Dota 2 NA Summer Shuffle – It was all one big lie

It was a blatant case of identity theft by NA Summer Shuffle who falsified players, games and sponsors for their Dota 2 event. The tournament initially promoted itself as a tier-2 NA tournament with a generous 15,000 USD in prize pool and garnered attention in the tier-2 pro scene. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s too good to be true as the tournament turned out to be a fraud altogether.

Invitations to the NA Summer Shuffle

Several weeks ago, the NA Summer Shuffle announced that 12 teams from the Americas are invited to the tournament. In fact, most entries were legitimate, with several notable teams such as G-Pride and Team Unknown, who recently played in ESL One Birmingham 2020 – Americas Qualifiers.

Infinity Esports, an invited and “participating” team, wrote that they were invited to the tournament, but the games were postponed to July 1^st. However, it didn’t take long before fans notified the official team that “they” were playing in a tournament.

Instead of having the official teams play, fake accounts with identical in-game name tags were used to impersonate the participants. Yet, the identity theft and fraudulent practices were only the tip of the iceberg.

Why go through the trouble?

The NA Summer Shuffle seemed like a legitimate tournament initially, with the tournament itself being featured on Dota 2 client’s tournament section too. What’s worse is that several betting sites offered Dota 2 odds for these games. Just like its audience, these betting sites were also victims of NA Summer Shuffle’s fraud. As of June 1^st, Liquipedia contributor, Louis, contacted Valve and various betting sites such as GG.BET and Luckbox to alert them about the matter.

It seems like Louis went out of his way to dig deeper into the suspicious event. According to Louis’ chat logs, Glückspilz (the person managing the NA Summer Shuffle) stated that he’s not obliged to provide private docs about the tournament or any details on their alleged sponsor, Towa-digital. Louis then emailed Towa-digital directly to verify the situation and was immediately responded that it was a fraud that they are not a part of. With that, it was clear that the whole event was a shady mess, so Louis informed all participating teams about it. Of course, Liquipedia removed the tournament page and banned Glückspilz as well.

Hard hit for American Dota 2

Unfortunately, the fact that fake tournaments are organized in tier-2 scene highlighted the detrimental state of tier-2 Dota at NA and SA regions. According to another participant of the tournament, Doze Reborn tweeted that they haven’t played a single tournament in weeks. Just when these teams had their hopes high for the event, it turns out to be fake all along.

In the end, not only did teams lose out on tournament games but their brand image was also tattered due to the fraud. At the moment, third-party online leagues and regionals are great and all, for the most part, keeping Dota 2 fans entertained.

However, the bigger picture is to nurture a healthy scene in every region. Unfortunately, we will have to wait for Valve’s take on regional leagues for that. Fret not however. We got you covered for all trusted market in esports odds.

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