ESL cracks down on player banter in new rulebook update

Through a blogpost ESL has announced a number of changes to their rulebook. While many new clauses were added, it was clause 2.30: "Internal team communications during a live match" that drew a lot of attention and criticism. "The private nature of team communications does not exempt participants from the standards of conduct set out herein", says ESL in this new clause as they go on to prohibit "discriminatory language and hate speech" while in-game.

The open ended nature of the clause makes it unclear as to the level of enforcement of this clause and fans argue that it could kill a big part of Counter-Strike tournaments- banters. From apEX calling out jimpphat for the "Twitter porn" incident to donk calling his opponents "fu*king bots", player banter introduced a new mental dimension to Counter-Strike at its highest level of play.

"We love counter strike for its freedom at every level, its not on TO to punish players if something is wrong, its on team internal to do that.", said one X user in the replies before comparing the rule to environments that surround VALORANT events.

The rulebook also received updates to fines, roster locks, offline match scheduling, absence from playing area, event withdrawals, team logos, sponsor restrictions and much more. Check out ESL's blogpost to read the entire list of changes.