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Valve have hit Newbee's organization as well as all five players with a permanent ban for match-fixing.
Effective from January 1, 2021, Newbee can no longer participate in any Valve organized tournaments.
The ban further extends to all the five players of Newbee,
- Xu "Moogy" Han
- Yin "AQ" Rui
- Wen "Wizard" Lipeng
- Yan "Waixi" Chao
- Zeng "Faith" Hongda
The match in question is the second game from the SLI Minor Season 3 China Qualifier's upper bracket, between Newbee and Avengerls. What should have been a comfortable win for Newbee, turned into an utter disappointment for the entire community.
The match-fixing scenario was so clear for viewers that former EHOME and current PSG.LGD's coach, Zhang "xiao8" Ning commented that he will "eat sh*t" on live stream if that match wasn't fixed.
Here's everything to know about Newbee's match-fixing scandal and the permanent ban from all Valve events.
Newbee receives permanent ban from all Valve hosted events
Apart from Moogy and Faith, the other three players in the roster were fairly new. However, AQ, Wizard, and Waixi were all allowed to leave the organization in August 2020 after being banned from Starladder and BTS. Nevertheless, The TI7 runner-up Moogy and TI2 champion Faith stayed at Newbee and waited for a decision regarding their ban.
Despite all the other event organisers banning Newbee from any upcoming tournaments, Valve took their fair share of time to announce their final decision. The decision from Valve comes two weeks prior to the Dota Pro Circuit resuming on January 18th.
However, the ban from Valve suggests that this might be the end of the road for two of the most celebrated DOTA 2 players from the Chinese region. Moogy and Faith have been at the top of the Chinese DOTA scene ever since the release of the game.
Although Moogy hasn't been able to lift the Aegis of Champions yet, he did come extremely close in 2017 when Newbee faced Team Liquid in the grand final.
Faith, on the other hand, is one of the champion veterans from the region. Having secured a TI victory in 2012 with Invictus Gaming, Faith once again found himself on the cusp of greatness at TI7 with Newbee. However, like Moogy, Faith too succumbed to defeat at the hands of Team Liquid.
Nevertheless, Faith's permanent ban from DOTA 2 is the first time that a TI champion has been involved in a match-fixing scandal. Previous examples of match-fixing scandals in DOTA 2 includes the infamous 322 incident of Alexey "Solo" Berezin. In spite of receiving a permanent ban from Valve, Solo was eventually forgiven as the first ever match-fixer in professional DOTA 2.
With that said, it remains to be seen if Newbee or the players involved choose to step up and apologise for their actions. Valve has previously been known for providing players with a chance to redeem themselves and hopefully, this Newbee roster will be able to do the same.
