OpTic India player Nikhil ‘forsaken’ Kumawat was exposed for cheating during a tournament and later banned from competitive CSGO in one of the biggest scandals of 2018 — and a new video has emerged showing exactly what his opponents saw when competing against the hacks.
OpTic India was formed in the summer of 2018 and started off strong with an impressive series of performances at various C-Tier and qualifier CSGO tournaments.
Just 4 months after the team was signed though, its entire roster was released in October 2018 after their star player was exposed for using hacks while competing in the eXTREMESLAND 2018 Asia Finals.
While forsaken is still serving his 5-year ESIC ban, new footage of his cheating continues to emerge. YouTuber Avi Thour shared a video showing the perspective of opponents playing against the hacks during the infamous “word.exe” scandal, called that because the cheating program was literally named “word.exe” on the Indian player’s PC.
The footage on display in the video makes it extremely clear that something is not quite right with forsaken’s behavior in-game, as almost every possible hacking situation can be seen in the 2-minute long montage.
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Opponents are hit without even seeing forsaken on their screen, headshot immediately after coming around corners, and many other instances of possible foul play.
Lucky plays and strategies like head-glitching are not an issue on their own. However, the video evidence combined with the the fact we now know forsaken was cheating is just more evidence these plays were more than just skill.
The video provides even more evidence that forsaken was abusing hacks while competing for OpTic India. Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez – the owner of OpTic Gaming – spoke about the scandal in an episode of his ‘Eavesdrop’ podcast that aired on September 13.
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H3CZ shared some strong criticism of forsaken, calling him a “f**king loser.” He went on to describe how forsaken’s actions negatively affected the OpTic organization, saying “To put on that brand, and to f**king do that, he is lucky that I wasn’t f**king there.”
While forsaken has apologized for the cheating scandal, the events have clearly stuck with H3CZ and many others in the CSGO and OpTic community. This video is just another reminder of how much a single player can damage the reputation of an esports organization and the integrity of a game’s competitive scene.