Robbed Dota 2 Players Say Game’s Community Saved Their Lives

Two Dota 2 players who were robbed at gunpoint in the middle of live-streaming a match of the popular competitive online multiplayer have come forward to offer their accounts of what happened.

The players, who go by the handles SUNSfan and Sajedene online, were at home in in Tempe, Arizona early Monday morning when their apartment was broken into by two armed robbers. The break-in was documented in real time since Sajedene was streaming a game of Dota 2 on Twitch when she first heard a knock at her door.

The entire portion of the live-stream that shows the robbery was captured in this chilling video:

The two have both posted on their respective Facebook pages to clarify what exactly happened during the robbery. Here is Sajedene’s statement, reprinted in full, emphasis mine:

Thank you for the kind outpouring of love and support for SUNSfan and me right now. It means the world that we (and both cats) are ok. It was a very scary situation to be in – especially knowing we were not the originally intended target, and how much worse it could have been if it were not for our friends from around the world who acted quickly to get the police involved. A big thank you especially to Ace, Neil, Spawn, CyborgMatt, and anyone else I may have regretfully missed who acted quickly – especially since our own neighbours DID NOT call anyone. We owe you our love and gratitude and life.

To get to the gist of it, I was streaming when we heard a loud noise in the other room and thought it was the cats. SUNSfan went to go check it out and I hear another noise and him yelling. Two men kicked our door in and pointed their guns at us looking for the drugs and guns of some other man who was their original intended target but they got us instead. We only had the latter and offered them everything else we had. They had us face down on the floor and took our belongings (bank cards, phones, jewelry, laptop, etc). They were going to take us to the bank and keep me hostage while SUNSfan took out money and from there god only knows. That was when the cops showed up (again thanks to you). The police have someone in custody, and have all the numbers to track and trace any other accomplices (with my rifle serial numbers probably being the strongest apart from the video feed you took – and not getting into any debates, were all legally purchased in CALIFORNIA not Arizona and honestly I don’t even know how long they would have stuck around or if they would keep us alive if they didn’t find anything worth taking and knowing we had some money in the bank and wanted to wait for the bank to open).

Sometimes, the risk of having such a public, out there life creates various speculations and theories and opinions, too much and sometimes too painful to address individually, but on the bright side, I don’t know where I would be if I wasn’t doing what I was doing to have you come to our aid when the people who lived much closer were not able to do the same. I can not thank you all enough.

At this time, we’re still in shock and can’t really go through each individual messages just yet, but we’ll get to them eventually and I promise to read and respond to as much as I can, if not all of it (as I usually try to do). All that matters is that we are ok.

Her statement and SUNSfans differ slightly from an early report from a local news channel that said the gamers watching the stream on Twitch couldn’t locate the two despite being the first people to realise the robbery was happening. Both Sajedene and SUNSfan emphasised that their neighbours were not the ones who originally contacted the police. Rather, it was the online Dota 2 community that “literally saved our lives today,” as SUNSfan put it.