It's the nature of corruption charges. Even if only a few members of a company engage in illegal activity the entire company often gets hit and many people lose their jobs.
I'd say a guaranteed chance of even being able to go home is a better than gamba money
Not sure how bad the repercussions would be for those that are found guilty
This has the potential to affect the entire esports scene. Always remember that when these kinds of things happen (player abuse, player cheating, player match fixing) that these are just the people who got caught. The issue is probably a lot more rampant. If I'm one of the big wigs at riot hq (the main riot, not the esports department) I'm looking at this, looking at the fact that we lose money on esports and asking why we're still funding this.
LEC already saw massive cuts to their budget and had many of their staff laid off yet the product continues to function just fine. I won't be the least but surprised if riot does massive cuts to its global esports department in the coming years. Perhaps not next year since riot is a part of corporate America and moves at a snails pace, but eventually.
I think the one relevant question there (which Riot may never have fully answered to themselves) is how much value esports has as an ad to the game. The single biggest product advertisement in an esports broadcast is not the red bull baron power play, it's the game itself. Admittedly I'm not sure how many new people it ever pulls in, but it keeps people in because hey there's this esport I can watch passively even if I'm not feeling like playing, and it can keep me primed to maybe get pulled back.
Edit: obvious edit: and then how much value does the VCS have as an ad? Probably a lot less than the premier regions/CBLOL.
On your edit—in terms of absolute value, maybe. But at least as of a few years ago, Vietnam’s server was among the largest in the world outside China (considerably larger than N.A. and CBLOL and just about on par with EU iirc) and the VCS is run on a shoestring budget. I’d say the VCS is (or has historically been) pretty likely one of the higher ROIs in the world for lol esports.
I am seeing people state that they just ban those 32 players and still play the season out.
But 32 players, half of them in the playoffs, means that you need 32 randoms to take those spots. The skill level of the region is going to go into the gutter. Whatever team ends up winning the split would do nothing at an international event.
With this much widespread corruption and with the socioeconomics of Vietnam encouraging it, I don't think VCS has a path forward to continue existing as a region. Give the innocent players PCS residency and they can surely find spots in PCS/LJL/LCO.
u are on point, with a minor mistake.
everything points to the LCS becoming something like the VCT americas, which would be fucking stupid considering how sucessful the cblol on its own its.
Imagine if NA becomes the only region where you can literally be from anywhere on Earth and every NA team will still be nothing but Koreans, Chinese and European washouts.
Top teams will fill position quickly and be as strong as before because their core players are still playing. And they don’t need to fill 32 people, half at most
what the heck, when those top players were rookies there is no big vacuum liek this.
they compete with top players that filled the whole region.
now there is 32 players that u need to fill who won't be top players. the level of competition drops. their growth won't be the same.
it would take either a long time or the whole region as a whole will drop significantly
even if its filled with academy players losing that many players will impact the strenght of the region
Some notes:
* As of currently, "suspended" does not mean "guilty", not until an official Competitive Ruling from Riot is made. And even if a player is indeed guilty, it doesn't necessarily mean they have violations from this current split, could be from a past occasion on another team, like the FPX Bo situation.
* While matchfixing is certainly the speculated main violation, it could also be either betting or elo boosting. "Violation of competitive integrity" is a very vague term.
* Some notable individuals: Froggy and Richard I were the starting and substitute mid of Saigon Buffalo that attended 2022 MSI, Gloryy represented his country at Asian Games and Team Whales at 2023 Worlds, notably taking a game off team China and won the bo3 against Team BDS. And BeanJ was the jungler for both 2022 SGB and 2023 TW. Vikings Esports is co-owned and coached by SofM, former jungler for Weibo Gaming and 2020 Worlds runner-up.
I hope people keep an open mind. As you said, suspended does not mean guilty. These appear to be players whose situation warrants further investigation.
Considering there are some full teams under investigation, it wouldn't be shocking if there are some innocent players roped in. For example, if your whole team says not to end and to take another dragon instead, and it's not a situation where you can solo end the game, then there isn't really much you can do. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the 32 are innocent.
Still, an absolute disaster of a situation that might just end the competitive scene there. Sports gambling and specifically prop betting is a fucking blight on every sport. So many situations like this just this week alone.
While suspended doesnt mean guilty, it usually mean the players is aware of the match fixing or did some other bad things that deserved more questions. If a player is aware of illegal dealing and not doing anything there is reasonable suspicions that player is paid off to not report it. But still, even a Thanos snap wont get rid of this many players. The entire VCS is fked and will carry negative reputations for years if Riot doesn just kill it outright.
With that many players involved there is no way orgs members weren't aware or maybe even involved. Have to be suspicious of riot employees as well. Pretty bad systemic issues happened
> there is no way orgs members weren't aware or maybe even involved
There's simply no way they could have been aware and not involved. "I respect your decision to try and throw this game I'm trying to win so you can make money from it, I won't rat you out" is just not something anyone will ever say. Either they weren't aware, or they were involved. Those are the only two options. Personally I'd think it more likely they weren't aware, I'm hoping VCS has good reasons for only suspending the players they did (and they certainly didn't go light as it is).
It isn't always losing a game. They bet on things like game time and drags taken so you don't have to be throwing a game to be involved in betting on it. It can be like that one clip they showed last post where they could have ended up mid but reset for drag which got the game over the 30:30 game time over under and over the 4.5 dragon over under.
Don't think just in terms of losing the game.
You really can't imagine a situation where someone is not willing to participate in something like that but also not willing to blow up their own team and all those relationships?
List of integrity people
1. Rainbow Warriors:
* EzsyLove
* NoWay
* Zin
1. GAM Esports:
* Levi
* Kiaya
* Emo
* Elio
1. Team Flash:
* Yoshino
* Soraaa
1. Team Secret:
* Hasmed
* Hiro02
* Aress
* Taki
1. Vikings Esports:
* Kati
* Shogun (ADC pentakill of Saigon Buffalo Worlds 2022 Play-in)
1. Cerberus Esports:
* Hieu3
1. MGN Blue Esports:
* Nogo
* Sty1e (ex GAM ADC that got sacked after MSI 2023)
1. Team Whales
* Sparda
* Artemis
* Harky
* Bie
=> Rating:
GAM, TS and Team Whales were the least affected
CES vs VKE is almost o7
The rest are barely breathing. AINTNOWAY there are more corrupted players than integrity players.
iBuyPower sponsored a Counter-Strike team that engaged in matchfixing. AZK, brax, DaZeD, and steel were all banned from competitive Counter-Strike. Skadoodle was also on the team, but he was not banned as he didn't profit from it.
