A Dota 2 Pro Circuit China team, Azure Ray, recently criticized IO Esports and Epulze, the organisers of the Bali Major tournament in Indonesia, where they competed last week. They believed the organisers were attempting to avoid responsibility for the issues that occurred during the tournament.
In a recent post on Weibo, the Azure Ray team released an official statement saying that the watcher bug, which allegedly occurred during the match against Nouns in the Bali Major group stage, was often exploited by professional teams in that competition. They also clarified that the coaching team and team captain had warned players not to take advantage of the bug.
However, at the time, the organizers decided to penalize based on the reports of infractions they received from Nouns, who pointed fingers at the two Azure Ray players, Yang “Chalice” Shenyi and Jiang “天命” An, as the suspects in game 2. Azure Ray’s second victory was nulled, and the game finished 1-1.
Azure Ray’s management responded by suggesting that the players’ settings be checked and that they play a casual game to see if any weird behavior occurred. However, the organisers refused to conduct these checks and also failed to investigate if other teams had utilized the same issue. After a lengthy discussion, the organisers reversed their decision and announced it as a misunderstanding.
The controversy continued when Azure Ray faced the BetBoom squad, who were eliminated in the lower bracket round 2 when Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko was accused of stream sniping during a match against Tundra Esports. At the time, Azure Rays reportedly threatened to leave the match if Pure were allowed to continue playing. Azure Ray later clarified the situation, stating that they merely wanted the organisers to impose strict penalties on their opponents at the time and prevent such occurrences like what they experienced in the group stage, but they never threatened to walk out.
According to detailed translations provided by the Chinese Dota 2 community, Azure Ray is now accusing the organisers of covering up their ineptitude in conducting the competition by exaggerating the issue. They criticized them for being too slow in dealing with critical issues and accused the majority of competition supervisors of being amateurs who were spotted slacking off throughout the bouts, which was said to be the reason for the several technical pauses in the Bali Major.
