How Russian Dota 2 professional players tricked Valve?

A scandal recently erupted around players from the CIS region in Dota 2. Valve banned ten professional players for life for transferring accounts to third parties during tournaments, tournament organizer PGL announced this on Twitter. Among them were well-known names and rising stars of the professional scene who had already been declared for organizations to major tournaments. What exactly happened and why Valve reacted strongly to this, read further in Cyber-sport.io report.
 

How Valve banned 10 Pro players from Russia?

Nemiga Gaming Dota 2 roster manager Eduard zverHDD Ashurkevich revealed the scheme of how some teams and eSportsmen, respectively, make money on fake matches. The logic is as simple as possible - a team of incomprehensible players (most likely of a weak and average level of play) is obliged to lose matches until the odds for them on the bookmaker's website increase. After fixing a high coefficient, players with a higher skill sit on the players' accounts, play the game beautifully, get a percentage, and are happy. All Tier 1-2 players loot odds, and no one touches anyone.

In a similar situation, as zverHDD described above, players were noticed that they were blocked. In short, instead of the tier-4 players of the S9 roster, the stronger Team Luna Gaming performed under their tag, here is the full list of permanently banned players.

Here is the story the teams are telling in response to Valve's accusation:

 We (Team S9) were sitting on Discord with Luna Gaming, there was a joke that if we switch rosters, then S9 will be able to win at least something. Then it was only a joke, but at some point, it turned from a joke into the truth

Further, the Luna Gaming team settled on the C9 accounts against Team No Sorry, won the first map, and during the draft of the second map, the opponents refused to play against us. Because someone wrote y0nd in private messages that, they are playing against you with an observer. Naturally, there was no obs. The next day, all news portals started posting from the y0nd telegram channel that in the match with No Sorry, S9 had an observer and the wrong players were playing. That's how players described their actions:

We (Team S9) got together again after a while - D2CL admins already started writing to us, who wanted to check our logs and see who logged into the accounts. We just didn't know what to do. We were already ready for a ban, but someone threw in the idea of hiring a programmer who would change the page code - make it so that our logs would hang

As a result, it worked for the first time, but a deep investigation of the league staff revealed all this. As a result, the players were banned. Of course, after specific accusations made by the orgs, the players confessed to everything and apologized.

Can you get banned for account sharing in Dota 2?

The problem of sharing game accounts or in other words “smurfing” has become quite serious in recent years: someone considers it a harmless entertainment, someone a way to earn money, and someone doesn’t care at all, but what do the developers think? Valve has repeatedly stated that account sharing violates Dota 2's terms of service, although these rules are rarely enforced outside of professional play. For regular players, sharing an account is highly discouraged and is considered a violation of the game rules.

Is Dota 2 smurfing Bannable?

According to Valve's official rules, smurfing is against the Dota 2 terms of service and may result in a permanent account ban. This rule applies equally to streamers, professional and casual players, although Valve does not enforce this rule similarly. From the known cases of receiving such a ban: streamers meepgor_off, BSJ and commentator Black^.

Who else can be banned for acc sharing in Dota?

Professional Dota 2 caster and analyst Maelstorm spoke about a lifetime ban from tournaments from Valve:

Well, what can I say. People have gotten away with it for years. This provoked more and more offenders. As a result, many of them could build a career for themselves now, and remain banned forever. I am sure that the list of bans can be supplemented by other players

Naturally, the names are not called, but such statements indicate that with a deeper and more thorough investigation, such lists of players will be replenished. In turn, the current player of the Darkside team, Roman RAMZES666 Kushnarev, commented the ban on participation in Dota 2 tournaments for ten players in his Telegram channel:

 To be honest, I'm not surprised. Actually, I knew everything and I hope that this is not the last time that Valve will arrange a cleanup. Players were banned not only for multiaccs, I will say this. I won’t elaborate, think for yourself

Such comments make it clear that the bug was deservedly given, and this is not the first such precedent. The same opinion was expressed by the сommentator of the Maincast studio Alexey STORM Tumanov on personal channel in Telegram:

I think it's not just about account sharing, a lot of players have been seen in other “fields of delinquency”

Streamer and analyst Yaroslav NS Kuznetsov also expressed his opinion on this matter during a personal broadcast on Twitch, in which he explained that the ban was definitely deservedly given, but the ban term (for life), in his opinion, is too long:

All the people who get banned can hope for is that Valve will take pity and reduce the ban from a lifetime to a year. You can't ban anyone for life if the person is not a tough recidivist. Well, they broke the rules there, played on fakes. Nevertheless, giving a ban for a year, why should people give a life sentence? This is too much […]

A year before this situation, commentator Vitaliy v1lat Volochay already spoke about the smurf accounts of professional players in Dota 2. In his opinion, esports players should be banned from participating in tournaments for playing smurf, and it’s hard to disagree with his opinion:

In general, I don’t care who is there and how long the game is waiting. Started a smurf - ban of the main account for three months and a ban on participation in tournaments

In the end, dear readers, play on your own, do not transfer accounts and be careful, especially when it comes to future pro-scene stars among our readers. This situation, which we carefully reviewed today, should serve as a lesson, even with the best of intentions, you need to play within the rules. Share your experience with Cyber-sport.io. Subscribe and follow the latest eSports news!