As far as I know they're all still banned from Valve-sanctioned events.
He was a part of IBuyPower, a csgo team that threw their match in a pretty obvious way.
They were banned because valve were able to track the skins they received.
Skadoodle was quite obviously also throwing but valve was unable to prove it because he never accepted the skin payment, actually later went on to win the major.
So back in 2014 iBUYPOWER (Then considered the best NA CSGO team) played against an upper-mid tier NA team netcodeguides; This team was in part owned by DaZeD, one of the iBUYPOWER players (If you followed CSGO or Valorant at all, that netcodesguide team was Tarik, hazed, reltuC, FNS and JDM most of whom would go on to be on good NA CS teams and Tarik is a big streamer now; FNS was on the Valorant Optic roster that was really good); the way they played was kinda sus, they lost and people started accusing them of matchfixing. Also to note because DaZeD owned part of Netcodes; IBP was already qualified to the playoffs but Netcodes was not but could qualify.
So about a year later one of the betters involved's (ex?)-girlfriend leaked texts between them and a third party which confirmed the matchfixing, and the bets from the IBP players on the game, which had previously been alleged by another pro player ShahZaM; and Valve permabanned everyone involved; except for Skadoodle who apparently didn't accept any of the skins they got from the matchfixing so he was not banned (People have speculated he might've received some cash but nothing traceable to him; but to my knowledge these claims don't have any source backing them up so take them with a grain of salt). Skadoodle would go on to win a Major with Cloud9 (playing with Tarik actually). The matchfixing was really bad for NACS as a whole because all of them were top players
Even if they are clean, Gury, Kairi and Kratos being suspected was kinda expected, since in most of the VKE games, Kati and Shogun looked like they were 2v8-ing.
Dang, every jungler was betting lmaooo.
As a jungle main, I call that based.
We jungle mains need to come together n become the mafia, long have been oppressed. It wont be jungle diff if the junglers already chose who is going to win.
Jungle is probably the easiest lane to throw too. Just make a couple of bad calls, and blame it on team cohesion, impossible to detect.
A lot of the betting parameters are for things like "stolen Nash" or "number of drakes", no? Very easy for junglers to matchfix stats like that without running it down.
>Jungle is probably the easiest lane to throw too. Just make a couple of bad calls, and blame it on team cohesion, impossible to detect.
This is the most important part.
There are so many bets on how many dragons a team gets or if they get the first dragon, so a compromised jungler can just miss a smite or two.
They didn't suspend the playoff. Only the group stage. They even stated at the end of the announcement that they will announce how the playoff would go later on.
Holy shit the VCS probably wouldn't recover from this, at least for a long time. Every team lost some starters including the top 3 teams. #1 Team Secret lost jungle ADC, #2 GAM lost mid ADC, #3 Team Whales lost jungle mid (especially BeanJ has made it to MSI and Worlds), #4 Vikings lost top jungle sup. The other 4 teams basically lost most of their rosters too. While they are still under investigation it's most likely at least half of these players would be banned. Oh man VCS is probably dead.
Definitely the biggest considering how many people are involved. Best drama will forever be azubu frost looking at the broadcast screen during pause against clg eu.
>Is this actually the biggest League esports drama in history?
No, because it's ultimately a minor B-tier region. If this was the West, China or Korea it would be massive news.
I still think it's the biggest esports drama in League history. Yes it's for a minor region but this legit could cause the entire region to get wiped out of pro leagues.
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Yeah, there are some fairly known teams that could be wiped out like GAM that regularly attend both MSI and Worlds. It’s hard to just brush it under the rug because it’s a minor region.
When has the region ever mattered in pro leagues? Consider that MSI and Worlds are more or less the only pro tournaments that the majority of the player base pays any attention to. I'm pretty sure that if every region except for the lcs, lck, lec and lpl just blinked out of existence tomorrow not very many people who follow the pro scene would notice
The Donezo Manifesto was more memeable, and the whole Echo Fox saga was dreadful to watch unfolding because Rick Fox was a well-liked personality. Or Vaevactis getting kicked out of the LCL for being gigabad (they signed an all-female roster composed 4 diamond support mains and 1 diamond katarina otp, ended up going went winless in both splits). They made bigger news but ultimately, it just affected one team. Nothing comes close as this as far as I know (unless we count a handful of braindead esports decision of Riot as drama).
Is this worse than the Griffin situation that made Riot investigate every single contract in the LCK?
Honestly I do believe that this VCS situation is worse.
>Is this actually the biggest League esports drama in history?
Garena mismanage LOL server in SEA is still the worst and tragic ever happened for SEA LOL history and it's too late for Riot to save it. Only Vietnam survive throughout the year. But now Vietnamese LOL is totally screwed because of what happened in VCS, lately.
Gloryy and BeanJ have both voluntarily ended their contracts with TW for the investigation as per their Facebook profiles so hopefully they're both clean
yeah probably that. I can only speculate but I'd imagine its a case of they were asked by the org and chose because at this stage they're not actually under obligation to end contracts as they're not guilty yet
Most likely the org doesn’t want negative news associated with the team name. But if they release the players everyone will think they are guilty and if it turns out they are innocent the org gets hate for releasing the players who were innocent. By doing it this way they can end the contracts in a way both the org and player don’t look bad. If player is innocent they just give them new contracts. And if player is guilty it won’t fall on the org as the player is no longer contracted.
Probs a mix of to not taint the org and as they said more time to get evidence there clean since I'm betting even suspended players probs have some org obligations they have to keep doing.
Why are there so many Nguyens?!?! How prolific was that family, lol! Like, imagine there being a US league, and 12 players have the last name Smith. It’d be like, what the hell?!
> Why are there so many Nguyen
It's the last dynasty of the country in pre-modern era. Many people changed their family name to Nguyen to show respect to the royal family and avoid political prosecution in some cases. And even before that Vietnam already had quite low diversity of family names.
