The G-1 League Western Qualifiers are said to have been suffering from DDOS attacks! The first round for the Western qualifiers has been a series of pauses, reconnections and remakes among lag complaints from the players to say the least. For a long time, as I was working on other things, I left the stream on and it sounded like a radio show. I commend the casters for keeping up with this and still trying to entertain the viewers even through the long pauses and technical difficulties. Yes, I feel bad about it. Yes, I am worried. I assume other people are, too. For those who have just learned about this, let’s take a look at the recent events for the G-1 League.
This year’s G-1 League was supposed to be one of the best and most anticipated tournaments as we head towards The International 2013. Not only is it the tournament with the largest prize pool outside of The International, but it would also have a LAN finals in China featuring six of the world’s top teams, two of which coming from the Western scene. What’s more is that the Western teams will fly to China with free airfare and accommodation. Chinese teams against Western teams? Some may disagree, but that’s like a TI teaser or a mini-TI for me! I mean, how often do we see the top Chinese teams against the Western teams, right?
As most of you may already know, the qualifiers for the Asian and the Western divisions were held separately. Just recently, Invictus Gaming, Orange NeoES, LGD.Cn and DK have made it past the qualifiers and on to the LAN finals in China. If you watched the group stages and the play-offs then you’d agree that the matches were surprising and very, very impressive as expected from the Asian teams. After the conclusion of these awesome matches, it’s time to determine the teams for the Western division. Fan boys and fan girls rejoice! This is going to be awesome, right? Right?
Well, I thought so, too. I was really excited for the match between Evil Geniuses and Absolute Legends Main. Aside from being the first match of the Western qualifiers, it’s also the return match for EG after a long while of struggling. Everything seemed fine at first until Maelk and Bdiz from EG started lagging and disconnecting. After forever a long pause and several reload attempts, the game was put to a halt until G-1 was able to decide on something. That time, a remake or postponement was not part of the option, as this was deemed “unfair to aLâ€. The next day, it ended up with EG receiving a default loss because they were already behind when the lagging and disconnecting issues happened.
At this point, Maelk posted this on Twitter:
There were still a lot who were skeptical about it being a DDOS attack. Perhaps it was a server issue? Or an internet connection issue on the side of the players? Well, it didn’t end there. During the match between Virtus Pro and Mousesports, NS and Airman also reported to have been experiencing lag issues and VP even had to resort to using stand-ins in Game 2, which was won by Mouz who eventually took the series by also winning Game 3.
The next day was no different. Players bOne7 and pieliedie from Kaipi were suffering from lag and disconnections during their match against Team Empire. In the end, though, the victor of the third match for the Western qualifiers was eventually Kaipi. The last match for Round 1 was also not spared. Fogged and Sneyking from Dignitas were suffering from lag during their match against the QPAD Red Pandas. Unlike the previous matches, however, this match was postponed until before the 17th.
Was someone DDOS-ing the participants of the G-1 League?
Apparently, there has not been enough proof that these indeed were DDOS attacks. However, all of the four matches for this tournament had the same issues. This was enough grounds to suspect that something is wrong. According to an article in GosuGamers.net, G-1 has been discussing the matter and are going to consult network professionals to help them come up with a decision. Tomorrow’s matches will also proceed.
There have been various speculations as to who or what could be causing the DDOS’ing and why. Once again, let me share one of Maelk’s Tweets about this matter:
I’d like to take this chance to tell you that there isn’t a particular reason behind me posting screenshots of Maelk’s posts. I just follow him on Twitter and pay attention to what he says because come on, people, it’s Maelk. Am I a fan of Maelk? Well, I have a soft spot for DOTA legends and old school players so, yes, I am a fan of Maelk. And with that, I would like to say that my fangirly self didn’t quite like it when people were thinking EG was causing the hassle on purpose. Anyway, back to the DDOS attacks, we do not have enough proof if this all has something to do with item betting or betting in general. Here’s what DOTA 2 Lounge has to say about this:
And it eventually led to this:
What comes next?
As of now, no one knows for sure who or what is causing the DDOS attacks except the attacker. That is if this is indeed a DDOS attack. We still have to wait for G-1’s announcement regarding the matter. Also, it turns out that something can be done to be protected from DDOS. Russian commentator V1lat recently shared a link on his Twitter to inform about protection against DDOS attacks. This indeed seems to be good measure since as the saying goes, “prevention is better than cureâ€.
I may be wishing for too much and this may be too late, but I hope for them to also remake the game between EG and aL. More than that, however, I want this problem to get resolved regardless if it’s a DDOS attack or not. I counted down the days until the G-1 League. I’d feel bad if it turns out someone DDOS’ed this whole tournament just for rares or something. As a fan and supporter of the scene, I’d like for whoever would qualify for the LAN finals in China — be it one of my favorite teams (Na’Vi or Mouz) or not — to get there without any further hassle, issue or doubt. I really hope this issue won’t affect the G-1 League in the future and that they will still consider and continue to hold tournaments for both East and West.
