OfficialRules
General rules and expectations for all DSE leagues, tournaments, invitationals, and ladders.
General Rules
Requirements for all DSE event participants
Note: Tournament/League specific rules supersede general rules.
Read and follow the Code of Conduct
All participants are expected to read and abide by our community-wide Code of Conduct. It covers our mission, behavioral standards, and reporting process.
Point of Contact (PoC)
The PoC is a CORE roster member serving as the liaison between their team, Death Slam administrators, and other teams.
Responsibilities:
- Schedule matches
- Coordinate with opposing PoCs on match times
- Facilitate roster changes and address roster issues
- Report match results
- Communicate scheduling conflicts and match issues
Important: PoC is not necessarily the team captain—it's an administrative role. PoCs can be changed anytime if personal schedules no longer permit these responsibilities.
Roster Requirements
- Core Members: Six default players expected to play all matches (four for Street Brawl).
- Substitutes: Minimum 1 required before playoffs (2 strongly encouraged).
- Subs can replace Core members for scheduling conflicts, emergencies, or no-shows.
- Teams without subs risk forfeiting matches if unable to field 6 players.
Ringer Rules
A ringer is someone not officially on your roster. Not all leagues or tournaments allow for ringers.
When allowed:
- If unable to field 6 official members (Core + Subs), teams may propose a ringer.
- Provide both the missing player's and proposed ringer's STATLOCKER to opposing PoC.
- Opposing team may: accept, deny and reschedule, or force forfeit if rescheduling fails.
Scrimming & Practice
Scrims (scrimmages) are practice matches—highly recommended for team development.
Recommended methods for scheduling scrims:
- Propose in the scrim channel:
#na-looking-for-scrim - Use the Scrim Bot feature with built-in availability matching to coordinate with other teams.
- Direct one-to-one contact with other teams.
Broadcasts
Players are expressly prohibited from viewing broadcasts of their games during an ongoing match. This rule takes effect from the moment the lobby begins to load into the game, includes any pauses in the midst of gameplay, and extends until the game officially ends and the end-of-game score screen is displayed.
Broadcasts, as defined for our purposes, include live video streams (including but not limited to Twitch, YouTube Live, etc.), DotaTV feeds, stream chat rooms (including but not limited to Twitch chat), and text-based live report threads (such as those on Liquiddota.com).
While the Administration recognizes that players may not have the intention of cheating when viewing streams, there is no way for an administrator to determine definitively what a player's intentions were. Therefore, any player found in violation of this rule will be punished, and the severity of the punishment will be at the Administration's discretion.
Players are allowed to stream their own matches if they wish. However, we strongly encourage setting at least a one-minute delay on any personal streams to minimize the risk of stream sniping.
If you choose to stream publicly, you accept full responsibility for any competitive risks involved. The tournament organizers will not intervene or penalize players for using publicly available streams to their advantage. In short, if you stream without a delay, you do so at your own risk.
Additional Rules & Support
Each event such as our Leagues, Invitationals, Ladders, and Tournaments will have additional rules associated with them. These will be shared on the DSE Discord Server in the relevant announcement channels.
If there are questions for rules, process, or requiring assistance reach out to the Tournament Organizer via a ticket in the DSE Discord Server.
Looking for community-wide standards and behavior expectations? View the Code of Conduct
Questions? Reach out on Discord