Alchemist’s Flash Bug Rant
by Jason "Alchemist" Baker

With millions of dollars being spent on setting up tournaments around the world and thousands of dollars in prize money on the line, I find it odd that a bug that has been in a game that has influenced so many matches has never been fixed. We could point the finger at Valve, but that really gets us nowhere. Valve has nothing to gain by fixing it, other than a bit of good press. Games like Quake and Unreal Tournament have always made versions of maps to get around bugs or balance issues for competitive play. On the other hand, Counter-Strike is dead-set on using the same buggy map over and over again. Despite the one flaw, Nuke is one of the most entertaining maps to spectate. Either as a community we have to pressure Valve to fix the bug, or convince leagues that we have a better version of the map to play (Pro_nuke, anyone?). I do realize it is a bug in the engine and not something that only happens on nuke. Nuke just gets the most match overturns because of the amount of flash bangs that get thrown at the ramp. The worse part of it all is that it takes longer to open up Steam than it does to fix this map. Just move the box down, even with the floor and you are set. I think our video cards can handle it.

At the 2004 Summer CPL I heard that the admins would overturn every round after a flash bug exploit, no matter if it was done on purpose or by mistake. This was a change from reviewing the demo and leaving it up to the judgment of an admin. I argued before the first match was played. I stated that I thought their policy was in the interest of time and fairness; however, no more than three rounds could be affected by a flash exploit. I argued that three should be the greatest amount of rounds given. Many admins seemed to agree and said they would look into it for the next event. Well, after the famous NoA vs EyE match in the winter CPL, we saw that the rule was never fixed. Since many other events mirror the rules from the CPL, I have seen other matches around the world receive the same fate, the most recent being EG versus Pentagram. I am sure the last thing Pentagram is thinking is, “If it were not for that flash bang we would have taken those last 11 rounds.” No, they feel bad that they received the free rounds. These guys are here to compete, not get a cheap win.

What I propose is simple. If a team feels that exploits are used, they should simply inform an admin. If there is no admin present, they should remember the round in which the infraction occurred, and play out the half. At the half, an admin could play the demo back and review the round. If a flash bug was used, then three rounds will be deducted (starting with the round in which the flash was used) and given to the other team. If it happens in the second half of the match, it would be best to play out and then go in for the review. If a flash exploit is found the admins could choose a winner one of two ways; use the final score of the full match, or recalculate the score of the second half based on when the winning team takes the sixteenth or the win-clinching round. Drawing up the simple box score like GotFrag Gamesense would make things clear enough. Neither solution is ideal, but short of replaying the whole half, it is the optimal way. Administrators should not determine the out come of a match. It should come down to the best team and not bad luck.