Upamanyu Acharya
322 happened. Then DDZ happened. Then iBuyPower happened (in a different game), but this might be the first ever time where two teams just bet against themselves on the same match. Sweet Boys allegedly tried to throw an official ‘Dota 2 Ice Tournament’ match, but their opponents Evil Corporation figure out the incoming throw, and counter throw to deny them the spoils from (alleged) matchfixing.
Note: nothing in this article is confirmed from an official source, and therefore at this stage it’s all just smoke, mirrors and speculation.
What Happened In-Game
The score is 9-9 in Game 2 of Sweet Boys vs Evil Corporation. Dazzle from Sweet Boys TP’s to the bottom lane alone against an enemy Bloodseeker and Disruptor. That’s an easy kill for the two Evil Corporation players. Instead, Bloodseeker ignores Dazzle and TP’s out, and Disruptor runs away and ignores him.
As the Dazzle situation unfolds, the mid-lane is chaos. Sweet Boys’ Troll and Venge walk towards the tower to kill themselves and give them the First 10 Kills, but Evil Corp’s Rubick lifts Troll and throws him away from the tower to stop taking damage.
Meanwhile Magnus has been at 100 HP in the top lane farming creeps for the last few minutes and dies to creeps by drawing aggro. As soon as Sweet Boys get their 10 kills, the enemy Bloodseeker gets an ultra kill, literally within a few seconds. Then they all disconnect, claiming “lags” while the game is paused. The game ends soon thereafter. Evil Corporation win the match but more importantly, Sweet Boys get the First 10 Kills.
What the Situation Probably Looked Like
To Evil Corporation players, after the score reached 9-9, it seemed obvious by the movements of Bloodseeker, Disruptor, Troll and Venge that they wanted anything but a kill at that point. First 10 kills is a pretty popular, if risky betting style in Dota 2 matches, where you can bet on individual matches, a series, or handicapped series as well. Evil Corporation probably figured out what was going on and therefore Magnus purposely died to creeps to get Sweet Boys the first 10 kills – basically counter throwing for the game.
The Suspicious $40,000 Bet
User eriiiiiiiiiiii made some huge bets on this particular Sweet Boys First 10 Kills match, betting on Sweet Boys to win. This person placed huge bets on Evil Corporation in every single category, which skewed the odds to extreme levels. In all cases they bet on Evil Corporation winning, except one crucial bet – a large bet of 3334.53 VP currency that Sweet Boys would win the First Ten Kills in Game 2. Here’s the page on VPGame where you can check it out directly.
With odds of 14.17, this user made 47,250.29 in VP currency from this one game.
The VPGame currency keeps fluctuating, but you could say that the value of the currency made is at the very least, $40,000 USD.
So far, there’s nothing to indicate that eriiiiiiiiiiii is related to Evil Corporation or either of the teams. But it’s definitely slightly fishy that out of all the bets to win, it was this one in particular – the reverse 322.
Things About Sweet Boys vs Evil Corporation that Really Make You Think 🤔
- MaTa, one of the players of Evil Corporation allegedly confirmed this series of events in the Russian stream of EPGtv. This confirms that they knew of the Sweet Boys First 10 Kills plan and ensured they wouldn’t get it.
- Also of note, the administrator of this Dota 2 Ice Tournament, WhitePipo, is actually one of the players in Sweet Boys.
- There’s no evidence except the betting odds that lead people to believe that Sweet Boys were part of a matchfixing gambit. However, the fact that Evil Corporation so adamantly opposed it and got their kill in as the 10th (the Magnus dying to creeps), as well as the fact that the suspicious odds on bets led to over $200,000 USD in winnings, could mean the matchfixing went the other way. It could be none, both, or one of them.
The person who noticed all this was Elements Pro Gaming manager Ivan “Just” Belov, who drew the community’s attention to this particular Dota 2 matchfixing.
You can watch the whole game (in Russian) here.
