Let me play devils advocate:

If I'm understanding lpkane's reasons, then the bitcoin miners nested inside the client were part of an experimental update (likely thinking along the same lines as you, with an opt-in system) that accidentally found its way into the publicly released version. I could buy that. It's not a very satisfying explanation but it is a feasible one.

Really I think a lot of this could be the result of bad PR. lpkane shouldn't have made his first post until he'd confirmed the numbers he ended up with in his second post. It called the legitimacy of his explanation and the severity of the infraction into question. His glib responses to the outrage aren't helping much either, but, once again I have to sympathize with him when confronted with the torrent of angry, profanity filled comments from CS players.

I find the idea that ESEA was secretly hijacking their customer's computers to farm bitcoins to be unlikely. There was no way it wouldn't be discovered, not when the people they're deceiving are so highly computer literate. It would only cause permanent damage to the company for a relatively small gain. Why would a company that's been around as long as ESEA have throw their customer base away like that?

tl;dr:

Maybe the bitcoin miners were from an experimental opt-in program that got mixed into the public client,

Maybe bad PR obfuscated ESEA's defense, and cast them in a bad light,

The cost for ESEA if they attempted to hijack customers' PCs for mineing would have been exponentially higher than the payoff, so doing so makes little sense considering how established ESEA is.

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I'd like to consider myself completely neutral, since I wasn't affected by this at all, and didn't even know what a bitcoin was until this happened and I went and read up on it. This is just my interpretation of ESEA's defense.

...Can we petition ESEA to use proest over stock? The open choke is amazing. There's a fully viable fast roamer rollout to the enemy healthpack with it, and the high ceiling could go a long way to reducing the stalematey-ness of 2nd-mid.

Actually I think they may still be within legal boundaries. Bitcoin isn't a currency in the same way as dollars or pounds. It doesn't get its value from government regulation and law. Basically someone created it and attached a value to it, and everyone went with it. It's essentially made up money.

As for the miners embedded within the clients, everyone who installed the client gave their consent to allow the application and everything it comes with onto their computers. There's probably a few clauses in the terms of use allowing for that too.

The biggest concern would be the claims of damaged GPUs. But for that to go anywhere you'd have to make the case that the GPU was damaged by the bitcoin miner specifically. That would be pretty hard I think, given the volatile nature of computer parts, especially in custom builds (I'm not saying it wasn't caused by the miner, just that it would be hard to prove legally).

According to Wikipedia:

I'm not sure if this has any relevance to this debacle with ESEA, but from what I've read, it's the only real link the government has to Bitcoins.

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All in all I think it's weird as hell. I'm a little floored by the amount of money they made in such a short time, and relieved that it's going to the prize pots. Their reasons for it do seem convenient but it doesn't mean they can't be true. The CS community seems to be reacting a lot more strongly to this than we are, and given what we know about them, our reaction is probably the more reasonable one.

4.5"

Do people really do this? I don't know anything about mobas but what's so good about mid and why are they threatening to grief the game if they don't get it?

also if that happens a lot why would anyone play solo queue

what's wrong with using a chat box to argue? Is that somehow worse than using a forum to argue?

http://www.vanillatf2.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Obama-Speech.jpg

I forgot about this awesome picture

http://ozfortress.com/showthread.php?t=37010

The argument against sniper is that he ruins the DM experience for others. The counter argument is that nothing can ruin your DM experience because dieing doesn't matter, and what other players are doing doesn't inhibit your own ability to practice.

Stickies are used to box enemies out of areas, restricting their movement and improving your chance of piping them. If someone chooses to run around M1M2ing everything, the only person they're hurting is themselves. It's no different than a soldier bombing everything that moves, or camping the high ground, or scouts shooting you in the back, or snipers body shotting across the map.

You can't ask for one and then complain about another.

that was way better than i thought it would be.

go mana

I'd love to participate but I work friday night. They'd have to be earlier in the week.

Also what's wrong with unknowns showing up? You don't need full IM teams to play a good game and test things out.

you know you can't say ban stickies but allow sniper.
that's logically inconsistent

The med 3k was awesome, but what was the context for it? Why was he throwing himself at half the enemy team?

I watched an OzFortress prem game on badlands where the team defending last ran both of their scouts and medic out of last across bats and onto graybridge to kill the enemy combo. But then, obviously, the other 4 players pushed into last in a 4v3 and won.

OzFortress games are entertaining as hell, but that's because of frequent outrageously aggressive plays that are easy to punish for a well organized team.

I can't see them competing with HRG.

It would be exciting to be proven wrong though.

DM of course. But unless you have exceptional DM you should generally avoid taking any 1v1s. If I see a scout running at me I'm usually going to run away. I don't usually take 1v1s unless I know for a fact I have advantage in some way, be it health, numbers, or positioning.

I know that's not what you were asking, but if you're playing right, you'll find yourself in very few 1v1s. Aim is like the least important part of the game.