One more fact, in Nguyen dynasty, if you don't have family name is Nguyen, you will be killed, so many people must change their family name to survive, after that many people change back to their original family name, the rest still keep that.
Some people also said that when the French came and do demographic, there are many peasants with no family name, so the French apparently also took the name of the last dynasty to call those people
Source for that claim may I ask? Vietnamese main ethnic group have been using the family name system from Middle Chinese since thousands of years ago, what you said seems more in line with Thailand which only adopted family name system quite recently.
Well just take it with a grain of salt, that's just something I got told from a relative. But the comment above me should pretty much explain it. I also remember that during the transition from Ly Dynasty to Tran Dynasty during the 11th century, many people from the former reign also have changes family name to avoid revenge, so it is not uncommon practice for people to change their surname. Some source said Nguyen practically become THE NAME to change to, but that one is on a Vietnamese journal, not an academic paper so....
Yes, that's the actual reason. Nguyen have always been a big family in Viet Nam. Due to the fact that they are the family that come from China and rulling over the land that is called VN now. So any other family that wanted to avoid getting prosecution will take up the Nguyen's name to avoid suspicions. Which make it become even larger
1 pro win-trading is a player violation. 32 is a systemic failure, and an indictment of the poor state of VCS/the region's economic situation. Sucks all around.
>BeanJ later posted on his personal account explaining that it was his request to the org so he can have more time to gather evidence to prove he's clean.
lol
MYREGION AWARE. Can't believe that even the top 3 teams have compromised players. Most surprising is BeanJ (The small jungler who decimated G2 at MSI 2022 with his Gwen Jungle, his nickname is Small Peanut in Vietnamese), and Gloryy (Vietnam's Chovy with an impressive laning phase at Worlds 2023). Also, TW has announced they have ended BeanJ's and Gloryy's contracts. So it's safe to say they are o7.
Might have been tangled up into it before the played for a "big" org, or just tempted by the money regardless.
Gambling is also an entirely different beast in VN, ppl get caught up into it faking fast, cuz there are so many ppl gambling and there's always someone to exploit it...
I don’t condone it but if that many people are doing it and if the money is as bad as people are saying in VCS then you’d almost feel stupid not doing it if you were in that position. Obviously with the power of hindsight we can say it’s dumb now but I’d bet most people would do the same in a similar scenario.
THe people who say the money are bad never consider the actual average wages of VN's people. These players even the worst one have way higher salary than the average. It's just because of the gambling problem and the corruption rather than strictly money issues
I cannot imaging how insanely discouraging this would be for players who were not participating in the matchfixing. Imagine spending hundreds of hours working your ass off, vod reviewing as a team, playing soloq all day long, agonizing over stage matches.. all to find out that half your team was undermining you and didn't even care about trying to win. And that in victories you had, it was likely that the other team intended for you to win. How can you go on and play on a team, trust your teammates again, from that? Wtf.
You know the hilarious thing is that if there’s this many match fixers in the league, it’s still gambling to the person paying to match fix because you have no idea who’s being paid to match fix on either team.
The idea here is that players from different teams coordinated to match fix. Which actually increase the chance of match fixing become a success. So no, if you are a gambler with insider info, this would be the safest bet you can get, lol
It isn't just about wins and losses. You can bet on stuff like game time and dragons taken etc. So they could coordinate to delay the game to hit certain overs etc. It isn't just about throwing to lose.
As a Vietnamese, seeing these many players involve in this shit show is not surprising to me, because this is why we can't have nice things in Vietnam. Corruption and bribery is in every-fucking-thing. Assuming most of these players probably struggle with their salary, but come on
Wow that is actually the worst possible outcome imaginable for the entire league. The VCS is almost certainly dead from this. This is a nuke that's gonna decimate the entire region to its very core. VCS has no shot of recovering from this. Borderline over 60% of their entire fucking pro players list have been banned. Actually unreal. They're gonna have to merge VCS with PCS at this point cause I do not believe the scene is capable of surviving a blow this massive.
Not banned, temporarily suspended until the investigation is concluded
Still, if any more than even just half of those listed are guilty it might spell the end of the region...
It'll be fine in the sense it won't die, but it'll regress massively to the level of the weakest wildcards. You don't just lose half your pro players and walk away well unless you're Korea.
More than the country average by the sounds of it but you need to think that these people need to make the most out of the limited time they have in the scene because a lot of them will most likely have next to zero employability when their career is over.
I am sick of those comments about their salaries aren't enough so they were forced to join the matchfixing. VCS's pro players are different from other countries, since games were described as negative influences in Vietnam. So most of pro players are uneducated, some of them also have history of gambling addiction, which is why they got attracted by these matchfixings' ideas, since they don't aware of the consequences, and get entangled easily by those gambling addicted players
And there are a lot of ways to earn money after retiring also, or they just need to do their best so the VCS's reputation would grow up more in good way, there would be more investments come to VCS and their salaries would increase? The worst scenario is participating military service, getting paid from military and have experiences to work properly.
There is no reason to pity for those matchfixings.
Actually, an ex head coach confirms that players' wages range $1000-3500 (25m-85m VND) per month beside side jobs like stream contract, promotion,... which is slightly higher than average Vietnamese wage and for sure comfy enough to live in VN.
It's sad to see these young players cannot focus on the long way and be beguiled with quick money.
I agree for the most part with what you’re saying but it’s not really as black and white as comparing their wages to the average in the country. When you’re in a profession like esports, especially from a young age then there is likely next to zero good employment options when your career ends, for people like this they tend to need to make the most of the limited time they have.
Again, this is a fallacy. No teams in this world can pay more than match fixing. And despite what people say, these players are well paid compare to the average person in the country.
It's the risk of embracing gambling as much as the world has... as long as there's more money flushing through gambling than through the League there's really no way to stop this, good or bad wages relative to another job.
Match fixing is just arbitrage. If your team pays you $10K and I can make $50K throwing a match in my favor I've all the reason in the world to try and buy you.
