Found Using Jockeys, Malaysian Assault Team Disqualified from Dota Pro Circuit SEA

GAMEFINITY.ID, Jakarta – One more team has been disqualified from the Southeast Asia Dota Pro Circuit (DPC). The Team Assault squad from Malaysia was found guilty of sharing accounts, said the organizer of the SEA DPC regional league, PGL Thursday (14/1/2021). Team Assault was one of eight teams that qualified for the Lower Division of the SEA DPC regional league after finishing in the top four in Stage 2 of the closed qualifiers.

Some of the players on Team Assault include former LGD.int players Wang “Gy” Kok Guan and Raymond “Rayy” Then Wan Jia, as well as veteran Siong Tait “JoHnNy” Lee. PGL did not mention which Team Assault players were found guilty of account sharing. This term itself is commonly known as jockey.

In the context of this incident, account sharing refers to a player sharing his Dota 2 account with another player so that that player can play in professional matches, while impersonating the previous player. Suspicions against Team Assault began to emerge on January 10, when they surprisingly defeated ZeroTwo, 2-0 during Stage 2 of the SEA DPC regional league closed qualifiers.

The result of the match attracted the attention of many people, because ZeroTwo was previously predicted to sweep Team Assault. ZeroTwo became one of the most respected teams in the qualifying round, with big names like Randy Muhammad “Dreamocel” Sapoetra, Ng Kee “ChYuan” Chyuan, and Muhammad “inYourdreaM” Rizky as part of its roster.

Shortly after ZeroTwo’s defeat, team offlaner Lee “X1aOyU” Qianyu, voiced his suspicions with Indonesian streamer Ramzi “Ramz” Bayhaki. He suspected that the Newbee players who had previously received a ban were actually those who played against them using Team Assault player accounts.

X1aOyU shows that Team Assault players are playing too well and their pings show that they are playing from China, not Malaysia. He then added that his party had reported the suspicion to PGL.

As previously reported by GAMEFINITY.ID, Newbee was punished after being involved in a match fixing scandal last May. The team was barred indefinitely from participating in the tournament hosted by China’s major organisers. Earlier this month, Valve also gave them a lifetime ban from participating in DPC and other Valve-hosted events.

The scandal rocked the DOTA and Esports communities, as it involved a team as big as Newbee, as well as player Zeng “Faith” Hongda, who previously won The International (TI). Newbee won TI4 in 2021, while Faith won TI2 in 2012 as a member of Invictus Gaming.

Due to Team Assault being disqualified from the DPC, their place has been given to the Indonesian Army Geniuses team. Army Geniuses were previously eliminated after losing a tiebreak to another Indonesian team, Zero Two. This punishment certainly makes Army Geniuses still able to continue their game in the 2021 DPC.

For your information, Team Assault became the fourth team to be disqualified from this year’s DPC. The first team to be disqualified was a team also from Malaysia, VisDota2 on 7 January. VisDota2 was banned from participating in the second stage of the closed qualifiers and subsequent open qualifiers for the Southeast Asian regional leagues for using players previously banned by Valve.

On the same day, the second team was disqualified from DPC, VirtusProPolar due to the use of an unauthorized stand-in. A third disqualification was awarded to Jimmy “DeMon” Ho, who plays with Aristotle’s team, on January 10 for alleged sexual harassment he committed in a previous tournament.

The DPC will kick off on January 18, with regional leagues for Europe, Southeast Asia, CIS, North America and South America set to run through February 28. Meanwhile, the China Regional League will run until March 14 as it will have a mid-season break to welcome the Lunar New Year, February 12.