Korb3n named the culprit who caused Valve to start mass banning Dota 2 pro-players

Valve initiated a wave of bans on smurf accounts of Dota 2 esports players due to provocative actions by streamer Rostislav "rostislav_999" Protasenya. Therefore, the CIS region was most affected, receiving the highest number of bans.

Dmitry "Korb3n" Belov, Team Spirit manager, revealed this during a Twitch broadcast.

"I'll say this. Bans are obviously because of Rostik. Pro players can thank him. Obviously, he didn't have any dealings with Valve. It's all fabrications or he got a standard response to his email. He didn't negotiate with anyone there. I'm more than sure of that. And in general, his behavior when he boldly smurfed, started it again, and got banned again. I'm sure that's why the wave of bans rolled through the CIS first"

He emphasized that players from the EEU region suffered the most, where bans were distributed massively, while other regions were affected only partially due to activity on Reddit.

"South America got involved only because it surfaced somewhere on Reddit. There, it only caught this guy - Stinger. Essentially, such a harsh wave of bans started because of that. So, let sleeping dogs lie while it's quiet"

Korb3n believes that if rostislav_999's behavior hadn't triggered the wave of bans, esports players could have continued playing on smurf accounts without issues. However, games at the 2000-3000 MMR rating and smurfing provoked a strong reaction from Dota 2 developers.

"Pro players can say thank you to him [rostislav_999] for this. He became precisely the element that triggered the chemical reaction. Rostik, in principle, doesn't need to smurf and play at two or three thousand, whatever he played"

Recall that Valve previously started blocking smurf accounts of pro players. The wave of bans even affected renowned players from tier-1 Dota 2 teams.