Elias Olkkonen lost his professional career at the age of 14 due to a ban in CS:GO. His story led to a review of Valve’s tournament rules.
Who is the person you are talking about? This is Elias Jamppi Olkkonen, who was still 14 years old at the time. At that time, he bought a second copy of CS:GO for his friend for a LAN party and sold this account to his friend that same evening.
However, this was then banned. Since the copy came from Jamppi’s account, it had a serious impact on his professional career.
Since then, Jamppi has been allowed to take part in tournaments that were not organized directly by Valve. However, due to the ban, he was unable to take part in the major tournaments, which are among the most important in the scene. This made him unattractive to most teams.
He then sued Valve in 2020. However, he initially sued the wrong company. Although the court and Valve agreed that Jamppi was not to blame for the ban, they stuck to their ruling.
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Jampii’s story is making changes
Which rule was changed? Due to the regulations at the time, Jamppii decided to switch to competitor Valorant, as his ban here had no impact on his career. Still, his story seemed to cause Valve to reconsider their regulations.
In April 2021, three months after Jampii’s move to Valorant, Valve announced on their website that they would be changing their tournament rules. Their statement at the time said:
Previously, players were unable to participate in official Valve events if they received a VAC ban in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. These guidelines have not been updated since the game’s release, when all VAC bans were still fairly recent. However, there are some bans that are already eight years old, so we decided to update the rules. From now on, a VAC ban will only be grounds for disqualification in two cases: if it was issued within the last five years, or if it was issued at any time after participating in an official Valve event.
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Due to the proximity, one can assume that Jampii’s case could have at least been a trigger for Valve to reconsider its rules for the first time.
Despite Valve’s announcement, Jampii decided not to return to Counter-Strike but to remain loyal to Valorant.
What is Jampii doing today? Jampii has been playing for Team Liquid since February 25th, 2021 and has remained loyal to the game Valorant ever since. His signature agents include initiators such as Breach, Sova and KAY/O. Although he no longer plays Counter-Strike professionally, he is very successful in Valorant. Last year he and his team won the VCT EMEA League (via Liquidpedia).
Even though Jampii has turned his back on Counter-Strike, at least on a professional level, he was still able to bring about a change in the rules. Nevertheless, he caused a smile when he did not sue Valve directly, but accidentally sued a German company. You can read how this happened here: CS:GO player sues Valve for €266,000, but the wrong thing