Infiltration Asks for an Unban after Being Barred from Major Events

Calling this whole story complicated would be an understatement, but if you're not up to speed, Infiltration is a long time fighting game player who mostly competed in Street Fighter and a few other titles, achieving quite a few tournament wins and high placements in the process.

In 2018, while playing under Panda, he was involved in a domestic abuse case, allegedly choking and hitting his at the time girlfriend after an escalated dispute. Panda dropped him immediately after, and Capcom banned him from participating in CPT 2018 and 2019.

Not much else followed until 2022 when he was banned from Evo, CEO, ICFC, and all Capcom ran or affiliated events. While the specific reason was never given, many suspect that it's a compounding issue of the prior domestic violence case, and an allegation of rigging a bracket in a beginner-only tournament that he ran for his Korean FGC discord.

The rigging in question was an issue of Infiltration allegedly allowing his friend to compete with beginners while aware that he's far above them in skill level. Since that scandal broke out, some new information came out, with one person saying that he organized the tournaments and no rigging took place, as the player in question was an actual beginner in SFV but with a lot of GBVS background. However, much like with the other case, not much definitive information ever came to light.

Now, after this plea, the reaction was mixed to say the least. Domestic violence is not something people take lighting, and without necessary evidence to clear his name, TOs prefer to err on the side of caution.

This is something that is too often omitted in these discussions, but innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard, because legal repercussions are (usually) far more severe than social ones. This standard does not apply to things like tournaments, where organizers can decide to ban someone from the events if they feel that this is right for the community.

The community's reaction is rather split, however. This plea for an unban follows other scandals with Noel Brown and Shinblade. Both of them have recently attended tournaments despite a host of issues being brought up, giving rise to a discussion as to why women don't feel comfortable coming to some events and competing.

Despite that, multiple community figures have spoken out both in support and condemnation of Infiltration. For example, MenaRD retweeted the post above, where Infiltration asks to be unbanned, and ChrisT spoke out in support of giving Infiltration a chance.

On the other hand, SonicFox spoke out against his request, while acknowledging that there is a conversation to be had about reintegration.