Dota 2: Azure Ray call out Bali Major organiser for unfair treatment over BetBoom incident

Chinese Dota 2 team Azure Ray has called out the organiser of the recently-concluded Bali Major, for their handling of the situation surrounding their controversial lower bracket Playoff match against Eastern Europe’s BetBoom Team.

In a post on their official Weibo account on Monday (17 July), Azure Ray said that the organiser (IO Esports, who are not mentioned by name in the post) made them look like “the bad guys”, according to a translation of the Chinese team’s statement.

The aforementioned incident came as a result of BetBoom offlaner Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko getting caught stream-sniping during their upper bracket semifinals match against Tundra Esports.

The match originally resulted in a 2-0 win for BetBoom, who advanced to the upper bracket finals, while Tundra was dropped to the lower bracket to face Azure Ray.

When Pure’s stream-sniping came to light the day after the match, IO changed the outcome to a default win for Tundra and disqualified Pure for the rest of the Major.

As a result, BetBoom was instead dropped to the lower bracket to match up against Azure Ray, with Roman "Resolut1on" Fomynok, who attended the Major as talent, as a stand-in for Pure.

BetBoom’s players apparently bristled at the situation. Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek even all-chatted during the match and asked Azure Ray, "Why [did you] guys force admins to disqualify Pure? [Are you] scared to play against our full roster?"

Azure Ray went on to win the match, 2-1, eliminating BetBoom from the Bali Major in 9th-12th place.

Azure Ray wanted to play Tundra

Despite winning the match, Azure Ray said that IO’s handling of the situation “led to us being the bad guys”.

The Chinese team said that they were not given any prior notice that they would be facing BetBoom instead of Tundra, even asking the organiser to follow the original schedule as they only prepared to face Tundra and did not want to waste their efforts “due to BetBoom’s mistake”.

Azure Ray went on to say that IO refused their plea and emphasised that, according to their rulebook, BetBoom must be handed a default loss.

The Chinese team then retorted by pointing out that the organiser initially ignored their own rules, as Pure was initially allowed to play in their match despite tournament rules stipulating that cheating players must be disqualified.

Azure Ray said that IO asked them if they would accept Pure only being disqualified after the Azure Ray-BetBoom match. The Chinese team rejected this proposal, asking IO to either revoke the penalty against BetBoom and let them play against Tundra or disqualify Pure immediately.

Azure Ray then claimed that IO did not clearly communicate their intentions to BetBoom, instead telling them something to the effect of they will only agree to play if Pure was disqualified, otherwise they will forfeit the match.

“We clearly told the organiser to either just revoke the penalty and let us play against Tundra, or just follow the rulebook strictly and disqualify Pure immediately. We had no intention to target Betboom or Pure at all. We fully respect them, but we still have the right to say no to any unfair treatment,” said Azure Ray.

“In the end, the organiser decided to disqualify Pure after communicating with BetBoom. However, during the communication, our appeal became 'Azure Ray will only agree to play with Betboom without Pure, otherwise they will forfeit', which dropped their responsibility and led to us being the bad guys.”

While Pure’s stream-sniping and subsequent disqualification caused enough controversy, further fuel to the fire was added by the fact that BetBoom’s hopes for a direct invite to The International (TI) 2023 were jeopardized by the incident.

The original result of the BetBoom-Tundra match had already earned the Eastern European team a coveted direct invite to this year’s iteration of Dota 2’s world championship tournament.

The result of that match being changed and BetBoom subsequently getting eliminated by Azure Ray almost cost the Eastern European team their direct invite, which also caused a lot of tension between the Eastern European and Chinese Dota 2 communities.

But with Quest Esports only finishing the Bali Major in fourth place, BetBoom finished the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season in 12th place at the DPC point leaderboard, which gave them the final direct invite to TI 2023.

Meanwhile, Azure Ray finished the Bali Major in 7th-8th place after losing to fellow Chinese team PSG.LGD in the second round of the lower bracket. As a team that was only formed during this season’s Summer Tour, Azure Ray will have to earn their spot at TI 2023 through the Chinese regional qualifiers.

Azure Ray closed their statement regarding IO’s handling of their controversial match by acknowledging the organiser’s day-to-day care for them during the Major, while pointing out their lacklustre treatment of the tournament’s competitive aspect.

“The referees [hired by IO for the Major] were amateur and lazy, just playing on their phones and sleeping during the games. The organiser cannot handle these incidents competently,” said Azure Ray.

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