46 Dota 2 professional players have all received bans due to what is being cited as “esports integrity violations”. The specifics of which are not being disclosed, with these bans being announced last night via a short tweet and a list of the banned players released by Perfect World.

The juggernaut partnership of Valve and Perfect World, responsible not only for Dota in China but also the Counter Strike series, have not been particularly forthcoming with information regarding the bans. The length of which range from one year to life-time bans for 21 players, denying them access to any and all official Dota 2 tournaments.

Cause of the bans

The reasoning for this mass ban has not been clearly laid out with only the ambiguously expressed integrity violations being given as the sole cause in an umbrella fashion. This of course has led to the Chinese Dota 2 pro scene perpetuating rumours that have already been rife for a good few years, about match fixing.

At the recently held, Lima Major, the Chinese team Knights, the members of which all received bans, were accused of match fixing. The combination of suspicious performances and peculiarly incongruent odds which appear to be influenced by large sums of money as opposed to gameplay, laced the chatter escaping from the tournament.

Match fixing

Some speculation looks extremely condemning for the Knights, who have also suffered allegations of using cheats, with some CAM footage seeming to capture the players using second monitors which would light up in the vision of another team. All of The players on the Knights roster were included in the lifetime ban which would suggest something in the nature of these accusations holds some weight.

In the wake of the Lima Major, 4 of the players from the Knights roster were dropped with the team being renamed as Artic Penguins in tandem with the arrival of four new players who have also received bans.

They would not be the only team impacted entirely by the bans inflicted, as EHOME, another Chinese team who’s performance was unquestionably disappointing received one lifetime ban with the rest of the team being hit with varying additional bans.

Stamping it out

The true implications of these actions are yet to be fully realised, with two teams being essentially rendered uncompetitive due to the widespread severity of the bans. The Chinese DPC league is in need of 2 new teams that have not suffered forbiddance. There has been no news as of yet regarding the process that will determine these new teams.

This highly invasive action by Valve and Perfect World is one that could be successful in stamping out the criminal activity that is heavily rumoured to be plaguing the Chinese Dota scene. However, the actions that follow and the implications of these in turn will only determine just how effective these bans have been.

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