Here are the thoughts of Dota 2 casters and the community on the lifetime ban of KSH and the disqualification of Yangon Galacticos.
Just as the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit Southeast Asia (DPC SEA) Winter Tour: Closed Qualifiers was about to come to an end, Epulze announced the disqualification and ban of Yangon Galacticos.
Yangon Galacticos and KSH at the 2023 DPC SEA Winter Tour
Before the start of the lower bracket finals, Epulze announced on Twitter that Yangon Galactico's carry, KSH, "has been found guilty of scripting and receives a lifetime ban from Epulze, remaining teammates are banned until further notice, pending a more extensive investigation."
A similar disqualification happened back in 2018 during the qualifiers for The International 2018 (TI8), when Dota 2 player Juan "Atun" Ochoa was disqualified for using a macro. A combat log showed Atun playing Meepo using the Poof ability on three separate Meepos at the exact same time. Under typical conditions this would be impossible to do.
Yangon Galacticos deny allegations and say they "will fight for Ksh"
Yangon Galacticos responded to the news of the Epulze ban on their Facebook page:
"Our professional Dota team was announced in the following link that our players committed scripted plays by the official organizer. We have never been acknowledged with evidences ahead of this post and never been provided contact information to further investigate. It’s something we have no knowledge of.
We wanted to investigate if there is anything that is causing the misunderstanding. All of our players from Yangon Galacticos have always been playing with our own morality and dignity. Additionally, Ksh is the youngest players who have achieved 10K MMR in the whole SEA region.
He is our hope, our country's rising star. We will fight for him. We will fight this nonsense.We, our brothers will fight for Ksh to get the justice till the end. Our truth shall be revealed soon. For now, further notices will be updated in the mean time."
Dota 2 community reacts to Yangon Galacticos situation
Following the ban, Epulze announced that the two teams from the lower bracket semi-finals will face each other. Team Drink Water and Lilgun faced each other once again in hopes of securing the final spot in Division II of the 2023 DPC SEA Winter Tour.
What are the professionals saying about the ban?
We reached out to several Dota 2 experts and casters formed opinions on their reaction to the ban.
"This should affect nobody else on the team going forward," Muriëlle "Kips" Huisman told Esports.gg. "Obviously, they are now disqualified from the tournament since they got to this position using an unfair advantage, but this should impact [zero] of the others unless it can be proven that they knew about this script. I have no idea how they would have known, and it's borderline impossible to prove that they did."
There's a precedent of career-ending rulings for these cases, most famously during Atun's disqualification for using scripts during The International 8 qualifiers. "Looking back, he'd been using scripts like these for months already," Kips told us. Based on that past incident, we can say that both the organization and the players turned out just fine despite his cheating."
"A case like this proves that the ones who are foolhardy enough to try it anyway will sooner or later fly too close to the sun."
Meanwhile commentator Sean "Snare" Rihlamvu felt the pressure to succeed in the DPC could be one factor in what he believes to be a rise in cheating.
"I think it speaks to how the scene is now basically impossible to thrive within unless one goes deep into DPC. I don't think it's a coincidence that since the DPC system began, we've seen a huge influx of cheating especially in the qualifiers. Players don't see another way to make a living in the game anymore."
When asked about his thoughts on the ban he did not hold back.
"It was the biggest f**kup ever," said Snare. "Because based on the overall ability of the squad they could have qualified heads up; and the player himself is actually quite decent."
On the topic of bans Nikola ''hairy_freak'' Babic said he believed the latest clean up in Dota 2 was a move in the right direction to discourage the players from breaking the rules.
"Big penalties are needed so that players in the future don't even think about doing something that is against the rules. YG as a team has had a lot of hardships in the past years, internet dropping down, no electricity, but I have personally worked with [tournament organizers], mostly Moonstudio that would make exceptions for their current situation and help them have a competitive environment, even though that would mean changing the schedule just for them.
So if the allegations against KSH are true, it is a big disrespect for everyone in the scene who has tried to previously help the team and he deserves the ban coming his way."
Hairy_freak added that when it comes to the rest of the team, that's a different matter. "It is hard to come up with a good punishment and hard to determine if the other players were in on it or not," he told Esports.gg. "So for the future, we will be needing a consistent set of rules and then the players and the teams will be able to take the needed steps so something like this doesn't affect them as much."
Dota 2 caster aponzeus also weighed in on the situation. "From an [outsider's] look, it is always sad to see things such as scripting, maphacks, account sharing etc. in the scene," he said.
"The rules are pretty clear about that though, and punishment has to be there as long as sufficient evidence has been found. I personally don't like lifetime bans on first-time offenders, especially in the esports scene, as a lot of players can be very young. The exception being, of course, egregious cases. Without having precise knowledge of what exactly happened and what the evidence is, I don't know if this is an egregious case."
Singaporean analyst and caster Sean "Hades" Goh on the other hand, said he felt KSH's permaban was "deserved", and that if his team-mates knew about it they should also receive a similar punishment. "I just hopes this doesn't negatively affect the Myanmar Dota 2 community," he added.
Will Yangon Galacticos come back from this? Will we see them at the next tour?
Stick around on Esports.gg for more Dota 2 news and updates.