Sammyboy had a confrontation with PGL’s admin during their closed qualifiers.
It's a story as old as the game itself. One player disconnects and is unable to reconnect. It's even worse if it's maintenance day, and it happens during a pro match. Today, the newly formed Leviatán lost to BOOM Esports during PGL Wallachia Closed Qualifiers.
Game 3 of the series was going well for BOOM until a team-wipe gave Leviatán the game's advantage, reducing the networth difference and now having the pushing advantage. Suddenly, Christian "Pakazs" Savina, disconnected due to "lag" issues.
PGL admin vs. Samuel "Sammyboy" Anderson
During the almost an hour-long pause, it was clear that all Sammyboy wanted was to keep Leviatán's momentum going. The game was not going to work anymore and Pakazs wasn't going to reconnect. The admin pointed out that a remake was the only solution. These were the following issues Leviatán tried to avoid:
- Respawn times: Almost all the BOOM Esports players had no buyback available.
- Creep wave: After the fight they won, Leviatán wanted to push towers with the next wave that was coming.
- Cooldowns: Abilities, Roshan timer, buyback timer.
On this matter, the admin said they would all respawn on base. But after some time, PGL finally stated that all of this would be taken into account. Sammyboy asked one more time if this was 100% guaranteed, which the admin agreed to and the remake was made.
During this parley, Damien "kpii" Chok raised a valid concern: "In the future, one team can replicate the situation and get a free restart. [...] Or just like, if I have an official on Tuesday - we lose a teamfight, I'm going to disconnect and hope I can't come back. Abusable."
The game wasn't as the admin promised after the remake
The real problem starts here. Sammyboy raised the concern that none of the past game's information, aside from networth difference, was saved.
After a brief attempt from Leviatán and Boom Esports to calm the situation, the game continued despite Sammyboy's discomfort. However, the mental game was already on. Followed by some classic "XD" and tips, a game-winning teamfight happened in favor of Boom Esports.
Sammyboy's thoughts after the game
We got the chance to chat with Leviatán's hard carry on this matter to try to get a closer look on his feelings after the match.
"Do you feel there was a better way to approach this circumstance? Maybe adding more rules to the remake before making it happen?"
Sammyboy: I felt the whole thing was kind of dishonest. I asked the admin to clarify whether there would be respawn times when the game begins. The admin clarified multiple times that there would be respawn times and obviously, there weren't.
Also, the admin didn't warn us about other bugs in the lobby. I'm asking for clarification about: Does Rosh spawn at the same time? Do we have spells? Do we have creep waves? None of these are things that I thought about, but then you load into the game and find that we had no creep waves, all the spells are off cooldowns, [enemy] team is moving around their fountain when they're not supposed to [...]. We were paused for around 53 minutes, all of this could've been clarified.
The admin could tell us the game that we are loading into. If he's going to force us to play in this game's state, that's fine, but I just wish that there was more clarification.
We load in and we actually don't know the game that we're playing, which sucks. Obviously, we could play better, but we lost focus. It's not like it's Pakazs's fault or the admin's fault, but the whole situation is kind of dishonest. To be honest, I'm not mad at BOOM, I just wish the admin handled the situation differently. If he would've told me all of this beforehand, I would've prepared.
"So what I understand is that you don't care that much about the remake, you only wanted more information on what were the terms of the remake"
Yes, exactly. I don't care if they're going to force us to remake. I mean, I disagree, it's kind of a silly decision to punish us for someone else's mistake. It sets a really bad precedent. It kind of opens the door for anyone to abuse [disconnecting from the game], that sucks too. If they are gonna go that way, they should be honest about it, so we can prepare for the game we are about to play.
"What's the feeling of the team about this whole thing? Do you blame this result on the remake?"
We all think this remake didn't favor us, but it's still on us to win the game. I would say my team is pretty chill, I'm the most mad about this. It's not like [we feel] it's BOOM's fault or anything. I guess it's Pakazs fault since he disconnected [laughs]. I mean, you shouldn't really leave if there's no coordinator. Doesn't make sense to disconnect like that, but maybe he doesn't know. He makes mistakes. It would also suck for them to play that game 4 v 5. But we were extremely disadvantaged by the admin's decision.
"There's a part of the community that feels that, since Pakazs was dead for more than 80 seconds, maybe the game could have go on until he respawns and then you make the remake"
For sure! That's much better because he has no buyback. We don't know that he has no buyback, but we have a creep wave bottom and we are going to try and force buybacks. So, we basically lost all the opportunity to put pressure on the game after this team-wipe. Literally, the game reset for us. We got forced into our fountain and there was no creep wave. And the game got remade at 34:04, which means there's no creep wave for 30 seconds! We can't take advantage of any of the time they are dead. It's super unfair for us. That's life, I guess.
"I feel this kind of conversations are important to try and avoid this situations. So thanks for your time and if there's anything you want to take out of your chest, feel free to tell me."
I think we are just trying to refocus and accept the situation. Hopefully, we get our chance to rematch them and get revenge!
Leviatán will now play against Infinity Esports on the lower brackets to try and qualify for the upcoming PGL Wallachia. To know more about the results and the next games, make sure to keep checking esports.gg Dota 2 content!