Valve bans two Asian DOTA 2 team from upcoming tournaments

Two Chinese teams from DOTA 2 Secondary Professional League have been bans with varying degrees from all future Mars TV and DPL tournaments by Valve.

Amidst exciting times for the professional scene of DOTA 2, incidents of match fixing among the smaller and lower tier teams continue to emerge. This is despite Valve’s stringent and ruthless bans on players and teams found to have been involved in suspicious or malicious behavior that threatens the integrity and sportsmanship of the game. The teams involved this time in such a case are ULrica- and Rock.Young, the latter of which was none other than the last surviving team representing China at the World Electronic Sports Games 2017, finishing with an impressive 4th place at the tournament.

The organizing committee of the DOTA 2 Professional League (DPL), prominently Mars Media (ex-MarsTV), made the announcement in a Weibo post on their decision following a careful scrutiny of every move made by either team in the group stage match. There were several examples of suspicious behavior right from the start. Players on both teams were dying without using any items or abilities. There were also illogical chases which involved unnecessary tower damage being taken, that eventually led to deaths with no favorable trades. The game ended with Rock.Y 5-manning down the mid lane with minimum resistance from the players of ULrica.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBW3VTMDiXw

The event was first brought to light by the clip shown above that was shared throughout the DOTA 2 community via platforms such as YouTube, Reddit and Twitch. This has apparently evoked a lot of anger and disgust from both the professional and casual players of the DOTA 2 community in China.

As such, the organizing committee of DPL declared the following penalties specific to their tournaments due to both teams displaying a “negative” and “passive” behavior during the game:

• The organizations Rock.Y and ULrica are banned from all future Mars TV and DPL tournaments.
• The players Rock.Y.Ayo, Rock.Y.Hitagi, ULrica.Fan, ULrica.Scorpio and ULrica.OLOS have been banned for life from all future Mars TV and DPL tournaments.
• The remaining 5 players have been banned for two years from all future Mars TV and DPL tournaments and will be revisited in two years.

Valve has made drastic changes to many different aspects of the game in recent times, such as the structure of the professional scene in the form of the DOTA 2 Pro Circuit, 6 month bans for reports in match-making and rules surrounding broadcasting and streaming tournament games.