Moscow 5, the troubled Esports team still reeling from the recent arrest and incarceration of their leader, Dimitry Simalyanets, has pulled out of the Dota 2 Gosuleague after their request for an enforced forfeit was denied by the league. All their following matches will be automatically forfeit, leaving their opponents with an automatic 2-0 victory.
Their first match of the league, against NEXT.kz, was forfeited when they failed to show up to the game and didn’t give any reason why this might be the case. The Gosuleague has a policy where any team that fails to appear within 15 minutes of the scheduled start time without giving a valid reason automatically defaults, which is the reasoning here.
Moscow 5 disagreed, refusing to play their second game until the original forfeit was revoked, and when Gosuleague told them that this would not be the case, their manager announced that the team was withdrawing from the league altogether.
While correlation doesn’t mean causation, the fact that there has been so much interior drama within Moscow 5 over the past couple of weeks can’t be helping the team’s morale, despite assurances that the arrest wouldn’t affect their play.
We’ll keep this post updated if any reason arises as to their original failure to appear for the game.