Yesterday, I reported on the DOTA 2 match that took place on Sunday between South Africa and Mexico. Our local boys won (actually they thrashed the Mexicans), and all was ducky. But then this morning, Lazygamer reported on what they saw as irregularities surrounding the match that called the Mind Sports of South Africa (MSSA) federation’s actions into question.

Specifically, it was the composition of the Mexican team that Lazygamer was concerned over. Two of the players, Ranpkr and Horusx, hail from San Jose in Costa Rica according to their Steam profiles, and as anyone with access to Google Maps knows, Costa Rica isn’t Mexico. Furthermore, the five gamers representing Mexico were clearly not of the calibre expected from a national team, a supposition backed up by their utter drubbing at the hands of our DOTA 2 Protea Team.

While the physical location of all five players could not be confirmed, nor whether or not the two players located in Costa Rica were Mexican citizens who just lived in Costa Rica (or some such similar justification), the fact remains that something smelled a little fishy.

Because of this, Lazygamer went on to hypothesize that the MSSA had either defrauded the South African e-sports community by misrepresenting the five foreign gamers as Mexican National Team members, or they, the MSSA, were not genuinely in contact with “real international federations”.

So I fired off an email to Colin Webster, the President of MSSA, asking him for comment on Lazygamer’s article. This is the response I received:

Dear Deon

A silly sensationalist article.

The MSSA asked the Mexican body to provide a team. The Mexican Federation provided a team. The two teams played. South Africa won!

There is no more to it than that!

Best regards

Colin

And there you have it – both sides of the story. What actually happened, and for what reasons, are just about impossible to nail down for certain, but both parties have something to gain from their version being accepted as gospel – Lazygamer gets the attention, and the MSSA gets to claim a legitimate (and impressive) victory for a struggling DOTA 2 Protea squad, who had previously been on the receiving end of lessons learned when encountering other national sides, like the Romanians who whipped them 2-0 back in August.

What do you think?

[Update]

The folks over at Lazygamer have published an update on the ongoing DOTA 2 debacle. They’ve provided all kinds of juicy new details, including the less-than-organised state of most – if not all – eSports organisations and Mexican DOTA players flooding their inboxes with protests over the makeup of the “official” Mexican National Team. That last bit seems to hint at less-than-stellar work on the part of the MSSA to ensure the quality of the Mexican team before this past Sunday’s test match.

Not content to just share the story, the people over at Lazygamer have committed to making the whole snafu right by arranging an unsanctioned online friendly between Mexico’s most well-known DOTA 2 teams (Team Quetzal, SUMA) and two of our local teams, Energy eSports and another, as-yet-unnamed team at some point in the future to truly determine who has the DOTA 2 magic.

Now that’s what I call going above and beyond the call of duty. Respect.