American CS:GO professional Jordan ‘n0thing’ Gilbert has revealed how he was approached with offers to fix games during his career despite those offers not seeming super serious.
During his time as a CS:GO pro, n0thing made his name as a part of the compLexity roster before moving over to Cloud9 and cementing himself with legendary status.
As he was on the rise, however, match-fixing had become rife in the scene and was highlighted with the infamous iBuyPower match-fixing scandal in 2014 – as some of North America’s top talents were banned from Valve-sponsored tournaments. Yet, n0thing revealed that IBP was not the only North American team to be handed the chance at throwing games.
n0thing returned to compLexity at the end of 2018 for their IEM Katowice Major run.
In fact, he and his compLexity teammates were often presented with ‘offers’ through regular messages. However, as the former pro revealed, they never seemed overly serious and he was never quite sure if a throw attempt had been proposed to him.
“I feel like I got approached but I feel like if I said it, they wouldn’t say that it was a real approach,” n0thing told Richard Lewis during the Dexerto Talk Show. Explaining what would happen when he received the messages, he continued: “People would crack jokes and be like ‘hey man, we can probably make like 20 grand right now or something for this match not really lol’ and then they wouldn’t say anything else.”
“I was like, I feel like if I didn’t say lol right there, something else would have been transcribed there,” n0thing added, before revealing that he wasn’t alone in receiving offers. “I had heard that from a couple of other people – my teammates at the time would get the same message and we’d just laugh about it and be like ‘my gosh, I think that wasn’t a joke.’
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However, the offers were never intended for big matches or anything with any real implications on the scene. “Like it’s these small matches where they don’t really mean shit for the whole scene or the year,” n0thing explained further.
“The enticing side was obviously right there in front of you like ‘oh, lose out on some qualifier to this event that doesn’t matter and you’re going to win more than the first place or the prize but it’s super shady.”
n0thing cemented himself as a CS:GO legend as a member of Cloud9.
Even though some professionals have spoken out about having the iBuyPower team unbanned from Major events, Valve has remained steadfast in their 2014 ‘Integrity and Fair Play’ ruling as the players remain as the most high profile case of match-fixing.
Some tournament organizers have since lifted the ban on the team for their own events – with Dreamhack and ESL allowing Joshua ‘Steel’ Nissan and Braxton ‘Swag’ Pierce to compete in their tournaments and leagues.
However, things may have been a lot different had the gaming giant not put their foot down and allowed match-fixing to infest the competitive scene – as it’s clear, from n0thing’s explanation, that some parties attempted to make it happen.