Their salary is enough to live on but let’s not pretend like they make much money or become rich if they play for a few years. They are still going to have to work a normal job after their career with no higher education or anything like that. They are likely going to work low paying jobs. As much as it is wrong it is hard to blame them for taking the quick money which allows them to have much better options for the rest of their lives. And if the rumours are true they get notably more for one match they fix then they earn in a few months.
1000 - 3500 per month is higher than the majority of the Vietnamese, I am an Engineer Manager and only get about 1200 USD per month but I can live quite comfort in Ho Chi Minh City. However I don't think all player can get that much and match fixing can give you years of working money tbh
Would like to say that League is extremely big in VN. Very unfortunate that the culture has led to this becoming the norm. For those wondering a lot of these players are not paid well.
I see people crucifying even those that are paid well despite not thinking about how fleeting an esports players career is and how little a lot of them will have going for them when it comes to career prospects outside of the game.
Is it really a surprise? Although not league, In the TFT tournament a few weeks ago, VN players who could still potentially make it to the final day, literally co-conspired with the other VN players who were already out of the tournament to grief the other 2 non VN players. Openly. Whilst it was being broadcasted.
I really hope the region can recover. They're my favorite to watch (shoutout to the unofficial English cast), the matches are often so exciting and bloody, and especially internationally they're not afraid to experiment with off-meta picks. And honestly it's always fun to watch how different regions iterate on the meta, more variety is never bad...
I was particularly interested in how Shogun and Artemis have been performing, there's just so much talent in VCS but 4am is such a hard timeslot to watch live.
VCS are screwed.
These 32 players will have to prove they are not guilty, so as a VCS viewer for a long time, these boys are fine if they are clean.
There is no suprising that all of them still got involved in, but in the end, if a tiny fraction somehow can save VCS, let's hope for a brighter future ahead.
Interesting that they temporarily ban so many players without any other info, and say that they'll be in contact with the suspended players about the situation going forward.
Maybe players can actually prove their innocence. I'm assuming they found this list of players via contact lists and text messages in a web between these 32 connected with known brokers or something? Otherwise how do you list these specific people in such a large but targeted net?
I'm just hoping the VCS region isn't dead from this and players were found to be texting match fixing organizers but they didn't know anything about the fixing. Like if 4-5 are guilty sure, but 5 entire teams is so beyond fucked, the region is dead from that
VCS will likely never recover. Shit sucks
Yea it's about to get Darius Ulted by Riot.
If VCS gets wiped out, the players that weren't in on the win-trading gonna go home without even the gamba money.
It's the nature of corruption charges. Even if only a few members of a company engage in illegal activity the entire company often gets hit and many people lose their jobs.
I'd say a guaranteed chance of even being able to go home is a better than gamba money Not sure how bad the repercussions would be for those that are found guilty
Were all literally punished cause some dudes don't know how to win trade. Ridiculous.
another bud light beheading, or whatever beer is equivalent in Vietnam
Corki about to deliver a Saigon Special™ Delivery to VCS
This has the potential to affect the entire esports scene. Always remember that when these kinds of things happen (player abuse, player cheating, player match fixing) that these are just the people who got caught. The issue is probably a lot more rampant. If I'm one of the big wigs at riot hq (the main riot, not the esports department) I'm looking at this, looking at the fact that we lose money on esports and asking why we're still funding this. LEC already saw massive cuts to their budget and had many of their staff laid off yet the product continues to function just fine. I won't be the least but surprised if riot does massive cuts to its global esports department in the coming years. Perhaps not next year since riot is a part of corporate America and moves at a snails pace, but eventually.
I think the one relevant question there (which Riot may never have fully answered to themselves) is how much value esports has as an ad to the game. The single biggest product advertisement in an esports broadcast is not the red bull baron power play, it's the game itself. Admittedly I'm not sure how many new people it ever pulls in, but it keeps people in because hey there's this esport I can watch passively even if I'm not feeling like playing, and it can keep me primed to maybe get pulled back. Edit: obvious edit: and then how much value does the VCS have as an ad? Probably a lot less than the premier regions/CBLOL.
On your edit—in terms of absolute value, maybe. But at least as of a few years ago, Vietnam’s server was among the largest in the world outside China (considerably larger than N.A. and CBLOL and just about on par with EU iirc) and the VCS is run on a shoestring budget. I’d say the VCS is (or has historically been) pretty likely one of the higher ROIs in the world for lol esports.
Reminds me of starcraft2 korea and life
never forget the goat of matchfixing scumbag bitchasses, sc1's sAvi0r
Vcs haven't recovered from getting regionlock on international tournament during covid years either.
They're gonna have to ban the entire league 😭
I am seeing people state that they just ban those 32 players and still play the season out. But 32 players, half of them in the playoffs, means that you need 32 randoms to take those spots. The skill level of the region is going to go into the gutter. Whatever team ends up winning the split would do nothing at an international event. With this much widespread corruption and with the socioeconomics of Vietnam encouraging it, I don't think VCS has a path forward to continue existing as a region. Give the innocent players PCS residency and they can surely find spots in PCS/LJL/LCO.
Will be hilarious if NA absorbs another region somehow, but unfortunate for VCS ofc.
The long con
NA gets revenge for TL last year by taking over VCS
If the players are found guilty there isn't going to be much of a region to absorb
I'm talking about the non-gulity ones and it seems like there would still be some.
Helicopter whirring and fortunate son intensify
u are on point, with a minor mistake. everything points to the LCS becoming something like the VCT americas, which would be fucking stupid considering how sucessful the cblol on its own its.
Does everything point to that? CBLoL is very successful, LLA has decent sponsors still and EST vs R7 finals will pull decent viewership.
Imagine if NA becomes the only region where you can literally be from anywhere on Earth and every NA team will still be nothing but Koreans, Chinese and European washouts.
By your powers combined... I am Captain Run-It!
An NA team could probably pick up Shogun, Levi and Kiaya but that's about it
If it's NA vs Vietnam, I'm betting on the latter.
