South American team Thunder Predator have been officially disqualified from The International 8 regional qualifiers following an incident where one of their players used an illegal script to assist in gameplay.
Earlier today, users on Reddit posted evidence of Peruvian player Juan “Atun” Ochoa using a script, which allowed him to cast Meepo’s Poof ability without having to queue each instance up separately. The game in question was the third map of Thunder Predator’s series against SG e-sports, which took place yesterday.
FACEIT, the official organizer of the TI8 qualifiers outside of China, has decided to completely remove Thunder Predator from the tournament in light of the evidence. FACEIT administrator Cristian “Omicron” Duca announced the verdict earlier today through his Twitter account.
The ruling will place SG-esports back in the winners final match, which restores their “extra life” in the tournament bracket. They’ll face PaiN Gaming, who were defeated in the first round by Thunder Predator, in a best-of-three series. The victor will move on to the qualifier grand finals. The loser of SG vs. PaiN will fall to the losers bracket, and will play Torus Gaming for the second grand final slot.
Related: South American player accused of using illegal macro in TI8 qualifiers
Thunder Predator have issued an official statement regarding the matter via a post on their Facebook page. Apparently, Atun opted to set up a macro via Razer Synapse, the hardware configuration tool developed by Razer for their mice. Thunder Predator claim that this wasn’t in violation of the official rules, and that it was not a “hack” of any sort. They have also renounced the disqualification by FACEIT, saying that the macro was simply something that Atun uses in order to be “more efficient” with Meepo.
Although Thunder Predator have been disqualified, neither FACEIT nor Valve have issued any bans on Atun at the time of writing. Knowing Valve’s strict stance on things like match fixing and cheating, though, we can expect them to hand out some sort of punitive punishment.
