in 2016, the Indian gaming scene in general was still on the up and up. Back then, E sports essentially meant going to your local gaming cafe, winning ₹2000 and that's your weekend done. Historically, Indian teams have never done well in international tournaments. Most of them lost bit embarrassing school lines. One of the reasons that the Indian scene has always been sort of self contained. And then you couple that with purchasing power in a country like India not having access to performance machines, we really had to import expertise after gaming was essentially the embodiment of every bedroom gamer's dream. It was very important to me to make sure that India was a focal point. I thought there was a huge potential there constructs the first person shooter, one of the biggest e sports on the planet, with a legacy of over 20 years in India. Specifically, counter strike has been well received. The goal of the optic India project was, firstly, to become the best in India as soon as possible and then put India on the map. This could be finally India's chance at actually having a shot at an international title community was excited because, you know, we are Indians and we are passionate about everything we love. We decided to do a tryout process. The idea was that we wanted to build a squad from the ground up. We've never actually done a selection process like this. I don't think many teams have done this anywhere in the world, right? And the fact that you guys are here, we're making history. Okay? Thousands and thousands of people applied for it. It was an opportunity that nobody really wanted to miss out on all these gamers who have been playing for years and years and years without any major achievements under their belt. All those underdogs had a chance. You had players travelling from remote cities to the land venue in Bangalore, and then you had these players that we had never heard of. The selected me trying out for those five slots. You know, I went there. I played only one game, but I was a beast on that game. A lot of young talent that we found that would never have been found had it not been due to the trial. I got selected. And then finally we moved to the Bangor boot camp. It was amazing. These are five young men that had never really left home and lived on their own and had to fend for themselves. We all stayed together because it's a team sport. You need to be together to improve. For second was one of those hidden gems. He was one of those players that came with unnatural amount of skill. He was brought in for his brains more than his reflexes. He did have a past that was a little shady as well, though there were accusations that he was a cheater. But all the people were saying he was fishy. We didn't have any proof or any concrete evidence to, you know, when she will kick him out of the team. One of our biggest events coming up was one tournament in Shanghai. We had to qualify in India. First they went out there. They won the tournament quite convincingly and all eyes were on optic like, Hey, you know, these guys have some stardust that it's sprinkling on their players. That's working and then we got the flight to Shanghai. It was the first time the players were flying international they were going to this big torment and everything was on the table, right? We were representing India. Now the Zowie tournament is one of the best opportunities for Indian teams to compete against the best Asia has to offer. Let's go, We played Vietnam must win game for us and I was having a very good game. There was, you know, single handedly destroying them. Optic India were just one map away from winning. It was halfway through the map when we noticed that the admins had called a pause. That usually happens when the monitor goes off or somebody's devices not working or the Internet is lagging. But it was lasting way longer than a normal technical pause. We saw not just one admin, but slowly, a second admin. And then, probably five minutes later, a third admin There's like a little bit of a scuffle. At that point in time, we kind of knew that this was not going to end with holy sh It was like, this is real. This guy, this kid, my player has been caught cheating, and everything kind of just went black. He cheated while representing one of the biggest stars in the world while competing in the largest tournaments in Asia. It is quite a one in a million kind of incident. He was just a dumb kid. He just felt scared to get kicked from the team because he wasn't a great Aamer. This guy had a special button at the side. And if he presses that button, that's when the chief gets activated and his aim automatically snap to the nearest target. There are a lot of cheats out there. This was definitely a premium cheat in the sense that he paid for it. The cheating industry, it's it's massive. There is a lot of money involved. If gaming itself is a multi billion dollar industry, then video game cheating is also a multimillion dollar industry. This guy had done an excellent job of hiding the truth. He not only hit it from his teammates, but everybody. He fooled everybody. That was, you know, a kick in the gut for all of us. The entire team had to be disqualified and emotions are running really high. All the players, all his teammates, felt extremely betrayed. I was crying the whole time holding the Indian flag. I don't know what to do what to say. I'm fit to this day. This might happen again to me. Even today in the tournament and the technical timeouts. I feel a short shock in just one second, but it's still there. It was like the perfect storm. Back at home. Everyone was furious Indian audiences, one that loves passionately and hates passionately. There were conversations of beating them up at the airport. There were conversations of how he had disappointed in the nation. There was also a lot of racism and hate thrown towards the Indian players. Him and his team were disbanded. We were so close to greatness and it all just came crashing down. Almost immediately, everyone was allergic to that region and that scene. It did send Indian, e sports and CS go into a dark age. We clearly realise that we don't have enough checks and balances in place. But then you had done with organisers using this as a wake up call to say that you know, we cannot let another forsaken incident happen ever again without integrity of the game. We don't have a sport. Everything falls apart Today. The Indian gaming scene is thriving. We are the first generation experiencing East Sports as a career in India. If I were to look back 10 years, we would be extremely happy back then. If someone paid for us to take a 24 hour train from Mumbai to Bangalore today, you know nothing short of $100,000 is incentive to compete in the tournament.