Valve disqualified some players from The Shanghai Major
Today, Valve announced the full list of players from Southeast Asia who are banned from participating in The Shanghai Major and other tournaments: among those banned were the player who won the open qualifier, as well as the player who received a direct invitation from Valve to the closed qualifiers!
Many of you must remember the high-profile match-fixing and betting fraud scandals that involved some players from Southeast Asia. These scandals, after a thorough investigation, always led to one result: Valve imposed a life ban on all unscrupulous players from participating in their tournaments. The list of such tournaments includes The International , as well as any other events organized with the participation of Dota 2 developers, including Major series competitions ( The Frankfurt Major , The Shanghai Major and subsequent ones).
Once announcing that any players found to be cheating with bets would receive a ban, Valve did not make public statements after each such incident and did not personally notify the violators, because of which they could hope for leniency from the game developers.
However, as some of those career-ruined players dared to compete in The Shanghai Major open qualifiers , Valve contacted some Southeast Asian esports organizations today to clarify the list of players who are banned from participating in Valve-sponsored tournaments.
Remarkably, this list, which consists of 16 people (see below), included the Filipino Mark Anthony ‘Jacko’ Soriano, a player of the Mineski-X team , which a few hours ago won the final of the first open qualifier for The Shanghai Major . Valve did not deviate from their principles, but decided not to disqualify the team: Mineski-X is allowed to take part in closed qualifiers for the championship, provided that the mentioned player is replaced.
Moreover, among those banned was Mark ‘Byb’ Gavin – a former Arrow Gaming / Team Redemption player , who currently plays for the Execration team , which Valve invited directly to participate in closed regional qualifiers! Execration will suffer the same fate: Valve will allow them to compete for a quota for the tournament, provided that they find a replacement. In any case, the replacement is unlikely to have a positive impact on the performance of both of these teams.
It is worth noting that regarding the bans themselves, the community for the most part is in solidarity with Valve, however, on various forums and in social networks. community networks came to the consensus that these misunderstandings could have been avoided if Valve had taken care of this issue earlier, and not after one of the disqualified players won the qualifying competitions, and the other received a direct invite at all (nonsense!). Judging by the fact that these teams were allowed to continue participating in the tournament with substitutions, Valve themselves understand that they made a mistake.
One way or another, Valve once again demonstrated to the world the firmness of their principles: severe but fair punishment awaits those who engage in betting fraud.
List of banned players
- Dinh Viet Thanh ‘Misa’ Nguyen
- Duc Trung ‘Kua’ Nguyen
- Trung Hieu ‘Sph’ Nguyen
- Fua ‘Lance’ Hsien Wan
- Goh ‘MoZuN’ Choo Jian
- Chiok ‘xiangzai’ Soon Siang
- Kok ‘ddz’ Yi Liong
- Kelvin ‘MaTte Ru’ Chong
- Jo ‘Jotan’ Tan
- Carlos “Chin” Rivera
- Mark ‘Byb’ Gavin
- Denver ‘yNd’ Miranda
- Patrick ‘JyC’ Easter
- Mark Anthony ‘Jacko’ Soriano
- Young ‘jvn’ Pancho
- Richard ‘Paseo’ Minowa
