The annual Dota 2 tournament The International is among us, and while the competition is still in its early stages, one of the teams have already been sent home due to a critical mistake from their captain.
In the first match of the lower bracket, Swedish side Alliance were up against Chinese team Royal Never Give Up, but the former team had already sealed their fate before the game even began. During the hero selection phase preceding the actual match, Alliance team captain Aydin ‘iNSaNiA’ Sarkoh made a costly mistake by securing instead of banning the character Gyrocopter. For those unfamiliar, Dota 2 — like League of Legends and other MOBAs — are highly strategic games, and while in a casual match selecting the wrong hero may not be the end of the world, a mistake of that magnitude at a professional eSports level is basically a sure loss.
Sure enough, after roughly 50 minutes of an uphill battle against Royal Never Give Up, the Swedish side were defeated and eliminated from the tournament. With a grand prize pool of $33.7 million USD, iNSaNiA’s mistake was no doubt a hard pill to swallow for him and his team, but Alliance nonetheless walked away from the competition with $506,103 USD — not a bad consolation prize at all.
Elsewhere in gaming, Spawn, the Terminator and Joker are all joining Mortal Kombat 11‘s roster soon.