You can’t get banned for being bad at a game, but you can be banned for pretending to be bad. Spectators learned this when Let’s Play Live hosted the Rocket League Oceanic Championship in 2020, during which Team Esper and Team Fury faced off in a best-of-five series.
In the final match of the series, everyone watching noticed some shockingly poor plays coming from Team Esper, which allowed Team Fury to suddenly take back the match and claim victory in the series. The bizarre behavior from Team Esper prompted an investigation from Let’s Play Live and “Rocket League” developer Psyonix.
Three days later, a joint statement announced that the investigation, which looked at gameplay footage and team chat logs, had found that two of Team Esper’s three players had “deliberately compromised competitive integrity in order to lose Game 5 of their team’s series against Team Fury.” In other words, these pros had thrown the game.
Gameplay footage showed two Team Esper players, Aiden ‘delusioN’ Hendry and Finlay ‘Frenzyy’ Rockach, repeatedly missing easy saves, dribbling the ball towards their own net, and even sitting motionless in the middle of the match (per Forbes). Both were banned from competitive play for a year, forfeiting their winnings from the 2020 Championship. On top of that, both were barred from competing in the Rocket League Championship Season 9. Their third teammate was found to be innocent, but Team Esper ultimately dropped all three players anyway.
