Tundra Esports won The International over the weekend, the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year, which is no minor accomplishment.
While it is appropriate and expected to celebrate such an accomplishment, it appears that the crew may have partied a little too hard. The squad reports losing the Aegis of Champions, the International championship trophy, on Twitter.
It’s not impossible to think that this is some kind of elaborate joke based on the responses to the tweet. The majority of them are lighthearted, and several of them feature pictures of people clutching the Aegis of Champions. Daryl “iceiceice” Koh, a Dota 2 pro from Singapore, joined in on the fun by pretending to be selling the winning trophy to the highest bidder. But it’s clear that this is not an out-of-season April Fool’s joke because Tundra issued a call to action a few hours after the initial tweet.
Ironically, Tundra won TI 11 with a fairly convincing margin of victory. In addition to defeating Team Secret in the grand finals with no defeats, the team also advanced through the playoffs without dropping a single series. The winning streak with few blunders ended with a fairly significant real-life error because the trophy is now missing.
The Aegis of Champions’ current locations are still unknown. It’s tough to picture anything so big simply getting lost. To be fair, a different Dota 2 professional team, OG, has offered to let Tundra borrow one of theirs until it is located. To put things in perspective, OG won both TI 8 and TI 9, making them the first team to win two consecutive TI tournaments.
