eSports Tackles Game-Fixing
How to engage with the world's fastest growing sports audience
The growth and infusion of money going into eSports brings with it the inevitability of shady behavior.In January, Valve banned seven pro players from participation in any official CS: GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) when it was suspected that they fixed a match in the North American pro gaming league CEVO.A Valve blog post addressed the scandal: "Professional players, their managers, and teams’ organization staff, should under no circumstances gamble on CS:GO matches, associate with high volume CS:GO gamblers, or deliver information to others that might influence their CS:GO bets."And just recently, Korean investigators arrested 12 people who fixed a number of StarCraft 2 matches that took place earlier this year, finding that a couple of the men involved are actually connected to organized crime.ESL (Electronic Sports League), other eSports organizations and betting companies like Unikrn are attempting to combat match-fixing by tracking all in-game data and betting data and using software to detect any irregularities that might suggest illegal activity is happening, according to research firm Newzoo, but there will need to be a concerted effort to keep eSports clean.
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