Diggie to be banned until 2023 SEA Games

MANILA (UPDATE) -- Support character Diggie has been banned from competition, due to a vision hack, a day before the MPL Season 11 playoffs, Moonton Games, the developers behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, confirmed.

The ban will last for the entire playoffs, to be held from May 4 to 7 at the SMX Convention Center. Moonton later on announced that the ban will last until May 16, which lapses until the Southeast Asian Games, where Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a headline title.

"We have observed a visual bug related to Diggie's lock settings and Young Again's passive ability, allowing the user to see the opponent outside its vision range. With this, Diggie will be banned from the tournament until 16 May 2023," it said.

Diggie, a hero often used by playoff teams Blacklist International, Bren Esports, and RSG Slate Philippines, experienced a visual bug, based on observation from the game development team.

"We've observed a bug related to Diggie's lock settings and egg mechanic. With this, Diggie will be banned from tournament use for one week starting today. The teams have been informed ahead of the games. Let's look forward to the exciting playoffs season," Keith Medrano, Moonton Games regional public relations manager, told members of the media in an earlier statement.

During the MPL Season 11 regular season, Diggie has one of the highest hero bans (69) and win rates (58.82 percent), according to tournament data. It also has been picked 17 times over the course of the regular season, winning 10 of them.

Competitive bans on heroes would mean slight changes to player rotations, often affecting compositions.

Diggie is one of the signature heroes of MPL Season 10 most valuable player (MVP) Johnmar "OhMyV33nus" Villaluna and Bren Esports' roamer Rowgien "Owgwen" Unigo, who is part of the SEA Games pool for Mobile Legends.

Diggie is also part of Dylan "Light" Catipon's hero pool.