The secret was finally out as it was revealed by the whistleblower, Moon.
It took me 10 emails, 2 months, watch replay like close to 100 times, 5 bucket of tears to get them banned. I’m human too, and I love my players very much. I already gave them warnings in channel and lobby. That we have integrity team watching their match. But team just ignore 🙁
— Moon | iG (@MoonLim_Dota) November 23, 2021
While the Dota Pro Circuit looks set to begin with a bang, Division 1 team OMEGA Esports was abruptly banned earlier this week. The announcement came after Southeast Asian DPC organiser, Beyond The Summit, published the ban notice in twitter. It came as a shock after OMEGA Esports has recently fielded 3 new players for their roster. Find out more information about OMEGA Esports here.
According to her tweet, Moon explained that the match-fixing incident occurred at OB.Moon Studio Asian Arena, which is a Tier 3 tournament.
Credits: OB.Moon Studio
Organised by Moon Studio, the tournament was mini tournament between twelve teams which included team Omega Esports. The matches were played in the Singapore/China servers between 6 September 2021 to 3 October 2021.
Prior to the match, there were early suspicions on the Filipino team. It also raised a lot of queries within the organisers and apparently Moon’s CEO was not happy that team OMEGA Esports was invited. They eventually went ahead with the tournament.
In Moon’s long tweet post, she highlighted that her integrity team sent a sensitive report regarding the match between team OMEGA Esports and team Lilgun. Apparently, she had also explained clearly to the players before the matches begin. This was a desired warning to the players despite the red flags.
I spent a lot of effort, on my tournaments, to make it as competitive and fair as much as I could. This is what I wrote at the channel before the games started. Anyway, my big respect to valve and BTS, I think we did the right thing. https://t.co/MjCVAVArLu pic.twitter.com/AxbazvOI84
— Moon | iG (@MoonLim_Dota) November 23, 2021
After her investigations on the matches, she had discovered many suspicious activities. This includes watching match replays several times such as the player movements, match moments, players’ reponses and also mouse clicks. These signs somehow were the calls for match-fixing and Moon then decided to send her report to valve at the end of the tournament.
Valve got back to her on 16 November and they exchanged more details throughout the correspondence. Just before the DPC was about to begin, Valve finally took action and the ban came out on 23 November 2021.
This was something that unfortunately happened in the Southeast Asia DOTA community and would serve as a reminder to all professional teams that illegal activities will not be tolerated. Moon was right to do what she needed to do to raise an awareness about match-fixing and anybody who did things like this will suffer undesirable consequences.