Dota 2 Pro Player Smash Writes An Open Letter About His Match Fixing Story
Bryan Freddy “SmAsH” Machaca Siña a very well known Peruvian pro-Dota 2 player from South America is currently banned in Dota 2 by valve for an indefinite period for being involved in Matchfixing for a pro game.
Currently, Smash is ranked number 1 on the American MMR leaderboard taking over RTZ one of the best carry player. now after two years of ban Smash has released an open letter to the valve and the Dota 2 community about the match-fixing story and the Dota 2 scene in South America.
In the post, he tells that when he and his team decide to go pro but to train and improve their skill he had to leave his hometown as it did not have any tournaments or decent internet. so he went to the capital and was able to train there but due to economic problems many time they did not have foods to eat or have room to sleep.
Many teams back then lived in deplorable conditions, from little to no earnings, but that did not break the passion and commitment we had with Dota 2. Everything was quite harsh for me and my fellow teammates, especially since we all came to the capital from different parts of Peru. We were alone and we didn’t use to socialize with other people either. It was hard as many days we were unable to fulfill basic necessities. There were even days where my teammates and I had no food to eat and no place to sleep.
Apart from living in a poor condition he also gave a detailed explanation about how he joined the Peruvian Organization Not Today and the owner of the team scammed their money.
the owner of Not Today asked that we return all the money that he had invested in us. I don’t know how much he asked for from each individual player but I know he asked me that I needed to return all the money I made from the MVP title I won at “The Summit 2 by Beyond the Summit” tournament (10K dollars). I was very naïve as I could only think about one thing, and that was playing Dota. I was unaware of how a proper gaming organization functioned.
After leaving team Not Today he joined Elite Wolves to have a decent living and a stable diet also during his time in Elite Wolves he was getting a salary of $90 per month but it was just not enough to make a proper living out of it.
Now being on brink of desperation he and his team decided to match fix their game against Infamous in Pro Dota Cup.
“There’s a point when you are close to shutting down due to desperation that you start to make bad decisions. Some people in the team had no money for food or to live on and what little we had to share was not enough to help them.”
The story is definitely sad and the community feels sympathetic towards them as they are very good players with a lot of potentials. but a majority of the people also feel that the ban should not be lifted as it would encourage other players to do the same.
Former MVP and Rave member said he felt sad about the situation but he too was in a similar situation but never thought of match-fixing.
Not that i lack empathy. But, living conditions in MVP was suuuper shit a lot of the times. Afaik, Rave’s living sitch sucked too. None of us succumbed to fixing games. The result is that most of former mvp/rave are doing alright as to being banned.
— SunBhie (@SunBhieDota) December 10, 2017
I have mixed feelings about the punishment.
— SunBhie (@SunBhieDota) December 10, 2017
Former DC member Jimmy Ho also commented on Jubie tweet saying
True that man, I joined TNC and we had like 4-5 people in a tiny bedroom. That was horrible, but managed. In MVP the conditions weren’t the greatest but I know mine was just a tad bit better than yours 😉 The payoff was the wins, not resorting to fixing games.
— Jimmy Ho (@DotaDeMoN) December 12, 2017
When the topic of the ban comes in Dota 2 everyone talks about the story of Alexei “Solo” Berezin the current pro player in Team Virtus Pro. he is the only player who has been unbanned by valve after 1 year for his match-fixing as there was no rule for match-fixing.
Since the establishment of the match-fixing rule, iBUYPOWER’s a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad, Team Redemption and Arrow gaming from Dota 2 and many more players are banned and none of their bans has been lifted yet. so the chance of Smash getting unbanned is probably very low.