Upcoming Release: The Hunden Files

101 pages of private communications between Nicolai "Hunden" Petersen and Astralis members provide context and insight into his behaviour while a Heroic employee

By now the story of Nicolai “Hunden” Petersen and his acrimonious split from the Heroic organisation has been well documented. For those who need a summary, Petersen, then coach for the Danish CS:GO team, used an in-game bug to confer upon his team an advantage in two competitive matches. Upon this being discovered he confessed and took sole responsibility saying his team were not aware of his cheating activity and was given an eight month ban as part of an Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) punishment wave that affected 37 coaches in total in September 2020. Heroic moved him into a non-coaching role before reinstating him, publicly saying “Hunden is our boy.”

After that things seemed to have returned to normal when in July 2021 rumours started to circulate that Petersen was the favourite to replace Astralis’s legendary coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen. Heroic would publicly state that they intended to take legal action against Petersen over an alleged “breach of contract” that involved the coach leaking strategy documents to the Astralis team.

The following month Petersen, rather than keeping a low profile, decided to try and leverage contacts in the media to wage a sustained campaign against Heroic, recanting his earlier assertion that the players didn’t know about his cheating and now implicating them. However, despite making many bold claims the evidence for them was flimsy at best and despite many public innuendos to the contrary the players were mostly vindicated. The same could not be said for Heroic executive Erik Askered. Evidence that he had crafted an NDA that specifically prevented players from discussing any cheating that might have taken place was leaked into the public domain and this attack on competitive integrity ultimately resulted in him having to leave the organisation. The only Heroic player sanctioned was Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen who was tricked into a form self incrimination in repeated conversations, effectively admitting he suspected that Petersen was cheating. ESIC ruled that Kristensen would have to undergo monthly integrity check-ups for six months and that any further transgressions would result in more severe punishment in future. However the revelations that Kristensen had ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome made Petersen’s actions appear predatory, elicting him little sympathy.

ESIC were not so lenient with Petersen. For leaking the strategic documents to Astralis, who were due to play Heroic at the upcoming IEM Cologne, he was hit with a two year ban in August 2021. A year later it would be revealed that Astralis, in a move many perceived to be a reward, had been working with Petersen as part of their Pixel.tv platform and Aimlabs sponsorship. “We would like to comment in general, though, that once Mr. Petersen’s ban has expired, should we have the need, we would not have any second thoughts about offering him a position as an analyst or the like” they said at the time.

By December, after a protracted legal exchange with ESIC, his ban was ultimately deemed to have been served and he was now free to enjoy all the freedoms afforded any coach and participate in ESIC events. Astralis wasted no time in announcing he was being hired as a “head analyst” on the 5^th January 2023 to much public criticism.

This would not be the end of the story though. The legal action that Heroic had announced in July 2021 remained ongoing. As part of the organisation’s actions against their former employee they were allowed to seize Petersen’s communication devices including mobile phones and computers. Although this was objected to by Petersen’s legal team on the 7^th October 2022 it was ruled that the communications found therein could be entered into evidence for the upcoming court case. This publication was able to obtain a copy of all 101 pages of evidence, verify their authenticity and have them translated and will go on to publish extracts relevant to the public interest.

The documents show that Petersen agreed to join Astralis as early as March 2021 and undertook a number of actions on behalf of the Danish organisation including recommending and recruiting players, that an Astralis representative had asked him to do these things, that Astralis seemingly had connected Petersen with a lawyer for the purposes of getting out of his Heroic contract, that the strategic documents he leaked to Astralis included tactics specifically for dealing with Astralis in matches and that it was leaking these documents that caused the behind the scenes move to break down. On reading the entirety of the documents it is impossible to conclude anything other than that months before leaking the documents Petersen was convinced he was working for Astralis despite still being employed by Heroic.

While the communications make it clear that Astralis did not want Petersen to leak the documents ahead of Cologne and also chastised him for doing so, the coach would not have felt obligated to do so had he not been involved in the process of joining and improving the Astralis organisation despite still being an employee of Heroic. It raises questions not only about the conduct of Petersen but also the Astralis organisation that their tournament partners might want to review. Given the scope of the findings we shall be publishing the material in batches, outlining the discoveries alongside the substantiating evidence. The first piece will be published later today.