While it should be evident from the title, this will NOT be a fun blog post from the Taiko Team.
Among the fanfare for the Taiko no Tatsujin Donder! World Championships 2021 Gaiden online tournament, there has been vocal suspicion in the comments of the interim rankings that a certain high-ranking player has been using a proxy to participate (asking and sometimes paying for other people to play for you to get higher scores).
With it being in direct violation of the tournament rules, the Taiko Team has been independently investigating the accusations. The Team has also been requesting a response from the offending player but no feedback came back. In view of all the findings, the Taiko Team has decided to disqualify the offending player to maintain fairness with measures such as:
- Withholding the prize for the offending player
- Cancelling the relevant tournament scores from the offending player's profile in Donder Hiroba
- Move up the rankings of the participants below the offending player (the new rankings will be shown in the Donder Hiroba later)
- The special-prize titles (including 765th, 876th, 2021st and the randomly-drawn Lucky Prize) will be granted both based on rankings both before and after the move
It should bear a reminder that this online tournament is an unfortunate compromise against the prevalent global crisis, temporarily in place when the real-life Donder! World Championships 2021 tournament is postponed to no end in sight. The online format makes it hard to guarantee that players are participating in person, but the Taiko Team is motivated to at least give something to Donders to satiate the competitive flames in their hearts. We suggest you also read the original post for more of Kimizu and Etou's heartfelt feelings about the situation.
Despite all this, the Team is also asking the greater Donder community to not step down and engage in slander or abuse of the offending player.
