Counter-Strike pro player suspended over racist comment

A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player has been suspended from the Faceit Pro League (FPL) for a month after calling another player a "fucking monkey".

Nils "k1to" Gruhne from Alternate Attax made the comments towards Brazilian player Joao "felps" Vasconcellos during a European FPL pick-up game.

Gruhne later apologised on Twitter to which Vasconcellos responded saying "we have [all] made mistakes and learned."

However, Faceit decided to take action against Gruhne with community relations representative Milos "Mikey" Nedeljkovic meting out a one-month suspension.

Nedeljkovic noted on Twitter that although players frequently joke among themselves, the racist connotations of Gruhne's remarks "went beyond something being a genuine joke" adding that it "cannot be acceptable".

Alternate Attax also released a statement in response to Gruhne's comment.

"This was never meant as a racist insult," it told Dot Esports. "The word is practically harmless in German and our player was unaware of any implications that the word might carry in other languages.

"This does of course not excuse the offense caused, but at least reveals that there was no racist intent to his actions... We will not be taking any kind of disciplinary action against [Gruhne]. He received a month-long FPL ban and we feel that this should be enough."