Pro Dota 2 Player Ninjaboogie ‘Fired Over Mother’s Death’ by Team SMG  

Dota 2
May 20, 2022
Jordan Ashley

Ninjaboogie is a big part of competitive Dota 2 for various rosters for nearly ten years. Most recently, he’s settled with Team SMG over in Southeast Asia. That was up until this week though, when ninjaboogie was fired from his team pretty unceremoniously.

After learning some more details from the player himself, it looks like ninjaboogie was fired over an unsavory reason (mother’s death), with the team making an assumption that boogie’s situation would negatively affect the team.

Ninjaboogie SMG kick

Ninjaboogie Fired Over Mother’s Death

The official announcement from Team SMG was fairly professional. They thanked ninjaboogie, and made pretty much no hints towards what was actually the reason for the release from SMG. Most people probably assumed it was down to his performance. While ninjaboogie is an experienced player, he’s yet to really do anything too impressive at the team. However, now we’ve got further clarified about why he was fired. It seems it had very little to do with his actual performance.

Things started when ninjaboogie addressed Team SMG themselves. He replied to their formal announcement that he was leaving. ninjaboogie asked them to “tell them the real reason for the kick”. This is fairly ominous, and it got worse from there.

Ninjaboogie later posted giving details on his personal situation. His mother was ‘on her last days’. She’s been facing Stage 4 cancer and more health problems from that as time has progressed. Her health has gotten worse, until ninjaboogie’s mother finally passed away.

 

Team SMG seemed to greet this with an amazing lack of sympathy. They kicked ninjaboogie from the team as they thought this would affect his performance. Instead they simply removed him from their team to get around the problem. That’s one way to get around players having a family and outside life.

The Reaction

Ninjaboogie has shared his side of the story pretty explicitly on Twitter. The reaction has been pretty sympathetic. Other Dota 2 pros have expressed their sympathy with him for the way he’s been treated. Putting it in terms of being fired because a loved one died has definitely evoked a response from the community. There is also those that state this was just last straw, and he was on his way out regardless of what happend this past two weeks.

Fret not, Ninjaboogie has switched around teams quite a bit in the Dota 2 professional scene. He’s competed at plenty of Majors and The International. He joined SMG first in January 2021, and left three months after. However, he later came back and returned to the team in February 2022. While. few expected this kind of treatment for any player, Ninjaboogie will land on his feet again.

We wish him the best.