NAVI accused of violating fair play principles after M249 purchase at IEM Katowice 2022

NAVI has been criticized by the CS:GO community after their match with FURIA at IEM Katowice 2022. The controversy came shortly after Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy bought the M249, which, supposedly, he did being aware of the bet made by streamer CMARTy.

On February 16, CMARTy tweeted about placing a bet that any of NAVI players would buy the M249. His bet amounted to 1,500 rubles with the 501 odds, winning him 764,000.

The English-speaking community drew attention to what happened after esports journalist Richard Lewis shared the material of CIS:GOne, who described the controversy associated with this event.

In particular, it is noted that Perfecto did not buy the M249 by chance, since he previously had an AK-47 on hand. The author also drew attention to the fact that none of the NAVI players made a single kill with this machine gun in their entire careers, while the bet was made at the betting website that is a sponsor of both NAVI and CMARTy.