ESL to reinstate anti-doping controls

Before the pandemic, anti-doping tests were a mandatory procedure during CS:GO events. They were conducted by organizers to ensure that players were not using illegal drugs or performance-enhancing supplements on stage. This 2023it appears that ESL will once again perform these checks during its CS:GO tournaments.

A few days ago, Ulrich Schulze, SVP Game Ecosystems of ESL FACEIT Groupresponded to tweet from Cloud9 nafany about the lack of doping controls at CS:GO events, in which he exposed to him that these were done regularly in the pre-pandemic era, and ESL intends to do them again when they have the infrastructure in place.

We did doping tests at our events frequently all the way up to early 2020, and we are going to continue doing it – we simply had to get the infrastructure back up after the Covid period impacted both staff and facilities EISC had previously used for this. https://t.co/gvErorT4Yh

– Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) March 9, 2023

In addition, some professionals joined the debate on Twitter. EliGE, from Team Liquidnoted that doping controls were very common if you made it to the in-person phase, however, they have not been done since then, although other professionals like blameF, of Astralis, o Bymas, ex-mOUZ, shared that they made them during the qualifiers of the IEM Cologne 2022.

It appears that many organizers have abandoned this procedure judging by the revelation of nafany of which never performed them. During the online era, it would make sense to stop doing them, but what is clear is that the tests will be back soon.