The competitive Dota 2 landscape was shaken to its core once again with recent match-fixing confessions of Arslan “Xannii” Shadzhanov. Following the former prodigy’s statements, a former teammate of Xannii, Jamshid “jAM3S” Abdurashitov, also came forward to reflect upon the ripple effects of Xannii’s statements.
In an interview with Escorenews on Aug. 25, Xannii talked about how he gave into the temptations of match-fixing due to struggling with money throughout his professional career. The part that came as a surprise was the fact that Xannii gave up on himself right after signing with a reputable organization, Team Empire, which may have lost the credibility its name holds, according to jAM3S.
Related: 322, reloaded: Former Dota 2 prodigy comes clean, reveals darker side of pro play
JAM3S reflected upon his and Xannii’s Empire days together, claiming the roster initially felt promising, and they were building up their synergy slowly. Despite all the positives, however, “everything went to hell” at some point.
In xannii’s statements, the player went over the two matches that he agreed to fix, but jAM3S claimed the situation had a larger impact than just two or three matches. After one of Empire’s encounters with HYDRA, Xannii’s teammates started to combine the pieces together, understanding “who was a friend, who was an enemy, who was the devil, and who was a brother.”
Following this incident, Empire parted ways with the roster consisting of jAM3S and xannii, while ceasing its Dota 2 operations for the foreseeable future after a secondary attempt at returning to the lower division of EEU DPC.
