PGL Wallachia Season 4: Aurora forfeit upper bracket semifinals due to a Doom bug

PGL Wallachia Season 4 upper bracket semifinals came to a dramatic ending after a critical bug plagued Aurora Gaming in the decider game of the series.

Aurora Gaming and PARIVISION were 1-1 in the upper bracket semifinals, with the former taking game one and the latter evening it out in game two. For the deciding game, Aurora thought they had an ace in their sleeve with a carry Doom, but it turned out they were not aware of an existing bug for this hero.

Doom carry is an exotic choice, even for pubs, where the players are more likely to experiment, which could explain why nobody knew of the bug before Aurora discovered it in what was one of their most important matches at PGL Wallachia Season 4.

Devil’s Bargain bug

In theory, Doom’s facet Devil’s Bargain allows the hero to sell his items for 90% of their value, but also increases the buyback cost by 20%. However, at the 52 minute mark, when Aurora’s Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko wanted to buy back to defend the base along with his team, he couldn't do so, although he had the gold for it.

Nightfall died with a net worth of 37046 gold, which means that his buyback would have been 3658 gold. The cost was also displayed on his HUD, but at the same time, when clicking the buyback button, the cost was 4391 gold, which he did not have. He was sitting on 4221 gold at that time. This means that the Devil's Bargain had been applied twice, increasing his buyback by 40% instead of 20%.

The game went into a nearly one-hour pause while PGL and the two teams tried to come up with a solution. At the moment the bug was discovered, Aurora was 37k net worth behind and had to defend their top-lane barracks.

After much deliberation, PGL decided that the game should be resumed, but PARIVISION would not attack Aurora and would not push the high ground for 95 seconds, allowing Doom to respawn. However, it turned out that Aurora did not agree with PGL’s decision and once the pause was lifted, all players left the lobby, forfeiting the game and thus losing the series.

In the post series panel segment, Robson "TeaGuvnor" Merritt confirmed the bug had existed for weeks, citing BetBoom’s Matvey "MieRo" Vasyunin in a match versus Tidebound during the group stage. However, in that case, MierRo had just enough gold to buy back, masking the issue.

Unfortunately for Aurora, the tournament went from bad to worse, getting eliminated immediately after dropping to the lower bracket.