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Mad Kings releases their entire Dota 2 roster
The South American Dota 2 scene is already off to a dramatic start to the year, as Mad Kings disbands their Dota 2 roster.
The lineup had several notable players in the region like Steven "StingeR" Vargas, and David "Parker" Nicho Flores yet all that talent wasn't enough to keep the team together.
Mad Kings placed in the top six in two major tournament qualifiers: BetBoom Dacha Dubai and DreamLeague Season 22. The underwhelming tournament results, along with controversial smurfing issues forced the organization to release their players.
Mad Kings' received a default loss in DreamLeague Season 22
Image Source: Reddit
South America is one of the toughest regions in Dota 2. The teams in the region are closely matched, with Heroic, Boom Esports, and Thunder Awaken on top. The region isn't the most popular with viewers and tends to underperform at International events. This often leads to tournament organizers giving the region one slot only for qualifiers.
In short, if you're not first in South America, you might as well be last. Only the best of the best get to compete at Dota 2 lans, making the esport a risky and expensive game to invest in.
Mad Kings was off to a relatively unimpressive start to the year, as two top-six finishes don't provide the team with anything apart from exposure. And speaking of exposure, well that's another problem their lineup had.
In public matches, the team's carry admitted to playing on his friend's account. The officially stated reason for doing was, "I couldn't play on my account for reasons and I went to his account to start practicing" -Parker.
Some of the community saw it as a boosting practice between teammates, and it seems like Valve agreed, as they banned StingeR's account during an official tournament match, an unheard-of event.
Mad Kings intends to remain in the Dota 2 scene
The organization took to X to announce the departure of their lineup. During their official statement, the org shared that the ban wasn't due to boosting and they still intend to be a part of Dota 2.
"We want to inform you about everything that happened on January 16th. To give some context, we started a collab with estar_backs, supporting this roster with our gaming house during January, trying to get sponsors or orgs to invest in this project.
During our match against Thunder Awaken, Stinger's account was banned by Valve along with many others due to account sharing, and he couldn't finish the match. We want to point out, that the ban wasn't due to account boosting as said by Mini.
For now, we will stop participating in tournaments but we will keep bringing the content and coverage beloved by our community and followers."
It'll be interesting to see how the other teams in the region react to the release of the players. This move by the Kings could set off a chain reaction with multiple teams shuffling their players around.
READ MORE: Dota 2 Pro Players address smurfs in the game.
Featured Image Source: Valve
