Unfortunately for one team, Peru’s Thunder Predator, it seems that their hopes at winning the $15 million prize pool this year has been dashed. According to a report from Motherboard, Valve has disqualified the team after it had been discovered that one of the team’s players was using an “illegal” off-the-shelf gaming mouse during a qualifying match.
What happened was that those who watched the match discovered that one of the players, Atun, seemed to be moving his character and its clones at an impossible speed, leading them to cry foul and accuse Atun of using “cheats” in the form of macros. Thunder Predator has denied these accusations and claimed that this was done using a mouse (a Razer Synapse mouse). However according to FACEIT, the organization that helps run these tournaments, they claim that using a programmable mouse is the equivalent to running software scripts.
In the case of Thunder Gaming in SA Qualifiers, this is the decision that was taken:
A) Disqualify Thunder Gaming for using unfair advantage
B) SG vs Pain in the Winner’s Finals
C) Loser plays Torus in the Loser’s Finals
D) Winner of that Plays winner of A in the Grand Finals— Cristian Duca (@FACEIT_Omicron) June 22, 2018
Unsurprisingly Thunder Predator disagrees with that ruling and responded by saying, “We denounce this accusation, stating that at no time, our player ‘Atún’ use any type of hack or particular program that facilitated his game mode before the match, yesterday, with the team of SG.”