Ex-OpTic India member Forsaken speaks about cheating
After complete silence, former OpTic India player Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat has spoken about his cheating scandal. In an interview with India-based gaming outlet AFK Gaming, Kumawat would explain his situation and apologize.
"I have dragged the name of the country in the dirt and I know it's unforgivable." – Forsaken
Check out the entire interview here: https://t.co/XDEIdp5JgA#Forsaken #HackingIncident #Esports #CSGO pic.twitter.com/SUmGvFZBdD
— AFK Gaming (@afkgaming) October 24, 2018
OpTic Gaming’s Indian Counter-Strike team would be disqualified from eXTREMESLAND 2018 Asia Finals after admins would catch Kumawat cheating. The scandal would cause OpTic to subsequently drop the entire roster. Now, the future of OpTic India is in jeopardy, as they may choose to close operations in the country. Additionally, the Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) would end up investigating his teammates, and several other players for cheats as well. Finally, the ESIC is giving Kumawat a five-year ban from all esports.
Forsaken Breaks Silence
As Kumawat says, he did not cheat for monetary gain or from pressure. The reason why he would choose to cheat was that he did not have enough trust in his aim. “I was confident in my decisions, I was confident in [my] understanding of the game, but [I] was never confident in my aim so to compensate that lack of confidence in aim, I had to choose the wrong path.” He would explain. He says that the cheat he was using gave him a slight assist when aiming, which was not blatant enough to notice.
Forsaken would apologize to his teammates, whose careers he has probably affected for the worse, stating, “I am extremely sorry to my teammates, OpTic management and the people who always put their trust in me over the facts. I feel guilty of stealing away the opportunities from my teammates. Each one was extremely talented and I have jeopardized their chances of being where they deserve.” Other professional teams may not even consider picking up his teammates, due to exposure to the cheating scandal.
Even still, he maintains that his coaches and teammates did not know about him cheating. He also states that although he did use cheats at the OpTic India boot camp, he did not use any during his tryouts. According to Kumawat, it was his first LAN and he wanted to give his best.
Forsaken and the Future
When asked about what he would do differently, Kumawat would explain how his passion for the game began to disappear:
I would probably delete the day when I first played Counter-Strike on. Nothing good has happened to me since the day I started playing this game. I thought this game was for me but since last year, I have not been loyal to it. I worked hard but I wasn’t loyal. I gave everything away for the game, I always put this game above everything else and today I realize what I have lost. One thing I always put everything above and I cheated it. I lost everything when I put Counter-Strike above everything and today I lost Counter-Strike too. The only thing I never lost is my family and my girlfriend, and I hope to never cheat on them.
Finally, when the outlet would ask him about his future, Kumawat would say, “All I can do is try doing something in life so that I can help my family. I have never thought of doing anything other than CS. I will try to improve from my mistake and be a better person.”
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