There have been discussions over which Anti-Cheat Tool is the safest, it has been said that VAC offers no more considerable protection against Cheats. Unfortunately, Valve is unable to keep VAC up-to-date and therefore is unable to keep the Anti-Cheat program useful against the release of newer cheats.

Cheating Death doesnt offer 100% protection against cheats, but atleast it blocks most of the usual cheats. Therefore with immediate effect, all ESL CS Matches must use CD by obligation.

New rule
2.2.4.1. Compulsory programs
The latest version of Cheating Death in all ESL matches is compulsory.
Despite this obligation, both teams can agree to play on a VAC Server.

Notice: Cheating Death is partly inoperable after Steam updates. At this time the CD obligation of the ESL does not apply and VAC must be used until Cheating Death has brought out an executable update.

The SoundCheck Plugin with all options up-to-date in each case is also compulsory.

Obligation instead of recommendation?
The change of rule contains no big changes, but we would like to specify the fact that a server is only rule-fairly configured with Cheating Death installed for the ESL. This is important for the opponent search over the ESL Instant Challenger (EIC).

If one team should not have a server with CD enabled, but with VAC, then the team may not indicate "I possess a server" for the search. Only servers with Cheating Death are certified to the opponent search over the EIC.

// Your ESL EU Admin Team