Dota 2 team Knights are under fire for the third time for cheating and match-fixing during a big tournament.
The Knights are being accused of match-fixing — again.
The Chinese Pro Circuit team recently qualified for the Lima Major. But Dota 2 fans grew suspicious of the team after it failed to win a single match during the LAN tournament. It seemed like the Knights only excelled at online tournaments due to its access to hacks during the regular season.
This was a sentiment Dota fans had back in January as well. At that time, the newly formed team was rapidly climbing up the ranks and beating top teams like PSG.LGD and Invictus Gaming. Fans were suspicious when the Knights all but destroyed PSG.LGD 2-0, accusing the team of using vision hacks.
After one caster did a breakdown video outlining their suspicions, the accusations were brought to Valve. But nothing seemed to come of it at the time.
Dota 2 caster accuses Knights of match-fixing at Lima Major
The Dota community also felt that the Knights were involved in match-fixing at the Lima Major. While they lost all their matches, there was still a concerning pattern forming, noticed by caster Oleksii "BafiK" Bafadarov.
The Ukranian caster tweeted that Valve should further investigate the Knights due to the "abnormal rates" on Chinese betting sites during their matches.
"Rates dropped fast and hard on betting sites right when they were ahead. This indicates that serious amount of money waged on the line. You will never see such drops if everything is clear, especially on this level," BafiK explained.
Basically, when the Knights had an early lead, huge sums of money were placed against them. This was immediately suspicious. Who would bet money on the Knights losing when they were ahead?
This is very similar to some match-fixing accusations earlier this month.
At that time, casters called for Valve to look into the situation. But now the Dota 2 community had to ask Valve to investigate the possible match-fixing another time, causing a bit of frustration.
Valve banned over 40,000 cheaters from Dota 2 before the Lima Major. But it doesn't seem like the Knights were involved in that big ban hammer despite ongoing suspicions. And the team has continued the same patterns once again.
Valve has not made any public statement on the most recent match-fixing accusations against the Knights.