Smogon Snake Draft III - Administrative Decisions

[MajorBowman]

Let's kick off the administrative decisions with a mild one for a change. Earlier today Garay oak logged out of Smogtours after his game vs. Finchinator had already started. This caused for Garay to be replaced in the battle by a guest account and we ultimately needed to enlist Zarel's services to put Garay back in charge of his team. Garay logged out of Smogtours to try and reset his avatar choice, because he had forgotten to select his team's custom avatar.

As of this post, the above issue should not happen again thanks to Zarel. If you want to change your avatar choice after the battle has already started, then please refresh the tab instead of logging out.

 

[MajorBowman]

September tier shifts have been announced. These will not go into effect for SSD III until Week 7.

 

[Hogg]

RE: Valentine

The TD team has been provided with logs of Valentine requesting ghosting for one of his Smogon Snake Draft games during SSD3. This incident had previously been reported to us after Snake’s conclusion. However, while the TD team always reserves the right to disqualify someone from a tournament for attempting to cheat or otherwise undermine its integrity (such as with the recent lax decision in SPL XI), this type of activity falls into a gray area within our current rules.

The rise of multiple cases where we have proof of someone attempting to arrange cheating but not direct proof of the cheating itself has led us to revise our rules on the matter. These situations are difficult because our current standards typically require a demonstrated incident of cheating for us to act, but that means someone is free to approach people and offer or request ghosting, team leaks, etc., confident that they will not be banned if the attempt is rejected. (And of course, if the offer or request is not rejected, the other party has a vested interest in NOT reporting the attempt.)

While we always have the ability to disqualify someone from a tour for such activity, this does not help us if we only receive evidence after a tournament’s conclusion (as happened with this case), and many feel that even then such a penalty is a mere slap on the wrist considering the offense. Therefore, we are revising our rules to better respond to these kinds of incidents.

From this point on, demonstrated proof of active attempts to undermine a tournament through cheating, including but not limited to offering, requesting or attempting to arrange ghosting; seeking or offering team leaks; and similar activity, will be met with a tournament ban (duration determined based on severity) even in the absence of proof that the attempted cheating occurred.

These rules will be enforced moving forward. Regarding Valentine, after much discussion, the TD team has determined that it would not be appropriate to apply such rules retroactively. However, if we had received this evidence before the conclusion of Smogon Snake Draft, Valentine would have been disqualified from the tournament and removed from his team, making him ineligible to receive a trophy. Therefore, we will be stripping Valentine’s trophy. Valentine will also receive a 2 point unsportsmanlike conduct infraction, and will not be permitted to participate in SSD4.