Dota's never-solved cases.
Gaimin Gladiators Quinn Callahan recently secured a championship title at the Lima Major, but it wasn’t long before the victory was overshadowed by a surprising confession. The player took issue with Ukrainian team B8 changing regions to North America, which Quinn said was an “attempt to steal a slot.”
Quinn recalled a past disqualification of his team from the South American qualifiers for the Chongqing Major. The mid-laners squad was disqualified after winning the qualifiers, which must have left a bitter taste in his mouth for all these years.
Quinns reaction was prompted by the fact that theres currently a team filled with Eastern European players competing in the North American region. Given how the two incidents may look similar from an outsiders perspective, Quinn asked for an explanation on why theyre being allowed to continue while his team was disqualified after securing a Major seat.
Fans quickly disapproved of Quinns statement, however, since the two cases were nothing alike when inspected closely. The team that Valve disqualified had two SA and three NA members.
Valves rulebook requires players to have at least three members present at the region theyre competing, but Quinns team only had two. The squad solved this problem by flying in the rest of their members, but they would fly immediately back to NA once the qualifiers were over. This rubbed Valve the wrong way, and the developer decided this wasn’t fair to the regions faithful.
The disqualified roster argued that they had three members in SA, claiming Francis “FLee” Lee was staying in the region. Despite the explanations, their case was never reopened again.
B8, on the other hand, completely relocated their Dota 2 roster to North America, even setting up a bootcamp in Mexico. The team has only left the region during a break while making sure they remain in NA physically throughout a DPC season. It should also be noted that Valve didn’t have a sound rulebook like it does today at the time of the incident, so the developer had to make a decision on the fly, which ended up being an example.
While Quinn’s curiosity could be justified since his disqualification came after qualifying for a major, his revisiting matter caused a fair bit of backlash from the fans. This was only the second tweet that the player posted after winning the Lima Major, earning him the title Sore Winner.