The MOBA Dota 2 has a large esports scene with many professional players all over the world. There is even the “Dota 2 Champions League Seasons”. However, two teams were a little too close and a stupid idea led to the permanent account bans of 10 professionals.
On December 18, 2022, the PGL announced that Dota 2 developer Valve had permanently banned a total of 10 professionals from current gaming operations. The PGL is the organizer of major e-sports events and also announced that they will also ban the players:
These were players from the “Luna Gaming” and “S9” teams. The reason given was: account sharing and that one would have pretended to be a person that one is not.
Now the players “Koma” from Luna Gaming and “SuperNova” from S9 have commented on their bans in a video and it turns out: What started as a joke and an idiotic idea, the players pulled through and in the end got their bans.
Luna Gaming took over a match from S9 and they played on the other team’s accounts.
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The video with the statement from Koma and SuperNova was in Russian (via youtube.com). The site cyber.sports.ru completely transcribed the video (via cyber.sports.ru).
How did the bans come about? Team Luna Gaming had already qualified for the playoffs in the current Dota season. A success, but the team was a little down because it would mean fewer games in the near future.
On the other side stood S9. They took over the group place from Luna Gaming, but couldn’t really convince and were of the opinion that they couldn’t win anything in the current tournament.
The two teams know each other and when they were sitting together on a Discord server, an idea came up as a joke: the players from Luna Gaming should take over matches from S9.
After some back and forth, the players pulled it off. Luna Gaming would receive half of the prize money if they were successful and they could even train.
Luna Gaming took over a game from S9 against NO SORRY. But after the first match, the NO SORRY team didn’t want to continue playing. A player had received a tip – it was about the opposing team having an observer at NO SORRY and that the opposing players are not who they say they are.
Nova and Koma insist there was no observer. But the exchange of players actually took place.
Due to the rumors about the player exchange, DOTA developer Valve came on the scene. Despite players trying to delete the evidence, Dota 2 Champions League admins finally found out the truth and banned all 10 professional accounts involved.
By the way, the player Koma tried to get back into the game somehow before the video: DOTA 2: 20-year-old risks professional career for greed, gets caught and severely punished – now he is asking Valve for mercy