In a recent episode of HLTV Confirmed, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) commissioner Ian Smith has claimed that as much as 80% of the games in the Chinese CSGO scene are fixed.
This comes as a shock to many avid CSGO fans and calls into question the integrity of the professional CSGO scene in China. The commissioner said that the reason Chinese CSGO isn’t broadcasted on HLTV is that most of its games are fixed, which results in the sponsors backing out and the prize pool experiencing cuts.
“Who takes the hit? Prize money reduces when sponsors back out, when broadcasts stop, when HLTV don’t want to put something on because they think it’s corrupt or fixed like 80% of Chinese CSGO,” Smith said during the interview. “Why is there no Chinese CSGO on HLTV? Because it’s fixed! It’s not worth putting on, right? …It’s the players who take the hit, and you guys who take the hit!”
The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) is a non-profit members’ association established in 2015 to promote and facilitate competitive integrity in esports.
The news comes after the ESIC handed out five-year bans to CSGO pros Sebastian “retchy” Tropiano and Kevin “4pack” Przypasniak after an audio clip of them attempting to fix a game in the ESEA Premier season 35 North America surfaced.
With the Chinese CSGO scene constantly growing larger, the numbers stated by Smith should certainly be a cause of concern for the CSGO community.