Betting scandal hits Korean StarCraft

By Oli Welsh Published 14 April, 2010

Pro gamers accused of throwing matches.

The world's biggest e-sports scene - competitive StarCraft in South Korea - has been rocked by a betting scandal.

It's alleged that several top players, along with coaching staff, have been rigging the results of matches in collaboration with illegal gambling sites.

A post on the forums of long-standing StarCraft clan Team Liquid has brought the story to attention in the West, linking through to many articles in Korean. It's summarised by Kotaku and GamePron.

The players and coaches under suspicion have not been officially named, although GamePron cites a post pointing the finger at a number of leading players including former BlizzCon champion sAviOr, a.k.a. Ja Mae Yoon.

Leading teams have been accused of intentionally losing matches and leaking information to gambling syndicates. It's said the operation began in 2006 and hit its peak in 2008. sAviOr had a notable run of bad form in the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

Retired pro gamers are said to have made the initial contact between the gambling organisations and the teams. Match commentators and reporters are also said to be involved, while team coaches are alleged to have accepted money for changing their team's line-ups.

Teams are currently taking measures to clean up the scandal, forcing the offending coaches and players to leave, or even retire from the sport.

Competitive StarCraft is big business in South Korea, with games televised and players achieving fame, sponsorship and sizeable prize money. Playing Blizzard's strategy game at the top level requires both tactical nous and physical fitness, with extremely fast reflexes needed to micro-manage units and input up to five actions every second.

The scandal comes on the eve of the release of StarCraft II - due by the end of June this year - as Blizzard gambles on migrating what's almost a national sport over to a new game after ten years of domination. One way or another, it seems there'll be a changing of the guard in the Korean StarCraft leagues soon.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eury #1 2 years ago

    Rumor goes around that Savior gained over $2 million by throwing games in the last couple of years.

  • nuanimal #2 2 years ago

    There are StarCraft coaches?

  • cianchristopher #3 2 years ago

    "Coaching Staff"????

    All I can picture is the grizzled face of Burgess Meredith....

  • LazyNinjaUk #4 2 years ago

    It requires physical fitness to sit on your arse and use a keyboard? If that's the case, why isn't half the western world (including myself) reaping the benfits of this exercise regiment?

  • Vordred #5 2 years ago

    how the hell can you have coaches for Gaming???

  • thisisatempaccount #6 2 years ago

    [link url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=fgO86LH_fco
    ]http://youtube.com/watch?v=fgO86LH_fco
    [/link]

    Not brilliant telly, it has to be said, but certainly a cultural eye-opener.

  • frunk #7 2 years ago

    Nuts... just totally nuts!

  • ignatiusjreilly #8 2 years ago

    Match fixing, corrupt officials, coaches taking bribes - seems like Starcraft is finally on its way to becoming a real, professional sport.

  • geeza2020 #9 2 years ago

    And i thought football was a corrupt sport....

  • AliRay #10 2 years ago

    Koreans are officially loopy!

  • Sonic_D #11 2 years ago

    Can't say I'm too surprised. Still nuts tho.

  • Rack #12 2 years ago

    Somehow I found this immensely entertaining. I'd love to be able to send this story back to April 1st 1990 as a vsion of gaming in the future. They'd never believe it in, well about 20 years.

  • rprince #13 2 years ago

    "on the eve" means the night before. It's not the night before June...

  • drxym #14 2 years ago

    I don't know what's sadder, that people play computer games as a sport, or that people take it seriously enough to actually bet on it.

  • hiddenranbir #15 2 years ago

    Typical Koreans.

  • CaptainTrips #16 2 years ago

    I can completely appreciate that playing SC at a competitive level requires decent physical condition - these guys input around 400 actions per minute, while at the same time needing to have split second reactions to whatever strategy their opponent is using. South Korean pros train in "Boot Camps" for 12-16 hours a day, and are treated like rock stars in their home country.

    It's really a shame to see this kind of shit polluting our own competitive scene. That being said, I am glad it is happening before the inevitable worldwide competitive gaming boom which I feel is only a few years away.

  • butler` #17 2 years ago

    pretty sure that boom you're predicting will remain a pipedream for a little while yet.

    GameSpy published this in '03 and most of it still stands true now:

    Top Ten Reasons Pro Gaming Sucks
    http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/april03...
    Edited by butler` at 14/04/10 @ 14:10

  • Tangled #18 2 years ago

    @butler`
    That article is on to something at times, but it mostly looks like the author is trying very hard to find rational arguments... and failing.
    Take for example the line: "Why watch other people play a game when you can just do the exact same thing yourself?". You know, that's what I thought a long time ago about every sport. "Why watch people chasing a ball if you can go outside and do it on your own?" And yet, millions of people watch football, and they aren't all elderly or submarine crews.

    That said, I also didn't think computer games would become a popular thing to watch at least until virtual reality - but Korea proved me wrong, so I'm no prophet ;)

  • RobotRocker #19 2 years ago

    In ur base, snitchin' on ur d00dz

    Next is Police Rush kekekekekeke ^_^

  • cen4pgb #20 2 years ago

    Given that alot off the betting scandels that have rocked proffesional sports in the west have been at the hands of asian/arabian betting syndicates (in concert of course with the mainly western sportsman who were doing the actual throwing, leads to the question whos worse the brober or the bribee), it was only a matter of time before they got interested enough in pro gaming, which is biger over there.

  • Dylbot #21 2 years ago

    Regarding that Gamespy article, it makes me laugh that the top reason pretty much perfectly describes WoW (and, I suppose, most modern MMOs).

  • jumpdeveraux #22 2 years ago

    Interesting Youtube video, one can't help but wonder if "Tossgirl" now regrets her choice of pro-gaming nickname.

  • Rack #23 2 years ago

    Arguing that people won't watch something because it's boring, irrelevant and easy to actually do seems like arguing that it's impossible for a giant ball of light to appear in the sky on a regular basis. Every one of the reasons in the Gamespy article is an argument against one sport or another ever becoming popular with some group or another, and yet oddly they all are.

  • butler` #24 2 years ago

    WoW's a pretty good example (aside from the fact it's not innately built for competition, with all the RPG elements - RNG, gear, racials, class imbaalances, specs etc - tending to get in the way).

    It has the player base and wider recognition (mainstream TV adverts). It has dedicated members of staff at Blizzard looking after its eSports interests. But it still ends up being a niche in a niche, with almost exclusively only the hardcore PvP people watching arena streams, big money tournaments etc.

    Whether it is just because it's too complicated to watch, or because there was no grass roots support for casting matches, is anyone's guess.

    The day someone makes a watchable, competitively fine-tuned game that can garner a sizable audience for promoters/advertisers to milk is the day eSports may get somewhere. And making games to be watched as well as played is something no developer is going to focus on any time soon.

  • craziii #25 2 years ago

    if savior earned that much by throwing games, I would say good for him, sucks for his fans.