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    One of the most common questions in Dota 2 right now is a tough one to answer. Is it true that Alliance cheated during a Dota Pro Circuit match?

    Alliance recently posted a vlog that included footage from the team's DreamLeague Season 15 match against Brame. Although this isn't uncommon for Alliance, interim coach Peter "ppd" Dager's phone calls to the squad raised some eyebrows on Reddit.

    ppd could be heard saying "our throne is in danger" during the game, which the Alliance team appears to respond to by rotating. Alliance was defeated by Brame in the series with 2-1 score.

    The spirit of Dota 2's rules was definitely broken by Alliance and ppd, but the letter of the rules may not have been broken.

    Outside of the draft phase, coaches in professional Dota 2 have historically been prohibited from communicating with their teams.Though this hasn't been a major problem in Dota 2, Valve has consistently attempted to reduce the influence of coaching in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and will likely be uncomfortable with coaches calling shots in official Dota 2 matches.

    OG captain Johan “N0tail” Sundstein said that he spoke with Valve about the matter and was blunt about how he felt about Alliance's actions.



    However, there may not be any explicit rules prohibiting teams from doing so. ESL and DreamHack changed the rules for their Dota Pro Circuit leagues following the ONE Esports Singapore Major, according to Dota 2 analyst Ben "Noxville" Steenhuisen, by dropping any guidelines about coaches being able to speak with players in-game and alerting teams ahead of the start of DreamLeague Season 15 and the ESL One CIS League's second cycle.

    Although this may seem unprecedented, several parties have stated that policing communications in the current competitive environment is virtually impossible. There is no way to prohibit third parties from interacting with teams in-game unless all teams have a referee present locally and the referee has full access to the players' PCs during the match. Rather than attempting to fix something that can't be fixed, ESL and DreamHack may have simply made these kinds of interactions possible.

    The discovery of ppd's communications was made by watching Alliance's own social media content, indicating that the company didn't believe its actions were out of line. It's also possible that other teams have done the same thing without announcing it as publicly as Alliance did. The question now is whether Valve will make a comment about it, and whether ESL and DreamHack will change the rules. Stay tuned for further updates on this matter!