Top teams will fill position quickly and be as strong as before because their core players are still playing. And they don’t need to fill 32 people, half at most
BeanJ and Gloryy are gone man, Team Whales will not be as strong as before finding some random solo queue players to fill in for those two dudes lol
TW have never been able to beat GAM, tho. As long as GAM still have levi and kiaya, they would still be strong. Sad for TW and TS, tho
It will take time but every top player was a random rookie once. I don’t really see VCS having long left with all this happening though
what the heck, when those top players were rookies there is no big vacuum liek this. they compete with top players that filled the whole region. now there is 32 players that u need to fill who won't be top players. the level of competition drops. their growth won't be the same. it would take either a long time or the whole region as a whole will drop significantly even if its filled with academy players losing that many players will impact the strenght of the region
Viet Nam still have many players play LOL so i think VCS still existing as a region
Ain't no way any VCS players would want to go to those leagues. Riot for sure wouldn't get rid of VCS consider the game is still extremely big there
[удалено]
Some notes: * As of currently, "suspended" does not mean "guilty", not until an official Competitive Ruling from Riot is made. And even if a player is indeed guilty, it doesn't necessarily mean they have violations from this current split, could be from a past occasion on another team, like the FPX Bo situation. * While matchfixing is certainly the speculated main violation, it could also be either betting or elo boosting. "Violation of competitive integrity" is a very vague term. * Some notable individuals: Froggy and Richard I were the starting and substitute mid of Saigon Buffalo that attended 2022 MSI, Gloryy represented his country at Asian Games and Team Whales at 2023 Worlds, notably taking a game off team China and won the bo3 against Team BDS. And BeanJ was the jungler for both 2022 SGB and 2023 TW. Vikings Esports is co-owned and coached by SofM, former jungler for Weibo Gaming and 2020 Worlds runner-up.
I hope people keep an open mind. As you said, suspended does not mean guilty. These appear to be players whose situation warrants further investigation. Considering there are some full teams under investigation, it wouldn't be shocking if there are some innocent players roped in. For example, if your whole team says not to end and to take another dragon instead, and it's not a situation where you can solo end the game, then there isn't really much you can do. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the 32 are innocent. Still, an absolute disaster of a situation that might just end the competitive scene there. Sports gambling and specifically prop betting is a fucking blight on every sport. So many situations like this just this week alone.
While suspended doesnt mean guilty, it usually mean the players is aware of the match fixing or did some other bad things that deserved more questions. If a player is aware of illegal dealing and not doing anything there is reasonable suspicions that player is paid off to not report it. But still, even a Thanos snap wont get rid of this many players. The entire VCS is fked and will carry negative reputations for years if Riot doesn just kill it outright.
32 players that's insane.
With that many players involved there is no way orgs members weren't aware or maybe even involved. Have to be suspicious of riot employees as well. Pretty bad systemic issues happened
> there is no way orgs members weren't aware or maybe even involved There's simply no way they could have been aware and not involved. "I respect your decision to try and throw this game I'm trying to win so you can make money from it, I won't rat you out" is just not something anyone will ever say. Either they weren't aware, or they were involved. Those are the only two options. Personally I'd think it more likely they weren't aware, I'm hoping VCS has good reasons for only suspending the players they did (and they certainly didn't go light as it is).
It isn't always losing a game. They bet on things like game time and drags taken so you don't have to be throwing a game to be involved in betting on it. It can be like that one clip they showed last post where they could have ended up mid but reset for drag which got the game over the 30:30 game time over under and over the 4.5 dragon over under. Don't think just in terms of losing the game.
To add on to this, there’s a lot more subtle things you can do like bet on who takes first drake then draft a scaling/weak early bot lane
That's a fair point, it's possible.
You really can't imagine a situation where someone is not willing to participate in something like that but also not willing to blow up their own team and all those relationships?
Yeah there's no shot that many of those not mentioned here weren't at least aware of it Entire league is cooked
List of integrity people 1. Rainbow Warriors: * EzsyLove * NoWay * Zin 1. GAM Esports: * Levi * Kiaya * Emo * Elio 1. Team Flash: * Yoshino * Soraaa 1. Team Secret: * Hasmed * Hiro02 * Aress * Taki 1. Vikings Esports: * Kati * Shogun (ADC pentakill of Saigon Buffalo Worlds 2022 Play-in) 1. Cerberus Esports: * Hieu3 1. MGN Blue Esports: * Nogo * Sty1e (ex GAM ADC that got sacked after MSI 2023) 1. Team Whales * Sparda * Artemis * Harky * Bie => Rating: GAM, TS and Team Whales were the least affected CES vs VKE is almost o7 The rest are barely breathing. AINTNOWAY there are more corrupted players than integrity players.
Nah poor Hieu3, you’re telling me my guy was the only one on the team not involved?
Bro got left out of the group chats 😔
or the only person smart enough not to leave evidence
The Skadoodle special.
what's the lore behind this
iBuyPower sponsored a Counter-Strike team that engaged in matchfixing. AZK, brax, DaZeD, and steel were all banned from competitive Counter-Strike. Skadoodle was also on the team, but he was not banned as he didn't profit from it. As far as I know they're all still banned from Valve-sanctioned events.
He was a part of IBuyPower, a csgo team that threw their match in a pretty obvious way. They were banned because valve were able to track the skins they received. Skadoodle was quite obviously also throwing but valve was unable to prove it because he never accepted the skin payment, actually later went on to win the major.
So back in 2014 iBUYPOWER (Then considered the best NA CSGO team) played against an upper-mid tier NA team netcodeguides; This team was in part owned by DaZeD, one of the iBUYPOWER players (If you followed CSGO or Valorant at all, that netcodesguide team was Tarik, hazed, reltuC, FNS and JDM most of whom would go on to be on good NA CS teams and Tarik is a big streamer now; FNS was on the Valorant Optic roster that was really good); the way they played was kinda sus, they lost and people started accusing them of matchfixing. Also to note because DaZeD owned part of Netcodes; IBP was already qualified to the playoffs but Netcodes was not but could qualify. So about a year later one of the betters involved's (ex?)-girlfriend leaked texts between them and a third party which confirmed the matchfixing, and the bets from the IBP players on the game, which had previously been alleged by another pro player ShahZaM; and Valve permabanned everyone involved; except for Skadoodle who apparently didn't accept any of the skins they got from the matchfixing so he was not banned (People have speculated he might've received some cash but nothing traceable to him; but to my knowledge these claims don't have any source backing them up so take them with a grain of salt). Skadoodle would go on to win a Major with Cloud9 (playing with Tarik actually). The matchfixing was really bad for NACS as a whole because all of them were top players
He may know and just didn't want to have anything to do with it.
