Match-fixing is not a new thing in the world of esports, and Valve’s competitive shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is no stranger to the horrors of professional players fixing games for personal gain. We have seen it happen in the past, and big teams and individual players getting banned for these incidents aren’t unheard of.
An Australian player has recently spoken up on one such incident where he was offered a sum of $2,000 to throw a CSGO game. This was mentioned in a report from the ABC’s Background Briefing which took a glance at the increasing occurrences of match-fixing in esports. The report itself is certainly alarming, but another huge reason for concern is the worsening state of the local esports scenes.
Joshua “JHD” Hough-Devine is not a tier-1 professional CSGO player, but the Australian was still offered a good sum of money to rig his games.
“I’ve been offered like two thousand dollars a match to throw, but I just don’t take it because it’s just not what I’m about,” Hough-Devine said.
The Australian esports scene isn’t that huge in the first place, and some individuals attempting to fix even the lower-level games can pose a serious threat to the future of esports in the country. It should be obvious that the corruption isn’t exclusive to Australia either. With most of the esports tournaments moving online as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, there have been multiple instances of such events surfacing over the last few months.
According to the report, the ESIC receives about 100 match-fixing, cheating, and other corruption allegations every day.
Stephen Hanna, the global strategy director at Esports Integrity Commission, has also confirmed the news of the escalating corruption. “We’ve seen a very significant upturn in all sorts of match-fixing activity, betting, fraud-related activity in esports, across all titles,” Hanna said.