Virtus.pro removed from The Summit 5 after admitting to allegations of using Ringers

VP admits to the case  of player ringing against team Ad Finem after Reddit’s cybersleuth’s pointed out discrepancies in gameplay and claims during their match in The Summit 5 EU Qualifiers.

On the trail of the case

Initially raised reddit user DDropped on Reddit last May 30, 2016, DDropped pointed out what was then supposed discrepancies regarding one of Virtus.pro’s players, ALOHADANCE, most specifically item arrangement, against team Ad Finem on the The Summit 5 Qualifiers. During the game, ALOHADANCE was said to encounter internet connectivity issues which forced to transfer to an Internet Cafe in order to play, ALOHADANCE took a significant amount of time to reconnect, which used up all of VP‘s and even some of Ad Finem‘s pause time, and forced the admins to continue the game 4v5 while ALOHADANCE is still trying to reconnect. One of the reasons being pointed out by VP is that ALOHADANCE, as he has transferred PCs in order to reconnect was asked for the steamguard code in order to login to his account on another PC.

At the same time though, Vega Squadron‘s Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko abandoned his stream stating that “VP has asked him to play”, the match in which No[o]ne was playing before he abandoned can be searched using the Match ID: 2398831814.

Screencap of the match details from Dotabuff, No[O]ne was playing the Sven under a smurf account.

Screencap of Juggernaut’s Item placement during game 2 of VP vs Ad Finem.

DDropped points out that ALOHADANCE normally places his Manta Style on the fifth inventory slot, as what was shown in his recent games using the Juggernaut.

ALOHADANCE’s item placement.

As a comparison, DDropped also posted screencaps of No[o]ne‘s Juggernaut games which surprisingly shows the same item arrangement as ALOHADANCE‘s Juggernaut during game 2 of Virtus.pro and Ad Finem on the The Summit 5.

No[o]ne’s item arrangement on his, Juggernaut shows his Manta and Phase boot placements on the first 2 inventory slots.

The confession

Earlier today, Virtus.pro themselves has decided to take a stance on the issue, and openly admitted that they have broken the rules of The Summit 5 and will also conduct an investigation on their own regarding the case.

In regards to this incident, Virtus.pro has been barred from further participating in the The Summit 5 due to the case of using a Ringer. In competitive games, a Ringer is an unofficial player that uses an official team member’s account to play for the said team, this is highly different from a Stand-in for Stand-ins use their own accounts when playing as a substitute during a match. There is no additional information as to the writing of this article if there are any other sanctions that will be implemented for the involved players and teams. Virtus.pro has been one of the longest running Electronic Sports association in Europe that gained notoriety back in the pro DotA scene by being back-to-back champions of the MYM Prime series during what was called the Vigoss era.