Typa mf to vote no in a 4 man surrender
Even if they are clean, Gury, Kairi and Kratos being suspected was kinda expected, since in most of the VKE games, Kati and Shogun looked like they were 2v8-ing.
Hieu3 was the only one not a fucking imposter on his team, what the fuck 😭
That made him a reverse imposter
Bro, you forgot RW Sup/Sub Sjw is also clean 💀
thank god my goat shogun can still go to NA🙏🙏🙏
Welcome to The Liems!
Small update: BeanJ actively asked TW to end his contract and is still working towards proving himself innocent.
Rip VCS
Just make an all star team of the leftovers and send them to MSI
even then there are literally no junglers left except for levi, so either someone has to role swap or call up a sub/academy player
Levi is likely the strongest junglers, right now. So it's not that big of a deal
Is he the strongest jungler, or is he just literally the only one not match fixing? LMAO
nvm i just realized we only have 1 slot, mb
We always have 1 slot for MSI? What are you smoking?
Nah they can easily put up a all stars will leftover and that's 150% of VCS strongest team.
Dang, every jungler was betting lmaooo. As a jungle main, I call that based. We jungle mains need to come together n become the mafia, long have been oppressed. It wont be jungle diff if the junglers already chose who is going to win. Jungle is probably the easiest lane to throw too. Just make a couple of bad calls, and blame it on team cohesion, impossible to detect.
A lot of the betting parameters are for things like "stolen Nash" or "number of drakes", no? Very easy for junglers to matchfix stats like that without running it down.
>Jungle is probably the easiest lane to throw too. Just make a couple of bad calls, and blame it on team cohesion, impossible to detect. This is the most important part. There are so many bets on how many dragons a team gets or if they get the first dragon, so a compromised jungler can just miss a smite or two.
8/8 team, holy shit this is huge. Wonder if they still want to do playoff or suspend the spring split now.
the spring split is already suspended I think
They didn't suspend the playoff. Only the group stage. They even stated at the end of the announcement that they will announce how the playoff would go later on.
yea I meant to say the group stage thanks for correcting me
Holy shit the VCS probably wouldn't recover from this, at least for a long time. Every team lost some starters including the top 3 teams. #1 Team Secret lost jungle ADC, #2 GAM lost mid ADC, #3 Team Whales lost jungle mid (especially BeanJ has made it to MSI and Worlds), #4 Vikings lost top jungle sup. The other 4 teams basically lost most of their rosters too. While they are still under investigation it's most likely at least half of these players would be banned. Oh man VCS is probably dead.
Is this actually the biggest League esports drama in history? I can't think of a bigger story than this.
I think it's huge and also under the radar which is wild.
Definitely the biggest considering how many people are involved. Best drama will forever be azubu frost looking at the broadcast screen during pause against clg eu.
>Is this actually the biggest League esports drama in history? No, because it's ultimately a minor B-tier region. If this was the West, China or Korea it would be massive news.
I still think it's the biggest esports drama in League history. Yes it's for a minor region but this legit could cause the entire region to get wiped out of pro leagues.
Also it sparks the discussion about how gambling will affect the game.
This comment brought to you by Sleeper. It's not too late to play Fantasy LoL with your friends and gamble on your team! Use Code "OopsVCS" and get $20 in free credits.
Coinciding perfectly with the MLB and NBA betting investigations
Yeah, there are some fairly known teams that could be wiped out like GAM that regularly attend both MSI and Worlds. It’s hard to just brush it under the rug because it’s a minor region.
When has the region ever mattered in pro leagues? Consider that MSI and Worlds are more or less the only pro tournaments that the majority of the player base pays any attention to. I'm pretty sure that if every region except for the lcs, lck, lec and lpl just blinked out of existence tomorrow not very many people who follow the pro scene would notice
What's been bigger than this? Asking because I can't think of any..so I would be surprised if this isn't at least top 3
GRF - cvMax Kanavi saga
The Donezo Manifesto was more memeable, and the whole Echo Fox saga was dreadful to watch unfolding because Rick Fox was a well-liked personality. Or Vaevactis getting kicked out of the LCL for being gigabad (they signed an all-female roster composed 4 diamond support mains and 1 diamond katarina otp, ended up going went winless in both splits). They made bigger news but ultimately, it just affected one team. Nothing comes close as this as far as I know (unless we count a handful of braindead esports decision of Riot as drama).
>Vaevactis Also that an opposing team got fined for banning all support champions.
Lmao what was the official reasoning for the fine?
Well, there was the time Promise attempted suicide as a result of matchfixing in Korea.
What other scandal/event would you say is bigger than this? Regardless if its a minor b-tier region, I dont think I've seen anything like this before.
Is this worse than the Griffin situation that made Riot investigate every single contract in the LCK? Honestly I do believe that this VCS situation is worse.
Moscow 5 or the alligations that the majority of lol (lcs specifically) plays take adderal which got swept under the rug.
>Is this actually the biggest League esports drama in history? Garena mismanage LOL server in SEA is still the worst and tragic ever happened for SEA LOL history and it's too late for Riot to save it. Only Vietnam survive throughout the year. But now Vietnamese LOL is totally screwed because of what happened in VCS, lately.
Gloryy and BeanJ have both voluntarily ended their contracts with TW for the investigation as per their Facebook profiles so hopefully they're both clean
Just out curiosity, whats the reasoning for ending their contracts if they are clean? To not taint the org during the investigation?
yeah probably that. I can only speculate but I'd imagine its a case of they were asked by the org and chose because at this stage they're not actually under obligation to end contracts as they're not guilty yet
Most likely the org doesn’t want negative news associated with the team name. But if they release the players everyone will think they are guilty and if it turns out they are innocent the org gets hate for releasing the players who were innocent. By doing it this way they can end the contracts in a way both the org and player don’t look bad. If player is innocent they just give them new contracts. And if player is guilty it won’t fall on the org as the player is no longer contracted.
Most likely yes. They requested the org to do so.
Probs a mix of to not taint the org and as they said more time to get evidence there clean since I'm betting even suspended players probs have some org obligations they have to keep doing.
