In another incident that brings disgrace to the esports ecosystem in India, three esports teams were not only disqualified but also banned by Nodwin Gaming for cheating in the Philips OneBlade Battleground Mobile India Cup 2024. Similar incidents have occurred in official mobile esports tournaments recently.
CS Esports, Falcon Esports, and RK Esports were banned for using third-party software in their initial five matches. Interestingly, they were among the top four teams in the overall standings after Day 1.
In an announcement, Nodwin Gaming stated, “After reviewing evidence from the tournament, we have confirmed that the following teams used unauthorized and unethical methods to compete. This constitutes a serious violation of our rules.”
“The following teams are disqualified from the tournament and banned from all Nodwin Gaming tournaments for one year, effective immediately. We are committed to fair play and will not tolerate cheating.”
The winner of the OneBlade Cup BGMI 2024, Future X have qualified to play in Krafton’s prestigious Battleground Masters Series 2024 and have also secured sponsorship from Philips for BGMS 2024. The tournament will be broadcast live on Star Sports for the third consecutive year.
The tournament continues its partnership with TVS Raider as the Official Mobility Partner, and Philips OneBlade, Philips India’s male grooming product, as the Official Styling Partner.
In May 2024, Krafton announced during the Battleground India Series that they had banned over 10 esports teams such as Carbon7, Atletico Marathas, Valhalla Esports, Edge Mavericks, TeamBR06, Team No Scope, Peaky Blinders, and Detonation Gaming for cheating.
Meanwhile, Krafton’s global game title PUBG, in its weekly ban report from July 1 to July 7, reported that the Battlegrounds Anti-cheat team banned a total of 65,714 user accounts, out of which 51,604 were for cheating, and also banned 77,432 hardware devices.