Team Esper, playing in the Oceanic league LPL that ties into the RLCS, have allegedly thrown their final game to team Fury. This gave Fury the playoff spot over Renegades, who fell just shy in fifth place. Psyonix has already stated that an investigation has started, while Team Esper posted a message that they have dropped the team. The final game itself can still be found on Twitch.
Team Esper under investigation
Team Esper came up against Fury in the final match of the season in the Oceanic league. Here, they lost their own playoff spot after losing game four, and game five would mean one of two things. Win, and Renegades would take fourth place. Lose, and Fury takes it.
But from the first second, it was evident something fishy was going on with a completely botched kickoff by Team Esper. Even the casters took note of it. As the game went on, Team Esper made more and more noticeable “mistakes”.
The community quickly caught on as well, calling for investigations and bans, and Psyonix complied. In a statement on the Rocket League Esports subreddit, Psyonix confirmed their investigation. They also said the following:
“We take the integrity of matches extremely seriously, and any sort of intentional match throwing will not stand in our leagues. […] That being said, we are working on fully understanding the situation and are checking over game logs, getting information from players, and reviewing the gameplay. Once we have a full understanding of what happened, we will communicate our decision.”
Dropped by the organization
Whether it was already planned for the end of the season or not, Team Esper quickly released a tweet stating that their Rocket League roster had been let go. They released it so quickly, in fact, that they failed to catch an obvious misspelling of ‘farewell’ in there.
A huge thanks to our Rocket League players for their hard work this season.
Our time with them has drawn to a close, and we wish them all the best in the future.
Hope to return shortly! pic.twitter.com/7zPIlrZrY1
— Team Esper (@TeamEsper) April 5, 2020
This is a developing story, and what might happen to the league standings remains unclear. Some pros are calling for a ban for the Team Esper players while Fury and Renegades play a tiebreaker to determine the fourth-place finisher. This would have originally led into the RLCS World Championships before the event was canceled.
Psyonix has a difficult decision ahead of them, so stay tuned for Daily Esports for any updates on the situation.
Published: Apr 5, 2020 11:38 am