Boys. We've done it. Recharge Gaming League has reached a new low. The second seed Invite HL team Run It Back has been DQed from playoffs for matchfixing our steel match vs froggieland. The situation: several weeks before the match, me (rib's pyro) and Poseidon (rib's sniper) informed our team that we cannot play the match. In my case, I was on Spring Break and couldn't take my entire setup home in my roommate's car, and Poseidon spent the entire weekend at a friend's wedding. The week of the match, gG; (our engi) contracted Dengue fever (he lives in Brazil) and was essentially bedridden the entire week. Then the night of the match, Maeko overslept. The entire team has logs of calling him: it was a stupid mistake on his part, but nothing malicious of course. Leading up to the match, we offered [correction: we only actually offered one ringer, my b] dt (won HL on demo last season) as a ringer and he was denied by froggie so we settled and rang a close friend of the team, kjr. In the match, froggieland rolled rib pretty hard, it was a fair win by them as we had 4 ringers/subs and steel is the most teamplay based map in the hl pool.
At about 10 PM EST on Wednesday, March 13, we were informed that RIB is being disqualified from invite playoffs for MATCH FIXING THE GAME. What evidence was this based on? If it's a ringer issue, 3 of our players communicated way in advance that they could not play. If it's a gameplay issue, how can you expect our ringers and subs to coordinate in only one weekend? Also, we had already banned steel because it's worst map. Additionally, rib has been shit at steel for multiple seasons anyways. It is clear to rib, as well as members on others on other playoffs invite teams that there was no RATIONAL BASIS for this decision. For context, this is basically 3 months worth of map reviews, demo reviews, scrims and grinding all for nothing based on decision of "the admins", who clearly have no idea what's actually going on.
There have been quite a few shitshows in 6s and hl in the course of RGL's history, but this is egregious even by their standards. What a travesty. How can you call this a competitive league if rgl admins are literally erasing other teams from playoffs?