Esports is a sector with a great history made by the teams and players. However, this industry is also full of scandals. GBC Time has listed the top 5 stories that shocked the fan base.
Esports seems to be an entertaining and fun sector. Tournaments, leagues, and championships welcome players and teams from all over the world. But any professional industry may impact the controversy. Here are the top 5 esports scandals that turned the industry upside down.
Team Griffin’s Implosion (League of Legends)
Team Griffin was one of the most popular and promising Korean teams in LoL. From 2018 to 2019, Griffin impressed the fans with their professional approach and gaming. However, the T1 team was still in the first position in the leagues.
At the LCK Summer Split 2018, Griffin lost their chances to even participate in the World Championship, when the Gen.G team got the place in regional qualification.
The next year, Griffin lost one more time to the Gen.G team. But still, Griffin’s professionalism and gaming style impressed the LoL fan base.
Eventually, there were some rumors about the physical and verbal abuse from the team coach – cvMax. Just before one week from the championship, Griffin members decided to stop working with the coach. Later, the team approved the rumors and said that it was a big disappointment. But the coach himself insisted on the injustice of such a decision.
Find more about this story at the link.
iBuyPower’s Match-Fixing Esports Scandal (CS:GO)
Thinking about esports, big money comes to mind. However, it has not been always this profitable for professional players. Especially, at the very beginning of CS:GO path. The payers’ earnings were not that impressive.
The team iBuyPower with a roaster of Sam “DaZeD” Marine, Braxton “swag” Pierce, Keven “AZK” Larivière, Joshua “steel” Nissan, and Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham got into the biggest CS:GO scandal.
The Esports journalists provided an investigation and published the screenshots, which demonstrate Duc “cud” Pham and Derek “dboorN” Boorn involvement in the deal with iBuyPower of hosting the match.
Through the investigation, it was concluded that these players placed bets on the match-fixing results to win some money. The total winning sum was over $10 000.
On January 26, 2015, Valve announced the competitive ban of DaZeD, swag, AZK, steel, cud, and dboorN. Only Skadoodle avoided the ban because he did not place any bets on those matches. An ultimate video guide is at the link
Life’s Lifetime Ban (Starcraft 2)
How many prodigies in esports do you know? One of the greatest in history was a Korean player Lee “Life” Seung-Hyun. He impressed the Starcraft 2 fan base with his incredible professionalism at the age of 14. There were a lot of victories, achievements, and results. But such growth only hastened the fall.
I the age of 19, the player got into jail for match-fixing. The term of imprisonment was 18 months and the fine was 70 000 000 KRW. Additionally, he was also lifetime banned from playing and participating in tournaments worldwide.
Kuku’s Chongqing Major ban (Dota 2)
The esports community is against any discrimination like sexism, racists, any forms of phobia, etc. And the case of Carlo “Kuku” Palad – a Filipino Dota 2 player is an example of this rule.
He got banned in 2019, because of the racist statements in the public game. The player decided to express his negative emotions in the chat by writing a racist expression toward the Chinese player. The community reacted quickly and resented this behavior.
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