You know why other sports and e-sports give players some leniency to players for "minor" infractions? It's because Sports and e-Sports have stadiums to host audiences and television deals to draw more audiences. And when players are not playing those sports, viewership and attendance counts drop, which costs them millions in revenue and hurts future stadium leases and television deals in the long run. In other words, when a player commits a infraction against the league rules, major sports and e-Sports are forced to sacrifice their integrity for the sake of profiting their business in the long run.Noki wrote:
This isn't a random tournament. This is the World Cup. The best a country can bring vs the best a country can bring. What we are seeing (last year as well) is 1 - 3 of a country's best players are being banned from playing. Of course I understand the rules and such, but like any sport or e-sport for that matter, you don't see this kind of reinforcement anywhere. A player who hasn't violated any serious rules, such as hacking and so on, should have some sort of leniency. Why is there such a draconian policy on a minor violation? In sports, you don't see a foul result in them not being able to play in the finals of an event.
tl;dr, major sports and e-sports can give "leniency" to players with "minor infractions" because the consumers' code of dollar signs is more important than the players' code of conduct.
Look at osu! → We don't have stadiums to hosts big events, and the only place to view the world cup is a random online Twitch channel that doesn't have a subscribe button. We don't make money. Therefore, if a player breaks code of conduct, technically, the tournament staff has nothing to lose in punishing a player for violating the terms of service. From the osu! staff's point of view, the point of the World Cup is to showcase the game, not the players. That's what it all comes down to.