Anonymous Hacker Disrupts Livestreams of Dendi, Daxak, and Iceberg

An anonymous hacker has repeatedly interrupted Twitch livestreams of popular Eastern European Dota 2 players such as Danil "Dendi" Ishutin, Nikita "Daxak" Kuzmin, and Bogdan "Iceberg" Vasylenko. In the past few days, when Dendi and others were livestreaming, many of the players in their games were forcibly disconnected from their games. As a result, these ranked games become safe to leave and Matchmaking Rating (MMR) were not updated for these games.

As a result, the streamers had to turn of their games in order to play games without interruption

A hacker disrupts the games of prominent livestreamers such as Dendi

As all of his enemies disconnected during a game recently, Dendi said, “I guess somebody on my stream is having fun,” but this chain of events ended up being too overwhelming for him when he was playing Ancient Apparition in the midlane against a Queen of Pain when all nine other players suddenly disconnected and the game was not counted.

It showed that the network conditions weren't accurate, so there wasn't an adjustment for MMR. Since then, Dendi has not livestreamed.

Initially perceived to be a one-off disruption targeted at Dendi, this has, however, spread to other Eastern European Dota 2 personalities, including Daxak and Iceberg.

On 8th Sept, Daxak played three games, but the disconnecting issue took place soon after the laning stage, preventing his games from being counted.

“Fate itself is against my streamers. We are somewhat similar to Dendi - we have the same haters. It's fun, I've been practicing laning. I definitely can't stream Dota. Maybe I'll find something to stream besides Dota, although I've always streamed it. We'll see, but I don't think so,” Daxak said in a video note posted on his Telegram channel.

[transcriptions via cybersport.ru, translations via DeepL Translate]

The latest player to experience the issue, Iceberg, also expressed his frustration through a video note that four out of six games he played on the day saw people getting forcibly disconnected.

A Reddit thread has emerged highlighting Dendi's problems. As reported, Dendi contacted Valve to assist in resolving the issue

Dota 2 hacks are already rare and the extent to which this hacker has been able to kick players out of the game is simply bizarre. As of now, it is unclear why the hacker was able to disrupt the games like this and what Valve can do about it.