I knew it was only a matter of time before cheating crept into my beloved e-sports, but it still sucks knowing it's here. I think there should be stiffer penalties for collusion. Simply not getting circuit points or prize money doesn't really hurt the team that badly does it?
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To sum it up: - first game of their best of 5 final was an ARAM, won by Dignitas - other 4 games were all played normally, Curse winning 3-2 - nothing would have changed in terms of rankings for the qualifiers for the Season 2 Championship, which is apparently why both teams didn't really care about the final (especially after having played 4 and 5 games respectively, with the prospect of playing 5 more the same day) - the "collusion" charge seemingly has nothing to do with the ARAM, but with the fact that the two teams seem to have agreed to split the prize money - Riot apparently posted a message saying the teams had decided *which* team would win the match, nothing about the money-split (as said by MLG)
Curse apologized for the ARAM (through 2 videos), but not for anything else. No message on their site yet. Dignitas has so far not apologized for anything, there's just a message on their site saying they'll investigate after some of the accusations have been found to be true.
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If they did decide which team to win, I find the punishment pretty light.
If they just decided to split the money, I'm a bit on the fence. It's a common practice in some other mind sports (chess, poker), but if it was against the MLG rules, I think the punishment is appropriate. If they only interpreted the money-split as against the rules after the fact, I'm more interested to see which rules MLG decided they broke.
If the only problem was the ARAM, I think there should be no punishment. This is not the only instance in sports or e-sports where a team didn't take that seriously a match where the stakes were very low from their point of view. Neither team was ever going to play their best or newest strategies in a series that is clearly in the shadow of the upcoming qualifiers. They just took it one step further and played an ARAM for the first game.
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quote:Just to be crystal clear, MLG’s decision here has nothing to do with ARAM. Both Curse and Dignitas admitted to and apologized for colluding prior to the finals to throw the match.
quote:Drakylon - they decided who would win prior to the match - it's not about their strategy during the game or what they are doing with the money afterwards, it's about respect for the game, the sport, the other teams, and the fans.
quote:This is in clear violation of both the letter and spirit of MLG’s Official Pro Circuit Conduct Rules: “competitors may not intentionally Forfeit a Game or conspire to manipulate Rankings or Brackets.”
This looks to be more about a potential throw by one of the teams than about splitting prize money. Frankly, I'm a bit sceptical. It makes little sense that they'd do it, and the games they did play don't provide evidence for it. Of course someone from MLG might have intervened after game 1, or the teams might have changed their mind, but it sounds fishy nonetheless.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I knew it was only a matter of time before cheating crept into my beloved e-sports, but it still sucks knowing it's here.
It's been here for at least a decade. There were Sumo-level match fixes in korea for SC1 tourneys and other examples of stuff much bigger than this.
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posted
OH. also. It is worth noting that this is the most important issue here:
quote:they would just split the prize money since it did not change their position on Riot's Season 2 Championship Leaderboard.
Anyone who has studied tourney strata and systems and knows about the complications of lame ducking, pointless matches, and kingmaking knows that this is a very bad idea to have matches which are irrelevant to ranking.
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posted
The matches still counted for the first and second place in *this* tournament, but with the Season 2 qualifier coming up this week winning MLG was of very little importance. Also the rating only gives seeding in the qualifier tournament, and as has been said no matter what the result of that match the seeds wouldn't have changed.
(You probably knew all this but just went for the conclusion, in which case skip my post. )
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I knew it was only a matter of time before cheating crept into my beloved e-sports, but it still sucks knowing it's here.
It's been here for at least a decade. There were Sumo-level match fixes in korea for SC1 tourneys and other examples of stuff much bigger than this.
No! Not sumo too!
I'm sure that's probably true, but I didn't follow e-sports then, and tournaments seemed well officiated the last 3 years.
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posted
Sumo had the perfect set of circumstances to ensure endemic corruption. One was an able and intransigent culture of corruption (assisted by high cultural power distance and high degrees of 'untouchability' for certain elements), but the most important circumstance was the structure of the matches; it is formatted in a way which guarantees corruption and fixing.
quote:Wrestlers in the upper two divisions, who fight one match a day for a total of 15 matches, thus focus, first and foremost, on getting eight wins to guarantee their place among the elite for another tournament. Toward the end of the tournament, certain wrestlers with poor win-loss records start eyeing upcoming opponents who can afford to sell or trade a bout since they are already in the "safe" zone. Then the negotiations begin.
In addition, the sport is often injurious in serious matches, yet has scores of required provincial matches —
quote:...in which nothing is at stake and no one wants to get injured, the action looks choreographed. In the regular tournament bouts, by contrast, the fighting is clearly fiercer and wrestlers often get hurt, sometimes badly..
So you end up with a long series of useless matches in which the action looks choreographed and often is reliably fixed. Not necessarily out of greed or graft at all, but just because it is in the wrestlers' thoroughly rational self interest to have these useless matches come at no risk of injury for the bouts that matter.
in short, it is a sport built around an incentive structure that guarantees "corruption," — both in an actively corrupt sense, as well as in a rational maintenance sense, since they risk nothing for choreographed matches and risk everything for actually competing in the majority of bouts. So you will always have corruption — always — in the competition structure they have.
Which is why I say it's important to ensure that a tournament structure *not* ever have useless matches. In e-sports or anywhere, the result is predictable enough as to be assured.
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