A couple of days ago, a certain player from the Thunder Predator team that’s playing for TI8 was disqualified. The player named Juan “Atuun” Ochoa was guilty of using macros during their match against SG e-sports, caused the whole team of Thunder Predator to be disqualified from competing for TI8. Though they denied at first stating that it was due to the capability of the Razer Synapse on the mouse, enabling them certain commands to a button, it never crossed their mind that such macro usage is against the rules.

To explain what macro is in computer lingo, it is a set of commands or instructions which is binded onto a key and all can be executed easily by pressing that one single key.

Sourced from LevoPhobia:

This is especially useful when you are playing a complicated character such as Meepo, which Atuun was caught using macros during a match. If you don’t know, the hero Meepo spawns multiple of it’s clones (up to 4 with Aghanim’s Scepter), and they all have the same abilities. One particular ability called “Poof” where the selected Meepos will teleport onto another Meepo or itself. Once activated, it will deal damage in a small AoE upon departure and arrival locations. With four Meepos Poof-ing at the same time, it can deal up to 1440 damage (before reductions). Not to mention the amount of DPS done when all 5 Meepos (including main Meepo) to auto-attack the enemy once it has done it’s Poof combo.

Thanks to a certain Reddit user named trking92 (Reddit)/LevoPhobia (YouTube) who found something amiss during the match. Other Reddit users like caiovigg and Menegucci, who also shared the same thought went further to investigate through logs. They came up with more proofs in the official match logs and videos to show the perfect-timed Poofs of all the Meepos, which is inhumanely possible to replicate unless you are using macros. With a push of a button, it can be executed perfectly which was exactly what Atuun did during their match against SG e-sports in a best-of-three series.

Thunder Predators, initially declared winners of the series, was disqualified after the Reddit post sparked a further review by the organization running the qualifiers. They have confirmed that Ochoa did go against the event’s rules and has disqualified Thunder Predators from qualifying the Regional Qualifiers.

Of course, some might not be happy about the verdict but it was found out later that Meepo was not the only hero that had macro ready to be used. Apparently, macros were also used for the item Armlet of Mordiggian, where it grants a total of 450 health, 63 health regeneration, 9 armor, 25 attack speed and 40 (65 to strength heroes) attack damage when toggled on. Of course, you lose the 450 health advantage when it is turned off, which gives players an advantage to disjoint certain DoT (damage over time) that will kill them. It was seen used on the hero Huskar during the match with Pain Gaming. This made it apparent that it is not an accident, but a conscious act or decision to use it.

Though this is not the first time the team has been caught of fraud in official major matches such as these (previously caught match-fixing), it is unknown what will the future of the team be since they’ve become infamous for such acts.

Source: Wanuxi