Why Valve should consider permanent bans

2 years ago, professional Dota 2 was very different from now. Online tournaments are ubiquitous, while LAN majors outside of Europe and China are absent. This has not changed too much from the present. Being a player in the South American region means that they have to compete online in an up and down and unprofessional environment. As an in-depth study of Tier 2 games, I understand each game well, there was a time when a South American team had to play on the US East server.

Ping is at least 150-160, and always disconnects from the game. Playing at the net shop with fake and noisy machines, they have to try everything to be able to play Dota. This is the current problem of the undeveloped South American esports industry. With poor facilities, it creates a harsh environment for gamers.

To make this more clear, some of the high tier North American teams that immediately quit playing on the Lux server (Luxembourg, Europe West) even though they are in the US East will probably play at around 90 ping. People can complain about 90ms ping, but SA players always have to play with pings half that number, and in a professional environment.

No one understands these issues better than Freddy “SmAsH” Sina. Almost 2 years ago, on March 23, 2016, Valve banned SmAsH from playing for match-fixing. Since then, the community has neither explained nor understood anything about this case, until Smash posted a letter to the reddit community on /r/dota2. In the letter, he talked about his living conditions, being away from his family in an area in Peru called Tacna, moving to the capital with no money in his pocket. As I write this letter, for days I have neither a place to sleep nor food to eat.

“A lot of teams at the time were living in pitiful conditions, from no income to no money, but that didn’t stop our passion for Dota 2. Things were tough for me and my teammates. team, especially we come to the capital from all different regions of Peru. We are alone and do not know how to communicate with others. There are days when it’s hard when the basics for yourself are not met. There are days when I and my teammates have no food to eat, only a place to sleep.”

This was not unique to his organization, then under Not Today. Leo “SunBhie” Jeong-jae and William “Blitz” Lee also described their plight on Twitter, Sunbhie mentions MVP’s horrible living situation. Blitz said Jeyo once asked me to buy eggs for her, because Rave couldn’t afford food.

At Summit 2, Smash won the Most valuable player (MVP) award, and received $10,000. That’s a lot of money for a South American player – according to Smash’s estimates -, he has a “fairly high” salary for an SA player of $90 monthly (about 2 million). $10,000 is equivalent to 10 years’ salary.

Here’s how Not Today’s story differs from other organizations. Players who decided to leave Not Today because they weren’t paid enough. The Not Today boss demanded that they return the money he invested in the team, including the $10,000 bonus that Smash received from the MVP award. Smash believes he has been tricked, many times, and this is one of them.

Yes, this is a scam. And before you’re about to say, “What’s the matter, you guys are obligated to pay them back,” Smash admits that he doesn’t know how the team works and only knows the right Dota. The naive teenager is easily persuaded like this: People take risks to invest in profitable teams. Just like a bank lends money to buy a house, banks believe that borrowers will repay the loan with interest. When you stop paying the bank because you don’t have enough money, the bank will claim your assets again. Similarly, if you want to leave the team, you can’t just walk away: the boss has already put money on you, and you need to compensate him.

Of course, this had nothing to do with the bank, but it was enough to convince the naive Smash boy. Especially when this boss is someone they consider him a “friend”, helping them out a lot, or if he can threaten and say he will make sure they are never taken by any Dota organization. South America will accept more. That’s a terrible threat to a young player like Smash. For Smash’s next team, the Elite Wolves, it’s not much better: they receive $90 a month, and this is not enough to live on. Smash reiterated that they had no money for food or lodging, and added that he himself did not cooperate with the match-fixing case.

“When the match-fixing scandal happened, it was our manager, with whom we had a lot of disagreements in the past, who came forward to speak to Valve privately. He was one of many people who took advantage of our inexperience and people still had some unresolved money issues with him. To this day, I’m still not sure what contact he has with Valve but we haven’t had a chance to describe our story.

There are many things that cause a team to fix a match. There are times when you are almost stuck and have to make the wrong decision. Some of the people on the team didn’t have money to buy food or stay, and what we got wasn’t enough to live on. I’m not a match-fixer, because I’ve never been able to convince anyone to do it. The truth is that I just follow what my teammates do, even though I don’t agree with them. It was the worst mistake and it ruined my Dota career.”

Dota now has a new competition system and with it, a second chance should happen. Now, teams no longer have to fix matches for a living. There are separate events for the Mai My area. Even if Team Sacred were to finish last at the upcoming Summit 8 Minor, they would still receive $6,000. Divide this amount among 5 players, each of them will receive $1,200 each. That’s a lot of money when you live in South America. Other Minors, like MDL Macau and DotaPIT, finished last at $9,000 and $10,000 respectively. Valve has clearly shown they want to invest time and resources in smaller areas, forcing tournament organizers to have qualifiers there, so why not go a little further?

This is a good time to consider bans for Smash, Mstco, VaNn, Iwo, and Ztok. They are not bad people. They are young men trapped with no way out and controlled by those they help. Needless to say, a lot of people do stupid things when they’re young, and being banned for life against them doesn’t seem fair. They’ve been banned for almost 2 years now, and I think the ban should be considered after TI8.

Perhaps some people remember CS:GO’s iBUYPOWER match-fixing case. It happened on August 20, 2014, and all players were banned on January 1, 2015. But, they had their bans lifted at ESL and ESEA events in July of this year, approved by response from CS:GO players. No new match-fixing cases have been detected so far. While Valve doesn’t care, I think it’s the right thing to do.

PS: While this only talks about the bad situation of Smash and Elite Wolves, Team Redemption (Lance, ddz, xiangzai, MoZun, MtR) should also be revisited. It is no coincidence that match-fixing occurs in developing countries.

Source: cybersport