Astini: "SA EWC qualifiers is infested with hacks"

Astini has been calling out the use of cheats in the Esports World Cup South American Qualifiers since June 2nd and demonstrating his claims on Twitter using clips from plays he considers suspicious.

Cheats dealt a whole lot of damage to the Chinese scene during the final days of the Dota Pro Circuit, and now they seem to have resurfaced in South America to interfere in matches and maybe score some unlikely results.

Astini was not happy at all and started a personal crusade against cheaters on the EWC regional qualifiers.

Bold Claims Demand Evidence

Astini started talking about the use of hacks in the Esports World Cup South American Qualifiers, and as expected, this generated a lot of commotion in the professional Dota 2 scene.

After winning the Grand Final, Astini mentioned he should be playing against his friend Héctor "K1" Rodríguez and that the Upper Bracket matches were fake. Some people replied to him saying they did not understand where these accusations were coming from.

This has been going on, and Astini made sure he would open his stream and analyze the replays. He called out Hokori's position 4 player, Asao, by name and made another tweet showing examples of suspicious behavior.

According to Astini, before using the tournament's Discord server, Asao was playing Techies and making perfect Tazer casts with only 11 competitive matches on the hero. After starting to use the tournament's Discord server, in a similar situation he failed to use Nyx Assassin's Spiked Carapace and, according to Astini, he is a Nyx specialist.

Some people told him in the replies that Techies had seen the enemy heroes and according to the logs, he cast his Tazer before they jumped in, but Astini remained firm in his conviction and said that this was still suspicious behavior.

In The End, Team Nemesis Won Anyway

Despite the wave of criticism after demanding that teams use the tournament's Discord server, Astini and Team Nemesis won in the end and secured the South American slot for the Esports World Cup, adding another (mostly) South American roster to the event's lineup.

I am sure that this will not be the end of it, but how much of his suspicions Astini can prove is still unknown. This is just Astini suspecting Hokori, but recently an ESIC investigation was announced involving a South American roster.

Investigation Into Team Clown Crew/BarrancoBar and Associated Participants

On May 26, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) announced that it would be investigating allegations concerning suspicious in-game conduct occurring during recent Dota 2 tournament matches involving Team Clown Crew/BarrancoBar.

While this investigation is ongoing, all players and staff associated with the roster are temporarily suspended from ESIC events. The commission mentioned that the main focus of the investigation is Cristian "Accel" Cruz, but it will also expand to potential team-level knowledge of, or benefit from, his alleged conduct.

Accel was the one showing suspicious activity but all players will be investigated.

The full ESIC public statement describes which suspicious activities they will be monitoring, the Game IDs for the matches, potential rule breaches, and detailed information about the suspension.

Apparently, Astini's reactions are justified, considering ESIC took official measures just days before the EWC regional qualifiers, and against a South American roster nonetheless. If Hokori is actually guilty or not, that is a whole other topic that is up to the tournament organizers (and maybe ESIC) to decide.

Closing Thoughts

The use of cheats caused irreparable damage to the professional Chinese Dota 2 scene years ago and has resurfaced every now and then ever since. Measures have been taken in the past and should be taken again to prevent this from becoming a pattern.

On the other hand, even an accusation can be damaging for players, and it should not be taken lightly. Astini is a professional coach and is very much aware of this, so we should give both sides the benefit of the doubt and wait for this situation to be resolved before drawing any conclusions.

Featured Image Source: esic.gg, Liquipedia and Flickr (dota2ti)