PGL, the tournament organizer of the Dota 2 Pro Circuit in North America, has disqualified American goons from Tour 3 for alleged matchfixing. However, the Dota 2 community is currently up in arms and convinced that this is a mistaken reaction to a joke by a member of the team.
“Players, managers, and coaches are prohibited from making any kind of bets on these tournament matches. If it is proven that a player/coach/manager had made a bet or had purposely tried to achieve a certain result in a game, then the team will be punished up to disqualification and banned from future PGL events If it is proven that a player/coach/manager had purposely tried to achieve a certain result in a game, then the team will be punished up to disqualification,” noted the PGL statement.
As a result of American goons’ disqualification, Team GateKept have taken over their spot in Division 2. However, this isn’t the end of the story, as previously mentioned, with well-known names in the Dota 2 community criticizing the decision and PGL’s lack of public evidence for their decision.
The only public evidence at the time of publication, which is being discussed on Reddit, allegedly shows GateKept’s Kobey “Napkin” Eimers asking Jose “esK” Coronel from American goons if they intentionally lost some games during the qualifiers, which esK confirms, albeit in a very casual manner.
Due to the ambiguity in the conversation and the belief, even if unfounded, that PGL only used a Steam conversation in the case has caused many professionals in the Dota 2 space to stand up for the team:
“Hey, it’s not too late to fix this. Please reconsider this uninformed decision,” TI 2015 winner Peter “ppd” Dager told PGL on Twitter.
“I trust that PGL will do the right thing and reverse this ban, lil nick and Boris are stand up NA Dota players who deserve more than this ending,” David “MoonMeander” Tan from TSM said in support.
“Lil nicks (Nick “Lil_Nick” Hartzler from American goons) team getting disqualified is COMPLETELY insane and ridiculous. This not being reverted would be one of the worst TO decisions of all time. Unreal,” Quinn “Quinn” Callahan from Gaimin Gladiators also stated in support.
This story is of course still developing and will largely come down to whether PGL takes the communities’ concerns into consideration and if there is more evidence yet to be revealed.
