German esports team, SK, have lost prize money for violating rules about team chat during a tech break in a competitive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive match.
An accompanying video, shared on Reddit, clearly shows the team chatting when play was paused to resolve tech issues.
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Replying to the thread that asks if it’s permissible for teams to chat during tech pauses, ESL staffer “crtmN” confirms: “It is not allowed to talk (or chat) during a technical pause as written in our rules. The admin caught it quickly and told the team to stop immediately.
“Due to the violation of the rules the team will get penalized which will lead to a prize money deduction.”
crtmN later clarifies the funds will be “redistributed” to the other teams.
While teams are allowed to talk during tactical timeouts, when there’s a tech issue that may prohibit a team from talking to each other, the other team, too, is not permitted to talk to avoid an unfair advantage.
“It’s not fair that one team can talk tactics and the other team has to deal with tech issues in the meantime,” crtmN adds in the comments.