Two teams from the Lower Division of the North American Dota Pro Circuit, Wind and Rain (WaR) and Pecado Squad Gaming, have been banned permanently from all Valve competition, according to the NA DPC League.
NA DPC Season 2 – Lower Division Disqualifications pic.twitter.com/RPI2qRXQfZ
— NA DPC League (@NADPCLeague) May 24, 2021
Why were WaR and Pecado Squad Gaming banned from DPC?
The original accusation came from a post by reddit user yzw a week prior to the decision. In the post, the user provided screenshots showing evidence of wildly changing betting odds for the match between WaR and Team Felt, another Lower Division DPC team. While the screenshots have since been deleted, the post alleges that the betting odds for WaR changed overnight from 1.2 to 4.3. At the same time, Team Felt’s odds changed from 3.3 down to 1.2. Such large shifts overnight are uncommon in gambling lines.
This match fixing incident was not the first for members of the WaR squad. Daniil “satesate” Krivenko was found guilty of match fixing in ESL Meisterscaft back in March 2021. Vladimir “Yol” Basov was involved in one of the most famous match-fixing scandals in all of Dota history; this incident gave birth to the 322 meme. The investigation was about the transfer of team ownership from the now disbanded A-team of last year’s Upper Division to WaR for this season’s DPC.
There have been accusations thrown at both sides. Raymond “AlienManaBanana” Milici produced a Google doc that detailed accusations towards Chad “Szabo666” Szabo and the WaR’s manager John “Jojo” Tomczyk. The accusations were as follows:
“One Player (Szabo666) who had control over the DPC website kicked every player but himself and one other player to bring in an org with confirmed match-fixers two hours before roster lock deadline.”
In the document, AlienManaBanana accuses Szabo of taking money to merge two members of the A-team and the three members of WaR. This was said to be done, on the eve of the roster lock deadline, in order to create a new team to play under the WaR brand. This move left the players that had been kicked from both teams with no chance to compete in the league. On the other hand, WaR have also responded with a Google doc of their own that states:
“We would like to clarify that at no point in time did we ever engage in communication with Chad “Szabo666” Szabo with the purpose of changing A-Team’s roster in exchange for a payment.”
The remaining players from WaR have also spoken out about Valve’s ban, including ilyas “Steel-_-Borco” Kaukenov, who claimed his innocence in a Twitlonger. Vladimir “Yol” Basov has also released a statement on reddit claiming the same sentiment. Finally, Chad “Szabo666” Szabo replied to the original Twitter post with a claim of innocence.
In no way was I involved in any kind of match fixing at all. I had a strict and firm talk with the players and manager that if I suspected any kind of match fixing , I would blow the lid off the entire thing . Even have screenshots to prove
— Chad (@Szabodota666) May 25, 2021
As of this time, Valve has not released evidence as to why WaR and Pecado Squad Gaming were banned. Pecado Squad Gaming has not made any official statements regarding their ban at the time of this article’s publication. This is a developing story.
