Dota 2: Malaysian teams disqualified from Dota Pro Circuit for account sharing

Malaysian Dota 2 teams Dino Esports and Team Ancient have been disqualified from the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) Summer Tour open qualifiers for Southeast Asia due to account sharing.

The disqualification was announced by EPULZE, this season's organiser for the DPC's Southeast Asian regional league, on Tuesday (16 May).

Account sharing refers to the act by which one player shares the Dota 2 account they officially registered to compete in the DPC with another player, who will then play in matches while pretending to be the registered owner of the account.

Both Dino Esports and Team Ancient were set to compete in the Southeast Asian Summer Tour open qualifier from 15 to 16 May prior to their disqualification.

EPULZE did not reveal in which matches the account sharing occurred that led to their ruling.

As a result of the disqualification, Koh "Zoro" Chin Poh from Tee "Clarky" Wen Xiang from Dino Esports as well as Hong "Turbo" T., Kevin "SonG-" L., and Liew "wh" H. from Team Ancient were handed lifetime bans from competing in EPULZE events.

The remaining players from both teams were also banned until further notice by EPULZE, who are still conducting a more extensive investigation into the account-sharing incident.

It is worth noting that only EPULZE have announced bans for the disqualified players, with the announcement not including any actions from Dota 2 developer Valve Software.

Bans handed out for the 2023 season

Prior to the start of the 2023 DPC season last December, Valve permanently banned 10 Ukrainian and Russian players for account sharing.

In that same month, Myanmar-based team Yangon Galacticos was notably disqualified from the closed qualifier for the DPC's Southeast Asian regional league after EPULZE found one of their players guilty of scripting during official matches.

Aside from account sharing and scripting, other incidents of unsportsmanlike behavior in the DPC have also caused a number of players to be disqualified from the circuit.

Back in March, 46 Chinese pro players were banned for foul play and "interference with fair competition".

Among the banned players were those that played under Knights, a team that was accused of using vision hacks to cheat in professional games back in January.

While the investigations were still ongoing, Knights finished third in Division I of the Chinese regional league and qualified for the recently-concluded Lima Major.

However, the team was by far the worst-performing squad in the tournament, bombing out of the Lima Major Group Stage with a 1-13 record.

Valve has maintained a firm stance against cheating among Dota 2 players, professional or otherwise. In February, the developer banned over 40,000 accounts that were found to have used third-party software in order to cheat in the game.

"Dota is a game best enjoyed when played on an even field, where victories are earned by skill and tenacity. We expect that some players will continue to develop and use new exploits, to continue to try to gain unfair advantages at the expense of other players. As before, we will continue to detect and remove these exploits as they come, and continue to ban users who cheat," Valve said in a strongly-worded statement that accompanied the ban wave.

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