DotA fans and even some professional players have expressed disappointment and outrage after one of Malaysia’s top teams, KingSurf, was banned from Meet Your Makers’ Prime Defending 9 global DotA competition on suspicions of cheating.
According to a news post on the MYM website, KS was banned for maphacking during their match against Greek team OnePiece (1P). As evidence, several screenshots apparently depicting KS players clicking on 1P’s heroes even after they went under cover of fog of war was posted up. 1P even posted a video on YouTube.
In real time strategy (RTS) games, the fog of war is an effect that shrouds map areas that are outside of the player’s and his allies’ units’ visual range in darkness. A maphack utility, usually third-party software, modifies the game by removing the fog of war effect, granting the user the ability to see the entire map, consituting an unfair tactical advantage over his opponents.
The announcement provoked a firestorm of comments from visitor’s to the MYM website. About 900 comments were written by Netizens in a period of just over 14 hours. While many posts were passionate outburts and finger pointing, including several posts by KS member Yamateh and 1P manager Boter, cooler heads eventually prevailed.
Naz, an admin with the official Dota Allstars forums, wrote a thread stating his belief that the evidence was "not conclusive enough" for a ban to be handed down.
Noting that all instances of KS selecting 1P’s hero units under the fog happened within a second or two, Naz explained: "To understand this there’s one thing that you need to realize, delay plays a part when it comes to registering actions made in a replay.
"If the host and the player are not in the same place, the lag time may result in the click firing after the target enters fog. In this case the host was from Denmark which more then covers for the delay in actions for Ks."
Maelk from MYM’s own DotA team struck a chord when he mentioned that whether KS cheated or not is no longer the real issue at hand, saying that he was unhappy with how the administrators of MYM PriDe 9 dealt with the issue.
He, along with team mate Slasher, were consulted by the admin team for their professional opinion on the matter. Although both of them judged that the evidence was "vague at best" and not to go live with the accusations, Maelk says that he got the impression that other persons had pressured head admin S1rro into handing down the ban to KS.
"Things were rushed with too little evidence too soon and some of the people behind the decision were incapable of judging such important matter," Maelk wrote.
Adding to the frustration of the online community is that MYM officials have not issued any further statements on the matter, instead choosing to remain silent. It appears that sentiment is now going against MYM, with many saying that this incident has tarnished the image of both the MYM e-sports outfit as well as the prestigious online DotA tournaments run by them.
Meanwhile, KS has taken things in their stride and are already moving along. KS member Yamateh left a comment on the news post (#360). "Thank you for all fans, supporters and last but not least, haters. I’m really glad that all this mess been cleared up (by Naz’s comments)," he wrote.
"Let’s leave all this behind us. We have more important things ahead (of) us. All we hope now is to prove that we don’t need any cheating tools to be the best."
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