Natus Vincere, one of the legendary names in Dota 2, appears to be working with a prominent MMR booster in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region as a featured streamer.
The streamer, who goes by the handle of Ybicanoooobov—previously known as ThisIsFedor—has long been known as one of the most notorious boosters on Twitch. He grew to prominence last year during the 6.84 patch, which saw the return of Tinker (his main) as a top pick in the game.The discovery of Ybicanoooobov potentially working with Na`Vi comes just one week after several prominent members of the Russian-speaking Dota community aired their grievances about the ongoing MMR boosting situation in the game. MMR boosting essentially means that a highly ranked player plays on a lower ranked patron’s account in exchange for money.
Ybicanoooobov himself advertises a site that lets its users rank up to 6,500 MMR at the most. The average public MMR in Dota 2 is estimated to be around 3,000, however as many players choose to keep their profiles private the true average is probably lower—due to most players being casual the average MMR number is thought to be around 2,000 to 2,500. But assuming that the everyday Dota player is around 3,000 MMR, having the account ranked up to 6,500 would cost a staggering $3,465 through the service.
The most ardent opponent to boosting is RuHub caster Vitalii “v1lat” Volochai, who started the aforementioned discussion with a series of tweets on Apr. 25, where he revealed that he was working on a way to combat boosters.
“I understand it’s difficult to ban every single one of them on Steam, but there’s a way of going about it that’s basically almost already implemented that would work with Twitch’s and Hitbox’s help,” one of his Tweets reads, as translated by Reddit user SoupKitchenHero.
The Ukranian continued by saying that both the booster and the person paying for the boost should be punished. “Ideally this would mean that people who pay for a boost get a full ban placed on their Steam account after the boost itself. The next day. And I know how to do it.”
V1lat’s concluding tweet also mentions that he is already well on his way to combat the boosting services and even called out streamer gaben007, another prolific streamer who offers boosts.
“I’ve been working on this for over two weeks already. And not just me, either 🙂 So you boys, gaben007 and the rest of you, don’t have much time left.”
It should be noted that Ybicanoooobov may not affiliated with Na`Vi as an employee and is instead using their overlay for marketing purposes. But given the fact that he’s included on the organization’s team page on Twitch, this is unlikely.
A request for comment from Na`Vi was not returned by publication time.
