TL;DR
Integrity Preservation Report
On May 7th, a report came in through the MD2L Integrity Preservation form regarding potential MMR manipulation by Chease. That report included the following concerns:
1. Chease intentionally lost his recalibration games. He played in 5 stack where they played five man roam whole game(no laning at all) since minute zero to lose games fast. Chease lost about 600 mmr from recalibration.
2. This hasn't even been the first time where he intentionally lost mmr. In his Winter Wyvern and Terrorblade games he would play on two accounts the same time to lose games intentionally (one account he is playing terrorblade and other one he is playing Winter Wyvern in the same game). He has been doing that on and off since start 2021 dotabuff.
This was the evidence provided by the report:
recall games he intentionally lost: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/965637926006444032/971976495520157776/unknown.png
An example of what was happening in the intentional losing of recall games: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/970441739850633257/972623273680601129/unknown.png
https://www.dotabuff.com/players/60921336/matches?hero=winter-wyvern https://www.dotabuff.com/players/60921336/matches?hero=terrorblade
This was the requested action:
adjust chease up to 4k mmr(before he started intentionally losing) and deny the Sicknasty team from playing md2l.
Admin Response
On May 25th, the report was brought up in admin chat with the following statement::
Additional evidence was provided through a chart generated by TinT’s MMR Chart script as well as highlighting the overall downward trend in Chease’s MMR from season to season:
Due to the provided evidence, the admin team felt that Chease was purposely misleading us, leading us to assume that this was intentionally done to fit within the MMR cap.
In response to this evidence, another admin brought up a potential suspension instead of an adjustment due to the malicious intent involved as MMR is used to maintain some degree of parity in the league. At this point, those discussing had not been made aware of Chease’s transparency, and the suspension seemed like the more lenient option compared to a full ban.
Minimal evidence was presented in defense of Chease, mostly that “he said that he played with his bad irl friends and they drug him down” which did not line up with the evidence presented against him. Prior to the vote, one admin did bring up that the issue only coming up after signups was a failure on the admins part and that they were in favor of a manual adjustment instead of an outright suspension. A 2 season suspension for intentional MMR manipulation was approved with a 6-1 vote, with voting closing at 2:15 Central and the suspension being officially announced at 2:43.
What Went Wrong And Why The Punishment Was Changed
At 2:41, screenshots of Steam messages between Matty and Chease were posted in admin chat:
Matty claimed to have not read the second part of the messages where Chease disclosed that he threw 5 placement matches. Matty mentioned that if he had a copy of the messages or remembered the conversation during the initial discussion, that it would have further supported his proposal of adjusting Chease.
Prior to all of this, on 5/4/2022, Chease had submitted a ticket (#51) asking if his MMR would be adjusted. Sleepy handled that ticket. In that ticket, Chease did not disclose that he had intentionally lost calibration games. However, Sleepy did review his Dotabuff and told him, “You will not be adjusted”.The calibration games were outside of the parameters we use to check for sandbagging.
In light of the new evidence, the decision to suspend Chease for 2 seasons was revisited with a growing argument in favor of a manual adjustment to account for the intentionally thrown games as well as the long-term decline in MMR. This second discussion featured two main aspects: length of decline and severity of adjustment. The following was provided to show long-term decline in MMR, intentional or otherwise:
2020 season 7 Legacy team 4200 MMR - knocked out first round in league. Was playing pos4 as off role. Dropped 200 MMR by end of league
2020 season 8 Chazz team 4000 MMR
2021 season 9 Took the season off because real life got busy dropped 500 MMR
2021 season 10 Webby team 2980 MMR -
2022 season 11 no team 2500 MMR before recal
Based on the overall decline in MMR and blatantly throwing recalibration games, Chease was adjusted should he choose to play this season.
What Will Be Changed To Prevent This From Happening Again
Moving forward, the admin team will give any player accused of violating any rules a full and fair opportunity to respond to any evidence and defend themselves via a ticket so that a log is maintained. As a team, we are also currently reviewing organizational changes that would enable decisions such as this and other controversial topics to be handled better.
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