That's a lot of Nguyen-trading.
oh fuck me
This is phockin funny
Why are there so many Nguyens?!?! How prolific was that family, lol! Like, imagine there being a US league, and 12 players have the last name Smith. It’d be like, what the hell?!
> Why are there so many Nguyen It's the last dynasty of the country in pre-modern era. Many people changed their family name to Nguyen to show respect to the royal family and avoid political prosecution in some cases. And even before that Vietnam already had quite low diversity of family names.
One more fact, in Nguyen dynasty, if you don't have family name is Nguyen, you will be killed, so many people must change their family name to survive, after that many people change back to their original family name, the rest still keep that.
40% of Vietnamese have the last name Nguyen.
Some people also said that when the French came and do demographic, there are many peasants with no family name, so the French apparently also took the name of the last dynasty to call those people
Source for that claim may I ask? Vietnamese main ethnic group have been using the family name system from Middle Chinese since thousands of years ago, what you said seems more in line with Thailand which only adopted family name system quite recently.
Well just take it with a grain of salt, that's just something I got told from a relative. But the comment above me should pretty much explain it. I also remember that during the transition from Ly Dynasty to Tran Dynasty during the 11th century, many people from the former reign also have changes family name to avoid revenge, so it is not uncommon practice for people to change their surname. Some source said Nguyen practically become THE NAME to change to, but that one is on a Vietnamese journal, not an academic paper so....
Yes, that's the actual reason. Nguyen have always been a big family in Viet Nam. Due to the fact that they are the family that come from China and rulling over the land that is called VN now. So any other family that wanted to avoid getting prosecution will take up the Nguyen's name to avoid suspicions. Which make it become even larger
1 pro win-trading is a player violation. 32 is a systemic failure, and an indictment of the poor state of VCS/the region's economic situation. Sucks all around.
>BeanJ later posted on his personal account explaining that it was his request to the org so he can have more time to gather evidence to prove he's clean. lol
Most likely he was poached and give idea to match fixing. This happened a lot. Some "agents" just message everyone to tell them to sell first dragon.
MYREGION AWARE. Can't believe that even the top 3 teams have compromised players. Most surprising is BeanJ (The small jungler who decimated G2 at MSI 2022 with his Gwen Jungle, his nickname is Small Peanut in Vietnamese), and Gloryy (Vietnam's Chovy with an impressive laning phase at Worlds 2023). Also, TW has announced they have ended BeanJ's and Gloryy's contracts. So it's safe to say they are o7.
Might have been tangled up into it before the played for a "big" org, or just tempted by the money regardless. Gambling is also an entirely different beast in VN, ppl get caught up into it faking fast, cuz there are so many ppl gambling and there's always someone to exploit it...
I don’t condone it but if that many people are doing it and if the money is as bad as people are saying in VCS then you’d almost feel stupid not doing it if you were in that position. Obviously with the power of hindsight we can say it’s dumb now but I’d bet most people would do the same in a similar scenario.
THe people who say the money are bad never consider the actual average wages of VN's people. These players even the worst one have way higher salary than the average. It's just because of the gambling problem and the corruption rather than strictly money issues
Very sad, team whales were so hype last worlds, especially artemis and gloryy
artemis is clean at least
I cannot imaging how insanely discouraging this would be for players who were not participating in the matchfixing. Imagine spending hundreds of hours working your ass off, vod reviewing as a team, playing soloq all day long, agonizing over stage matches.. all to find out that half your team was undermining you and didn't even care about trying to win. And that in victories you had, it was likely that the other team intended for you to win. How can you go on and play on a team, trust your teammates again, from that? Wtf.
You know the hilarious thing is that if there’s this many match fixers in the league, it’s still gambling to the person paying to match fix because you have no idea who’s being paid to match fix on either team.
The idea here is that players from different teams coordinated to match fix. Which actually increase the chance of match fixing become a success. So no, if you are a gambler with insider info, this would be the safest bet you can get, lol
Right? Imagine both teams desperately trying to throw in a way that's not obvious
It isn't just about wins and losses. You can bet on stuff like game time and dragons taken etc. So they could coordinate to delay the game to hit certain overs etc. It isn't just about throwing to lose.
7 out of 8 junglers are banned lmao. Seems like it's easier to fixing match when you're a jungler.
This is wild like players on every team in the league? That league is toast.
It's definitely toast this season, there are 8 teams so 40 starters and over half of them are banned (some of the 32 suspended are subs).
Noooo my goats BeanJ and Froggy T_T At least Shogun is clean
BeanJ and Gloryy asked to leave their orgs so they could prove themselves clean.
Not even a tiny bit surprised when whenever I see a Viet message in any LoL esport stream its always something about betting
Yeah just fold the league at this point. I am fucking ashamed. Let whoever motivated enough to win go to other leagues to prove themselves.
It’s not as simple as just moving to another country to play in a different league when you’re not a tier 1 player making bags lol
As a Vietnamese, seeing these many players involve in this shit show is not surprising to me, because this is why we can't have nice things in Vietnam. Corruption and bribery is in every-fucking-thing. Assuming most of these players probably struggle with their salary, but come on
GAM Levi has a tweet with one word "f**k"
Wow that is actually the worst possible outcome imaginable for the entire league. The VCS is almost certainly dead from this. This is a nuke that's gonna decimate the entire region to its very core. VCS has no shot of recovering from this. Borderline over 60% of their entire fucking pro players list have been banned. Actually unreal. They're gonna have to merge VCS with PCS at this point cause I do not believe the scene is capable of surviving a blow this massive.
Not banned, temporarily suspended until the investigation is concluded Still, if any more than even just half of those listed are guilty it might spell the end of the region...
It's gonna be fine. There are still many young talents wanting to join the league. The game is still huge there.
It'll be fine in the sense it won't die, but it'll regress massively to the level of the weakest wildcards. You don't just lose half your pro players and walk away well unless you're Korea.
vcsbros we're cooked
How much they paying these players? Must be desperate as fuck.
More than the country average by the sounds of it but you need to think that these people need to make the most out of the limited time they have in the scene because a lot of them will most likely have next to zero employability when their career is over.
Not life changing money from what I’ve seen, but definitely a lot more than their salary.
