Amateur Dota 2 team, Team Cyberding, which was participating in the North America Closed Qualifier of ESL One Raleigh 2025 has been caught using a ringer in their match, leading to their disqualification.
This led to their opponents, Red Bulls, securing a victory via DQ. Here’s how things went down:
Team disqualified at ESL One Raleigh 2025 for using a ringer (Image credit: ESL)
Team Cyberding Caught Using Ringer At ESL One Raleigh 2025
It was only Day 2 of the NA Closed Qualifier at the ESL One Raleigh 2025. Team Cyberding was winning the first round against Red Bulls, when the all-chat discussion went down.
Red Bulls accused Team Cyberding for using ringers in their Dota 2 team. What raised Red Bulls’ suspicion? Well, Red Bulls’ players checked the ping of three of Team Cyberding’s players, which were suspiciously high at 200 ping. This is unusual because it is a regional qualifier, held in North America server, so the three players likely weren’t playing locally.
Match paused during Team cyberding vs Red Bulls (Image credit: ESL)
In response to Red Bulls’ accusations, Team Cyberding stated that they were playing the game in school network. Both the ESL game admins and team Red Bulls didn’t buy into the latter’s excuse, so ESL investigated the case after the match.
It didn’t take long before ESL confirmed and announced the verdict of their investigation, courtesy of Malibu, a Dota 2 caster at ESL One Raleigh 2025.
What’s a ringer?
For the uninitiated, a ringer is a term to describe a person that one hires because they have a higher likelihood of winning in the skill bracket of your amateur team. Essentially, like hiring Dota 2 account boosters, but in a more professional setting.
State of North American Dota 2
The NA Dota 2 scene hasn’t always had the best reputation to begin with. From having less dominant teams in major tournaments to a poor state of its amateur scene. It is such a crippling scene that many NA top players have already moved to other regions for a more successful career, such as Quinn Callahan in Gaimin Gladiators and Andreas “Cr1t–” Nielsen in Team Falcons.
Hence, the recent ringer incident is just another proof of the current state of NA Dota 2, where amateur teams are even relying on overseas ringer to stand-in for them illegally. There were speculations that the ringer player that Team Cyberding recruited was a banned Southeast Asian player, although their identity has not been confirmed at this time.