How do you solve the problem of gambling errors in virtual sports?

Interest in esports has reached a tipping point and viewership will grow by fifty percent to one billion viewers in 2019 alone. It has already overtaken baseball and Formula 1 and the largest tournaments are on an equal footing with many traditional sports world championships. Cybersport is popular with young people and therefore has enormous growth potential. At the same time as the interest in competition is growing, so is eSport betting on the Internet.

The proliferation of esports betting has revealed the sport's greatest problem, namely match fixing, even at a high level. What is the situation like at the end of 2021?

Why are eSports players playing the wrong games?

Conspiracy games can ruin people's interest in cyber sports, and viewers are known to turn away from tournaments when they learn that players are using third-party software (scam) or illegal tricks to play. Betting shops can void bets and remove the tournament from their accounts for this reason, but that doesn't prevent obscure players from occurring. You are not even afraid of being rejected for a long time.

Why do players use match contracts? Tournament prices go up and players who drop in the early stages get crumbs from the table, sometimes the money they get is not enough to repay their participation in the tournament. Winning a thousand dollars is not for cyber gamers, and their greed for profit is stronger. Raising prize money is not a panacea as large teams and even champions participate in mediations.

Fraud and Other Prohibited Tricks

Dishonest players often use special programs (CHITS) to gain an edge in the game. special schemes are used to prevent their use in large tournaments with prize pools. The most notorious scam happened in 2018 when Thunder Predator was knocked out of the race after using a custom mouse that enabled one-click keystrokes. In lower level tournaments the situation is more out of control, especially in Dota 2 and CS: GO.

Dozens of games are jeopardized every year, and not even the specially trained officials who oversee the course of the game help. They are often involved in violations. Cheats are unbeatable, auto aiming when shooting, increasing speed, slowing down an enemy, and being able to look through walls have become popular.

The scandals that got the most attention

The first high-profile scandal came in 2013 when a Dota 2 player was found guilty of a rigged game that paid a symbolic sum of $ 322. Traditionally manipulated eSports matches are now referred to as "322", although the amount of potential winnings has increased significantly.

One of the most prominent scandals has to do with the name of Sun Hyun, the South Korean world champion in StarCraft 2. The player was fined and banned.

There was a strange contract game incident in a 2017 match between Evil Corporation and Sweet Boys in Dota 2. Both sides bet on the first 10 kills and when the situation was 9-9 they presented the show to the public and used aimless attacks for a long time. The teams were abandoned and the prize money was taken away.

In 2020, Cyber Legacy lost to the Giants in CS: GO, users noticed a multitude of reports of a rigged game, and betting odds changed significantly. After the investigation, the teams were disqualified, the CS: GO tournament was temporarily suspended on the BC lines and the teams were massively cleaned up.

When reputation comes first

Representatives from online sports organizations investigate all violations and are working to establish a unified program to detect gambling crime, and a code of conduct has been published. Not all players are mentally prepared to view online competitions as a traditional sport, but there is some movement in that direction. Major tournaments are reviewing their attitudes towards the rules and introducing new measures to combat match-fixing. Agreed matches damage the reputation of the competition and rejections increase.

Much of the solution depends on the players' own behavior. The growing popularity of cyber sports as a sport and the attraction to the public carry the risk that athletes will lose advertising contracts by being rejected, forcing them to reconsider the consequences of participating in fake games. The professionalism of the athletes has increased especially in Asian countries.