[TrackMania] Sanction against TM player Massa after ESWC qualifier

patrick3027 · September 23, 2015

Quite surprising to see such controversy in the small and quiet TrackMania community. It's the first time I hear of a player being banned during a tournament. This guy named Massa (team Dignitas) played under a fake nickname to diminue the chances of players of other teams to win a slot for the ESWC.

Here's the full statement:

On Sunday, September 20th the first online qualifiers for the ESWC 2015 PGW Trackmania tournament was organized by Drakonia. 20 players attended it and at the end of the day the players Florian "oNio" Roschu and Krompolc "kappa" Martin qualified for the ESWC 2015 Trackmania final by finishing first and second.

However, during this qualifier one player was identified and caught for participating under a fake nickname. The admins of Drakonia had suspicions on a participant playing under the name of "Peti". Thus, they did an IP check of the player giving them a location near the living area of German player Dennis "Massa" Lotze. So the admins of Drakonia contacted Dennis Lotze to verify with the IP check. After several questions by Drakonia admins he confessed that he was currently playing in the tournament under a false nickname to help friends despite being already selected for ESWC final in Paris.

This behavior leads us to take sanctions against Dennis Lotze as he violated several rules of qualifiers for the ESWC 2015 PGW tournament:

Misleading on his identity

Misleading or dupe tournament admin

Try to manipulate results

Consequently the ESWC Regulations Committee has decided to ban for a period of one year German player Dennis "Massa" Lotze from all ESWC tournaments. His slot for ESWC 2015 PGW on Trackmania will be given during a match between the two other players not qualified from the final match of the first online qualifiers: Belgium player Scrapie and Spanish player JaviFlyer. They will be contacted by the admins of Drakonia in the upcoming days to play it.

Trying to manipulate results or using false identity are behaviors that ESWC doesn't tolerate at all for none of its disciplines and online qualifiers. Each of these cases and suspicions will be studied carefully and sanctioned severely to continue to ensure the integrity of ESWC tournaments and its participants.

Sylvain Maillard Tournament Director ESWC

Is this common on other games? I'm curious because TM is the only game where I'm somewhat invested in the community and it's the first time I hear of a player being banned.

Senzelian · September 23, 2015

That's surprising.

Everytime I hear about TM I want to play RPG in TM ... <_<

LogicalDrm · September 24, 2015

Its not that common for tournaments. But on public many pros have fun by playing with another account and trashing people with lower skill level. That being said, I think there have been many issues with similar actions in LoL community.