iBUYPOWER match-fixing scandal: skin bets, Valve's bans and where they stand
The 2014 iBUYPOWER vs NetcodeGuides match, the skin bets placed on it, Valve's 2015 bans and which of the banned players have since been cleared.
Fact-checked 18 October 2026 · 8 sourcesIn August 2014 iBUYPOWER, then one of North America's best CS:GO teams, lost a league match 16–4 to a much weaker side while people close to the players collected skins from bets on the upset. When the evidence came out in January 2015, Valve banned seven people from its events, and for ten years the case stood as the scene's warning about match-fixing. Here is what happened, what the bets looked like, and which bans still stand in 2026.
The match
The game was part of CEVO Professional Season 5, then North America's top online league. iBUYPOWER fielded Sam "DaZeD" Marine, Joshua "steel" Nissan, Braxton "swag" Pierce, Keven "AZK" Larivière and Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham. Their opponents, NetcodeGuides.com, were a young team backed by a CS:GO coaching site that DaZeD, iBUYPOWER's captain, co-owned with Casey Foster.
The stakes were low for one side only. iBUYPOWER had already qualified for the playoffs, while NetcodeGuides needed the win. On a rarely played map, de_season, iBUYPOWER lost 16–4, trying knife kills in odd situations and laughing as rounds slipped away. Afterwards the team blamed jet lag from the ESL One Cologne Major and a lack of practice on the map.
The bets
At the time, most betting on pro Counter-Strike happened on CSGO Lounge, a site where fans staked skins on match results and were paid out in skins, which could then be sold for real money. Anyone could open extra Steam accounts, known as smurfs, and bet from each of them.
According to data the site later gave the Daily Dot, Duc "cud" Pham, a player and skin trader with strong connections to both teams, controlled nine smurf accounts that each placed the maximum bet allowed on NetcodeGuides. Each returned skins worth $1,193.14. Some of the accounts had been created just for this match.
| Item | Value | |---|--:| | Accounts used | 9 | | Return per account | $1,193.14 | | Total returned | 9 × $1,193.14 = $10,738.26 |
The total matches the "more than $10,000" the Daily Dot reported. A bet on the underdog pays more than a bet on the favourite, which is why a fixed upset is the profitable kind.
How it came out
Suspicion surfaced the day after the match, when a young journalist gave the Daily Dot screenshots of a pre-match chat in which another pro, Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan, said the game was fixed. He then declined to say more, and the story faded.
It returned on 5 January 2015. Derek "dboorn" Boorn's former girlfriend posted text messages from him on a community forum, and Reddit mostly dismissed them as fake. The Daily Dot confirmed they had been sent from Boorn's phone two days after the match. "They really did throw that match and I bet for them on alternate accounts," one read. The texts also named cud as the person placing the bets and said about $7,000 in skins would land in Boorn's account around match day.
On 16 January the Daily Dot, in a report by Richard Lewis, put it together with the betting data. ShahZaM also admitted to it that he had bet against iBUYPOWER after Foster told him to change his bet.
Valve's bans
Valve acted ten days later. On 26 January 2015 it said that by checking account histories it could confirm that "a substantial number of high valued items" won by cud had been passed, via Boorn, to iBUYPOWER players and to Foster. It told its event partners not to allow seven people to take part "in any capacity in Valve-sponsored events": cud, Boorn, Foster, DaZeD, swag, AZK and steel. Skadoodle was not banned; he had turned down a share of the winnings.
The same post set a rule for the whole scene: players, managers and team staff "should under no circumstances gamble on CS:GO matches", associate with high-volume gamblers, or pass on information that could influence bets. Major organisers, ESL among them, banned the players from their own events too, and on 5 January 2016 Valve added that its bans were permanent.
Where the bans stand now
The tournament organisers moved first. In July 2017 ESL, following a recommendation from the Esports Integrity Coalition, lifted every indefinite match-fixing ban it had issued before 15 February 2015, effective 1 August 2017, so the former iBUYPOWER players could play ESL events again. ESL was clear that Valve's own bans still applied at Valve-sponsored tournaments such as Majors.
Valve moved years later and, as far as is public, told players individually. In October 2023 steel said Valve had told him his ban would end on 26 January 2025, the tenth anniversary; he said he hadn't asked about the others. In March 2026 swag told Dust2.us that he had been cleared at the same time.
| Person | Valve ban status (October 2026) |
|---|---|
| steel | Ended January 2025, per steel and HLTV |
| swag | Ended early 2025, per swag to Dust2.us in March 2026 |
| DaZeD, AZK | Reported lifted by some outlets; no confirmation from Valve or the players found |
| cud, Boorn, Foster | No public information found |
Valve did not announce either change itself; both became public through the players, so the table rests on what they have said.
What it showed about skin betting
The case showed how easily skin betting let insiders hide. Bets went through throwaway accounts, winnings moved as items rather than money, and a league game that mattered little to the favourite was enough. It was the betting site's own records, combined with private messages, that broke the case open, and only after five months.
Today's rules address some of what it revealed. Valve's licence for tournament organisers requires them to bar their own staff from betting on the event and, through their agreements with teams, to prohibit players and team staff from betting on any match in a tournament their team plays in. The same licence bars organisers from showing case-opening or skin-trading sites on jerseys or broadcasts, and from taking sponsors whose business relies on Valve's game economies. The site where the iBUYPOWER bets were placed ended skin betting in August 2016, after Valve's crackdown on gambling sites; Valve's 2016 crackdown covers those letters, and the history of CS:GO gambling puts this scandal in context.
If you watch or bet on esports, the lesson from 2014 is that an obvious upset in a low-profile match is exactly what a fixer bets on, and no reading of the odds protects you from a result decided in advance.
Sources
- New evidence points to match-fixing at highest level of American Counter-Strike — Dot Esports
- Integrity and Fair Play — Counter-Strike blog
- A Follow Up to Integrity and Fair Play — Counter-Strike blog
- ESL aligns with ESIC's recommendation on sanctions for cheating in esports — ESL
- steel's Valve ban set to elapse in January 2025 — HLTV
- swag confirms he is unbanned from Valve events — Dust2.us
- Limited Game Tournament License — Steam
- Counter-Strike match-fixing scandal — Wikipedia
