eSports network StarLadder TV has dropped the banhammer on Aleksey "Solo" Berezin and four of his teammates on Dota 2 team RoX.KIS. StarLadder TV claims RoX.KIS purposefully fed during a Star Series match to win a $100 bet placed on eSports betting site egamingbets.com.

Berezin has been permanently banned from all StarLadder competition while his teammates have received three-year bans. Team RoX.KIS has been banned for one year.

StarLadder TV got in touch with egamingbets.com to find proof of the $100 bet as well as the cash withdrawal into Berezin's account. StarLadder has a full post up on its site along with screenshots of the transactions, although it's all in Russian.

RoX.KIS maintains that the team is innocent, going so far as to say that the bet came from an unknown account with an IP that doesn’t match Berezin’s IP. “We think that the evidence base is very uncertain in this case. We've been able to insist on more thorough investigation of the incident and we believe in the innocence of our players and staff, and inadequate solution on the case,” said in a statement that was translated.

From where I'm sitting, it's suspicious that the $322 winnings were deposited into Berezin’s WebMoney account, even if the bet wasn’t placed with his usual IP. Addressing the alleged feeding, RoX.KIS says that the “match was just a formality,” because the team couldn’t have made it to the LAN finals.

After an even early game, the match seems to edge into zRage’s favor around 16 minutes into the VOD of the full match. To my inexperienced eye, the game doesn’t seem like an explicit attempt to throw—aside from a few bad plays. If anything, the fact that a loss for zRage would have meant relegation is just one more reason that zRage would try hard to win.

If the situation wasn’t confusing enough, fans betting branches in the GosuGamers.net non-money betting system clearly favored RoX.KIS with 84 percent of branches wagered on RoX.KIS’ victory.

Despite the strides that Valve is making in reforming the Dota 2 community, it seems that the eSports scene still has a bit of a ways to go. The strict response from StarLadder TV is the bright spot in a situation that doesn’t really benefit anyone.



Thanks, joinDOTA.