One of Peru’s most popular professional Dota 2 players told the story of how he fell from grace in a matchfixing scandal on Reddit yesterday.
Bryan Freddy “SmAsH” Machaca Siña posted an “open letter” to Valve and the game’s community in anticipation of the two year anniversary of his permanent ban from all Valve-sanctioned tournaments.
In the post, he recounted the struggles he went through when starting his career as a professional player, as well as the economic, logistical, and competitive difficulties of being a pro in Peru.
SmAsH is one of the most individually talented Dota 2 players that Peru, and the South American scene, has ever produced. He currently holds the second spot on the American ranked matchmaking leaderboard, just below Evil Geniuses’ Artour “Arteezy” Babaev.
He was once a very promising player with a seemingly bright future ahead of him, but that all came crashing down after he and his teammates on Elite Wolves were implicated in a matchfixing scandal last year.
Since then, all three players have been banned indefinitely from participating in any and all Valve events, just like iBUYPOWER’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad in 2014, as well as several other Dota 2 players, including Jacko Soriano and Kok Yi “ddz” Liong.
“At first, gaming in Peru was not easy whatsoever,” SmAsH said in the post. “In 2013, there were no organizations that supported players that wanted to be professionals; only cyber cafes/LAN centers and small teams formed by friends. Nobody wanted to invest in esports in Peru, and many players had to live off their own savings.”
SmAsH and his teammates apparently suffered through poor living conditions, as well as exploitation by local esports organizations. In particular, he says that they were scammed by the owner of Not Today, a Peruvian team that he used to play for.
“Many teams back then lived in deplorable conditions,” he said. “There were even days where my teammates and I had no food to eat and no place to sleep. Before we left [Not Today], however, the owner asked that we return all the money that he had invested in us.
“I was very naive as I could only think about one thing, and that was playing Dota 2. I was unaware of how a proper gaming organization functioned—how our earnings were handled, how they dealt with sponsors, etc. It was due to this that I was scammed many times.”
After leaving Not Today, SmAsH and his teammates sought to join a different team—one that promised better financial stability. This was when they joined Elite Wolves, and SmAsH claims that his salary at the time was a mere $90 a month.
Incidentally, this was when he and his teammates decided to take matters into their own hands by fixing their match against fellow Peruvian team Infamous in the ProDota Cup. SmAsH says that the conditions he was living in practically “forced” him into making the decision, and that their situation was far from the dream scenario that the community thought they were in.
“Sadly, with that amount of money we could not cover the basics; most days we ate cold cereal or whatever we could muster. Most people thought that we made tons of cash, but they are now starting to realize that this is simply not true and we did not live the lavish life that everyone said we did.
“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.”
Though sympathetic to his story, the Dota 2 community as a whole still seems to be leaning towards keeping his ban permanent. The offense is simply too serious. And former MVP Phoenix and Rave rosters managed to survive in similar living conditions without having to resort to fraudulent play.
That’s something that MVP Hot6ix player and current coach of Team Secret highlighted in a tweet yesterday.
History has shown that Valve does not lift permanent bans on professional players, with the one exception being Virtus Pro’s Alexei “Solo” Berezin. Solo’s ban was lifted one year after the infamous “322″ scandal, as there had not been any written rules on what he had done back then.
After that incident, however, Valve has been cracking down on any matchfixing in its esports titles, levying indefinite bans even on first offenders, and it hasn’t lifted a single one since. Whether SmAsH will be the next on the list of those pardoned by Valve has yet to be determined, though chances are the Dota 2 publisher will simply brush his open letter aside.
