Four North American Dota 2 pros banned from PGL

Four professional Dota 2 players participating in the North American season were banned by PGL for fixing the game, which attracted widespread attention in the e-sports circle.

PGL, one of the most influential organizers of Dota 2 e-sports events, recently announced that it has taken severe measures against four North American professional players for their violations. The four banned players are Mkid影, Psyscho, Lanzarote and Heaven_1.

The four players formed a team called "unknown" in the North American Open Qualifiers for DreamLeague Season 24. Although they participated in the North American competition, they were actually Eastern European players participating remotely.

According to the e-sports data platform, Mkid is from Kyrgyzstan, Psyscho is from Russia, and Lanzarote and Heaven_1 are from Ukraine. This cross-regional participation method was originally one of the advantages of e-sports, but the improper behavior of the players has pushed the fairness of the competition into controversy.

In the DreamLeague Season 24 North American Open Qualifiers, unknown performed mediocrely and barely made it to the closed qualifiers. Because his opponent gave up the game, unknown had a chance to win, but was eventually eliminated after losing to Wildcard Gaming.

According to the evidence collected by PGL, the four players were suspected of fixing the game during the initial open qualifiers, which triggered the subsequent investigation and led to the decision to ban them. Unknown originally participated in the DreamLeague Season 25 North American Qualifiers in January this year, but their careers came to an abrupt end when the evidence of game fixing was exposed.

After PGL released the announcement, it was stated that these four players would not be able to participate in the official events of Dota 2. PGL stated that manipulating the game undermines the trust and fairness of e-sports, and they will take any action decisively whenever and wherever there is solid evidence.