Dota 2: VGJ.Storm causes drama at The International 2018

Not long after the TI8 group stage officially ended, the VGJ.Storm team received a ticket to the winning bracket. This attracted a lot of attention from the organizers and they discovered that the team used 2 coaches for the ban/pick phase in the group stage. According to the announcement on the Tweet, the team said that they know they have asked a PGL employee and he also agrees on the matter.

Today we learned that VGJ.Storm had used two coaches during their group stage drafts. When we asked VGJ.Storm, they said that they asked a PGL employee if they could have more in the draft, and he told them that he doesn’t care as long as they left at the end of the draft. (1/4)

— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) August 18, 2018

Jack ‘KBBQ’ Chen tweeted explaining his case and that of the team that no one stopped them – nor did they try to cover it up.

For the coach case: We’re not sure if 2 coaches are used in the ban/pick phase? There are no regulations on this matter. So we asked a PGL employee to check on this.

Before he told us this is fine as long as they leave the game room after the ban/pick phase is over. We didn’t have any reason to hide it and neither did the other staff, until this morning the organizers told us that this was not possible.

The penalty given to the team was that they could not use the coach in the first match of the winning bracket along with the reduction of the ban/pick time.

Once again the Dota 2 community is up and running, some people are on Valve’s side, others wonder if VGJ.Storm doesn’t realize this is wrong? No matter what, VGJ.Storm will still be the team entering the winning bracket, will they make it through the first match of the winning bracket? Let’s wait and see.