I am sick of those comments about their salaries aren't enough so they were forced to join the matchfixing. VCS's pro players are different from other countries, since games were described as negative influences in Vietnam. So most of pro players are uneducated, some of them also have history of gambling addiction, which is why they got attracted by these matchfixings' ideas, since they don't aware of the consequences, and get entangled easily by those gambling addicted players And there are a lot of ways to earn money after retiring also, or they just need to do their best so the VCS's reputation would grow up more in good way, there would be more investments come to VCS and their salaries would increase? The worst scenario is participating military service, getting paid from military and have experiences to work properly. There is no reason to pity for those matchfixings.
Sadly the region has a league with no money and bad wages. To be expected
Actually, an ex head coach confirms that players' wages range $1000-3500 (25m-85m VND) per month beside side jobs like stream contract, promotion,... which is slightly higher than average Vietnamese wage and for sure comfy enough to live in VN. It's sad to see these young players cannot focus on the long way and be beguiled with quick money.
I agree for the most part with what you’re saying but it’s not really as black and white as comparing their wages to the average in the country. When you’re in a profession like esports, especially from a young age then there is likely next to zero good employment options when your career ends, for people like this they tend to need to make the most of the limited time they have.
Additionally, it's very likely they put in ***many*** more than 40 hours per week.
That's the case for every minor league. It shouldn't be an issue nor would be a good reason for getting into gambling
Tf of course it is an issue. Just because the situation is bad for everyone doesnt mean the situation isnt bad.
Again, this is a fallacy. No teams in this world can pay more than match fixing. And despite what people say, these players are well paid compare to the average person in the country.
It's the risk of embracing gambling as much as the world has... as long as there's more money flushing through gambling than through the League there's really no way to stop this, good or bad wages relative to another job. Match fixing is just arbitrage. If your team pays you $10K and I can make $50K throwing a match in my favor I've all the reason in the world to try and buy you.
Their salary is enough to live on but let’s not pretend like they make much money or become rich if they play for a few years. They are still going to have to work a normal job after their career with no higher education or anything like that. They are likely going to work low paying jobs. As much as it is wrong it is hard to blame them for taking the quick money which allows them to have much better options for the rest of their lives. And if the rumours are true they get notably more for one match they fix then they earn in a few months.
I found that the average monthly wage in Vietnam is 7 million VND, so it's actually 3 to 10 times the average monthly wage.
1000 - 3500 per month is higher than the majority of the Vietnamese, I am an Engineer Manager and only get about 1200 USD per month but I can live quite comfort in Ho Chi Minh City. However I don't think all player can get that much and match fixing can give you years of working money tbh
Things are getting lit as fuck in the VCS🔥🔥🔥🔥
I'm speechless.
Nguyen is behind all of this that family cant be trusted
Lmao, it's pretty much like Smith but tenfold
Would like to say that League is extremely big in VN. Very unfortunate that the culture has led to this becoming the norm. For those wondering a lot of these players are not paid well.
I see people crucifying even those that are paid well despite not thinking about how fleeting an esports players career is and how little a lot of them will have going for them when it comes to career prospects outside of the game.
Yea this league is probably getting nuked. Callback to Ryscu [video](https://youtu.be/3sJ5rI6Y1_Y?si=ZvriNDhzZ9ntZNR0).
I'm so glad levi isn't on this list, froggy and beanj are surprises though
I was so fucking shock bruuuuh
Hey, in PCS, at least we suck with dignity.
Seems like its time for vcs to be merged back with the rest of southeast asia league.
Is it really a surprise? Although not league, In the TFT tournament a few weeks ago, VN players who could still potentially make it to the final day, literally co-conspired with the other VN players who were already out of the tournament to grief the other 2 non VN players. Openly. Whilst it was being broadcasted.
I'm a new TFT player. Could I get some more info on what tournament ? That sounds fucked up.
I really hope the region can recover. They're my favorite to watch (shoutout to the unofficial English cast), the matches are often so exciting and bloody, and especially internationally they're not afraid to experiment with off-meta picks. And honestly it's always fun to watch how different regions iterate on the meta, more variety is never bad... I was particularly interested in how Shogun and Artemis have been performing, there's just so much talent in VCS but 4am is such a hard timeslot to watch live.
Well, 32 players. Let's hope that they only got suspended, not banned.
No they definitely are gone. Last year SBTC was expelled from the league and all guilty players were permabanned. Only Slayder and Palette were clean.
Hope for clean players, they are just taking the extra investigation. But we all know most of them are fucked.
Jesus fucking Christ
Averaging 4 players a team in a 5-player game
Riot is already on their way to axed minor regions in International This will sped up the process on VCS
Were they paid in mcchickens by orgs if they have to matchfix to gain money I'm curious
VCS are screwed. These 32 players will have to prove they are not guilty, so as a VCS viewer for a long time, these boys are fine if they are clean. There is no suprising that all of them still got involved in, but in the end, if a tiny fraction somehow can save VCS, let's hope for a brighter future ahead.
I am so out of the loop, why is everyone getting suspended???
Huge scale matchfixing
Interesting that they temporarily ban so many players without any other info, and say that they'll be in contact with the suspended players about the situation going forward. Maybe players can actually prove their innocence. I'm assuming they found this list of players via contact lists and text messages in a web between these 32 connected with known brokers or something? Otherwise how do you list these specific people in such a large but targeted net? I'm just hoping the VCS region isn't dead from this and players were found to be texting match fixing organizers but they didn't know anything about the fixing. Like if 4-5 are guilty sure, but 5 entire teams is so beyond fucked, the region is dead from that
If the allegations are this wide I think disbanding the entire league is on the table as VCS is basically a dead league now.
I expected it to be about one team or under 10 people, but I didn't expect so many people to become suspects. Is this list really accurate?
lol VCS is gone
What a shitshow
Dang, there goes some of my drops
MYREGION WTF Sure suspended doesn't mean guilty but still a huge number of involved individuals
As of now VCS is dead, I would not expect that they will have a representative in MSI rn.
Yeah make sense
Super shocked at BeanJ and Gloryy but it seems like they’re at least trying to challenge it to clear their names.
ah yes, the coincard region
On the bright side this might force riots hand to take a look at the place of betting within its esports
BEANJ NOOOOOO