BetBoom receive a default loss at the Bali Major

Yesterday, BetBoom Team and their fans were understandably excited after the victory against Tundra Esports. This world-class opponent that won The International 11 and Tour 3 in WEU looked very hard to beat, and game 2 of the match lasted 104 minutes.

But not long after the victory, BetBoom’s victory was turned into a default loss by the tournament organizer. And the decision is 100% legitimate. In fact, it’s surprising that BetBoom are still allowed to compete in the lower bracket after what happened.

Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko, a 19-year-old with more than 13.000 MMR and one of the most talented players of his generation, was essentially caught cheating. He wasn’t cheating in the standard way, using scripts. He was cheating by watching the Twitch stream of the match while competing in it!

This is absolutely mind-boggling and it makes you wonder: is this the first time when he has done this? Was it a mere mistake on his part or was this a deliberate tactic used by his team (and perhaps by other teams as well!)?

Arguably, this incident should make tournament organizers ask themselves some serious questions with regard to the integrity of online matches. The teams need to be monitored in a stricter way. Otherwise, some of them might end up doing what Pure did here.

There are some who say that Pure’s stream was actually paused and that he simply forgot to close it before the match began. In that case, Pure’s actions should not be viewed as a form of intentional cheating, but rather as a very unfortunate incident.

Details about the incident

The incident was reported on Reddit and people still cannot believe their eyes. A professional player of the highest caliber doing this is bad for Dota 2’s image as an esport. It also reflects poorly on himself, his team, and the tournament organizer. Especially if that organizer doesn’t even update its social media team about the situation.

DAY 2 PLAYOFFS LET’S GO!#WhereLandMeetsSea 🌊 pic.twitter.com/csLynJdhFB

— IO Esports @ Bali Major (@ioesportsgg) July 6, 2023

One wonders: what was the admin doing? Why was nobody there to stop Pure from doing what he did? But then again, who would have thought to check?

If Pure did it intentionally, this is such a blatant and stupid way of cheating that nobody expects a world-class player to attempt something of this nature. And the fact that it happened at a Major in which BetBoom finally avoided getting destroyed by the other teams makes matters even worse.

Now, the whole community wants to know: did something similar happen during the group stage of the event? And what about DreamLeague S20, where BetBoom nearly won the Grand Final against Gaimin Gladiators? Is this how the team deals with online events? Do they just listen to the live stream in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage?

Header: IO Esports, Epulze