In the following post we'll go through what occurred during the ESL One Raleigh Qualifiers, how it led to NAVI Junior being disqualified, why other teams weren't caught initially, and what the final verdict for ESL One Raleigh will be.
The Bug
The bug that we investigated primarily manifests as a way to detect if the other team has used smoke whilst they’re in the fog.
Assuming that your team had vision of an enemy hero whilst the smoke was in their inventory, you could alt-click/click and drag the item. Usually this would display a message - alt click in the chat, click/drag displays an error telling you you don’t control that unit.
The bug in this situation is as follows: if the smoke has been used since the hero was last seen, then this message does not display, giving you that information without the other team being aware.
Using this bug gives you valuable and otherwise unobtainable information, allowing you to avoid walking into bad fights, prepare yourselves for a teamfight, adapt farming patterns to avoid ganks, or use the information to avoid fighting altogether during opponent power spikes.
This bug has since been patched out of the game.
Our Timeline
This smoke bug was first banned by us at ESL One Bangkok, with BLAST also banning its use at BLAST SLAM.
All teams in attendance at ESL One Bangkok were also informed of the bug, to ensure they understood the function of the bug and its severity.
Although teams participating in the ESL One Raleigh qualifiers were not re-informed that the bug was still not permitted, they were also not informed that it was now allowed. PGL also explicitly banned the use of this bug during their qualifiers for PGL Wallachia Season 3, which were happening simultaneously.
NAVI Junior and complications
The first complaint regarding the use of the bug in the qualifiers was made by AVULUS immediately after their match against NAVI Junior in the lower bracket final. We immediately investigated NAVI Junior’s matches, logging each incident of bug abuse. It was discovered at this time that NAVI Junior had extensively exploited this bug throughout their qualifier run.
At the time there were also checks of all of the other qualified teams, to ensure that they did not use the bug. Unfortunately, one of the people responsible for checking other qualified teams experienced a bug where his client could not properly recreate the POV of the players he was spectating. Due to this, incidents from other teams were missed.
Believing that only NAVI Junior had used the bug, they were disqualified from the event on Wednesday 22nd January. In the following 24 hours, the community helped to identify other uses of the bug that our team had missed at the time. This is what led to our team discovering the replay bug, and showed us that we needed to create a more robust checking system with multiple checks.
The investigation was re-opened, this time with a new and more thorough methodology. The sheer difficulty in going through every single qualifier game multiple times led to a longer time frame for us to publish information, as we wanted to be absolutely certain that we had caught all cases of the smoke bug being abused.
The investigation was further aided by a software tool which could flag in the demo files to identify all points in the match where it could look like the bug was triggered.
It is important to note that, though we specified a use case above that constitutes abuse, it’s possible to trigger this flag in a non-abusive way; for example, if you alt-click an enemy’s component which they have since combined since leaving your vision, it can trigger the flag, even though this is a natural occurrence in a game of Dota that does not indicate an attempt to gain an unfair advantage.
All flagged incidents have also had to be manually reviewed to establish the intent of the player involved and what advantage, if any, could be gained.
ON PROPORTIONALITY...
It is important for us to establish that there are degrees of fault here.
There are 0 legitimate ways to gain updated information on the status of an opponent’s inventory in Dota while they're in the fog of war, outside of utilising this bug.
Therefore, combined with its widespread banning in other recent tournaments, we believe it is reasonable to consider the abuse of this bug to go against the spirit of Dota.
It was a mistake to not re-state that the bug was still banned to all participants in the qualifiers and this has to be taken into account when looking at appropriate sanctions.
...and appropriate sanctions
The scope of the sanctions delivered as a result of the various circumstances at play will be limited to exactly ESL One Raleigh and its qualifiers. No sanction will extend beyond that point, past or future.
Given the easily perceivable ‘unfair’ nature of the information gained here, combined with the fact that Valve shortly thereafter patched it out and that other TOs have been explicitly banning the bug, especially with the widespread reminder circulated during the PGL qualifiers immediately preceding Raleigh, sanctions are absolutely warranted for significant abuse of this bug.
When arriving at sanctions however, it has to be admitted that there is a significant degree of mitigation due to the fact that we did not explicitly re-communicate the banned status of this bug.
Furthermore, all uses of this bug were not necessarily equal. We have split the teams into five categories:
-
Systematic Abuse of the BugThe bug features in a strong majority of the team’s matches. At points in gameplay, at least one member of the team is consistently using the bug in an attempt to gain an advantage. It appears to be a constituent part of the team’s general approach to Dota.
The following teams fall into this category:9Pandas: ~160 abusesNAVI Junior: ~115 abuses
Aurora Gaming: ~50 abuses -
Moderate Abuse of the BugThe bug features in a few of the team’s games. It is only used occasionally, but usually in high impact spots involving Smoke of Deceit.
The following teams fall into this category:
Passion UA: 17 abusesOne Move: 12 abuses
Virtus.Pro: 11 abusesWinter Bear: 9 abuses
Tundra Esports: 9 abuses
Team Spirit: 7 abusesTeam Secret: 5 abuses -
Minor Abuse of the BugThe following teams have abused the bug once or twice, and fall into this category:
WildcardShopify Rebellion
Natus Vincere -
Accidental Use of the BugThe bug has been used by teams throughout the qualifiers, but the instances found were inconclusive as abuse.
The following teams fall into this category:
Nigma GalaxyTALON
Gaimin GladiatorsM80 -
Not Suspected of using the BugThe remaining 40 teams from our Closed Qualifiers have passed all checks performed by our team and there is no indication that they used the bug, accidental or otherwise.
The Final Verdict
The three teams that made abuse of this bug a core part of their strategy in the qualifiers for ESL One Raleigh (9Pandas, NAVI Junior, Aurora Gaming) are disqualified from the event. For NAVI Junior, this means that their qualification is revoked. For 9Pandas and Aurora Gaming this means that they will no longer be able to participate in the event should another team from their region be unable to attend.
Teams which fall into the Moderate Abuse of the Bug category will be penalised through fines.
Teams that made Minor Abuses of the Bug will receive a warning.
Teams that accidentally utilised the bug will not receive any sanctions.
DreamLeague Season 25 & beyond
We encourage teams to come forward if they suspect that bug abuse is being utilised in games instead of abusing the bugs themselves to "level the playing field". A healthy Dota scene requires cooperation between teams and TOs to be able to showcase the best Dota possible.
There were no reported incidents and no official Match Protests filed during the DreamLeague Season 25 qualifiers, therefore no investigation took place and no sanctions will be given out.
Teams are encouraged to talk to Tournament Administration if they have any reservations about a match. Details about how Match Protests are handled can be found in the drop-downs below.
We will be working to clarify these rules further in the future to eliminate the possibility of this situation happening again.
Systematic Abuse of the Bug | Significant Abuse of the Bug | Moderate Abuse of the Bug | Minor Abuse of the Bug | Accidental Use of the Bug |
|---|---|---|---|---|
9Pandas | Tundra Esports | Shopify Rebellion | Nigma Galaxy | |
NAVI Junior | Team Spirit | Wildcard | TALON | |
Aurora Gaming | Team Secret | Natus Vincere | Gaimin Gladiators | |
OneMove | M80 | |||
Virtus.Pro | ||||
Winter Bear | ||||
Passion UA | ||||
