In what appears to be the aftermath of an investigation into claims of cheating in January’s Chinese regional Winter Tour of the Dota Pro Circuit, 46 players have been banned from Dota 2 Esports competitions (DPC). The entire Knights team, which was charged with utilizing a vision hack to rig the DPC matches in order to place third, is on the list.
Knights won $27,000 and a spot in the latest Lima Major thanks to that performance . However, the Knights’ performance there was infamously dismal, completely bombing with a 1-15 record in that competition.
Just after their participation in Lima, Knights changed their name to “Antarctic Penguins,” eliminating the majority of their previous squad while including their entire new one on the ban list. It is currently unknown whether Antarctic Penguins will compete in the forthcoming Spring Tour regionals in China, despite the fact that they officially still have a spot reserved.
According to a statement published by Perfect World Esports on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, the bans were given out for “interference with fair competition” . 21 were lifetime bans that prevent the receivers from participating in any official Dota 2 competition. Twelve more received one-year suspensions and thirteen more received two-year bans from participating in official Dota 2 competitions.
The specifics of the investigation’s conclusions and the justifications for the various fines weren’t made public. Valve has been contacted by PC Gamer for comment. Valve’s regional publishing partner in China is Perfect World Esports.
These significant bans come after Valve issued a major round of 40,000 public Dota 2 cheating bans late last month. Such bans served as a type of “honey pot” where Valve learned about the hack, developed a method to catch it, and let players to use it for a short period of time to amass as many jerks as they could in the banhammer’s impact area.
Yet, it was somewhat timely on the side of the dishonest esports players. They almost missed being listed on our list of major esports controversies that just happened.