The South American team Thunder Predator has been disqualified from The International 8 regional qualifiers due to a player using an illegal script.
Today, users on Reddit shared evidence of Peruvian player Juan “Atun” Ochoa using a script that allowed him to cast Meepo’s Poof ability without queuing each instance separately. This incident occurred during the third map of Thunder Predator’s series against SG e-sports yesterday.
FACEIT, the official organizer of the TI8 qualifiers outside of China, has decided to remove Thunder Predator from the tournament following the evidence. FACEIT administrator Cristian “Omicron” Duca announced the verdict on Twitter.
As a result, SG-esports will return to the winners final match, giving them an advantage in the tournament bracket. They will face PaiN Gaming in a best-of-three series. The winner will move on to the qualifier grand finals, while the loser will play Torus Gaming for the second grand final slot in the losers’ bracket.
Thunder Predator has released an official statement on their Facebook page regarding the matter. They claim that player Atun used a macro through Razer Synapse, a hardware configuration tool, to be more efficient with Meepo. They argue that this was not a violation of the official rules and not a hack. Thunder Predator disputes the disqualification by FACEIT.
At the time of writing, there have been no bans issued by FACEIT or Valve regarding Atun. However, given Valve’s stance on cheating and match fixing, it is likely that some form of punishment will be handed out.