Chinese cybersport problems

Match-fixing scandals are ongoing in China. Most often, tier-3 rosters fall under the organizers’ hot hand: for example, in 2018, the scandal around the KDB and Brave Heart stacks was discussed at reddit with might and main, and even earlier, a little-known Rock.Y and ULrica rosters were found in the game. The tricksters did not differ in talent in these matches – today even such players of the Sentinel rank do not seriously commit such blatant “mistakes”.

Of course, the players were punished – but the problem is that these bans were exclusively demonstrative in nature. Dozens of local small-scale tournaments are regularly held in China, where one-day players perform, who neither before nor after these competitions appear on the professional stage anymore. Here, for example, a certain LIKK, who played for Brave Heart, managed to spend ten matches over his career. Ban one such Doter and he will register ten more accounts.

In this regard, the Newbee ban is hype news, such large tags in China have not been punished before. Caliber player Xu Moogy Han will no longer be able to get lost in the crowd and re-emerge under a different nickname – perhaps somewhere in the local online championships, but it is unlikely that this prospect will please the finalist of The International.

Interestingly, in this situation, the organizers did not name specific matches in which Newbee allegedly violated the fair play. So what is she to blame? In April, the team lost nine meetings in a row, showing a very unstable game – in theory, any of these matches could be negotiable.

Click-to-enlarge image

Earlier, Newbee was in the middle of a scandal with match-fixing during the qualifiers for the major. There, the team lost to the Avengerls in the quarterfinals, but then equalized after a series of very strange fights performed by the opponent.

The legend of the Chinese “DotA” Zhang Xiao8 Ning was so sure that Avengerls intentionally “leaked” the match, that in case of an error he was ready to literally eat his own excrement. Nevertheless, the roster is still “free” – and may even participate in the qualifiers for the next rating tournament, if one day we live to see it.

After the Newbee ban, English-speaking caster Kyle Kyle Friedman remembered the organization of this match and suggested that it was he who caused the punishment. If the commentator is right, then Newbee in this situation did not “merge” the match, but organized it – the Avengerls team played in the giveaways. Why not punish her?

You will say: “Surely these players have already caught a trace.” But this is not so – on May 10, the roster made the final qualification for China at the ESL One Birmingham 2023 and was one step away from the next stage! The tag on the server was represented by all the same familiar (no) people – Exx (playing as soul goodman), Pabiyon ʚΐɞ and Deska hiding behind the nickname ???????????.

The Newbee ban is, rather, a message to other lovers of agreements: “If even such a large tag can be punished and virtually permanently removed from Dota 2, then such a fate will catch you sooner or later.”

The region has long been looking for new ways to deal with elusive match fixers. For example, in September 2019, Jack KBBQ Chen, who was just speaking as the manager of Newbee, said that the organizers began to use … a polygraph to search for violators. The problem is that the lie detector testimony in most countries is not considered sufficient grounds for accusations, and therefore it is rather a measure of intimidation of inexperienced violators, who are often teenagers who are new to the law.

Ban Newbee is the same demonstrative measure as a lie detector, which should be a signal to the Chinese community that the plums of matches will be severely punished. All means are good in war — and it is precisely in China that it is going. Last summer Bu YaphetS Yantsyn He said that in the region there is a real doping mafia – cybersportsmen are threatened, they are required to merge matches and extort money even to play matchmaking calmly.

Refuse to pay – and the Ladder Mafia will make sure that in every second match you come across feeders and ruiners. It sounds like a story from the Black Mirror, but for Chinese Doters this is a harsh reality. It is logical to assume that these same attackers have power not only over the pubs, but also over the mass of regional leagues – therefore, the organizers have to play “evil cops” trying to drive newcomers into the head: it is better to get a feeder in the pub than a ban for life.

The question remains, why did Newbee get involved in this? After all, this is a club owned by one of the richest people in the world – Wang Yue. Surely the players of such an organization could pay off the mafia and leave this war unattended, right?

Not certainly in that way. In 2016, Wang Yue really entered the Forbes ranking with a fortune of over a billion dollars. But since then, the businessman’s career has turned in a completely different direction. A year later, he disappeared from the top of the magazine, and in 2018, investor Vici Gaming announced that Yue was mired in debt – allegedly because of interest rates. Weibo wrote that Newbee employees didn’t receive a salary for about half a year, and once at the club’s office they turned off the lights for non-payment – and Yue did not deal with the problem, but sent everyone home.

I do not claim that this was the reason for the club’s possible participation in contractual matches. Obviously, there is no question of bankruptcy – since then, the organization has consistently performed at major tournaments, and even joined the American squad at TI9. Experts then estimated that it cost the club approximately $ 100 thousand. However, the organization had financial problems, and its owner at one point owed millions of dollars in football bets – in the cinema, donors with Italian surnames often solve such problems.

The reasons may be different, or they may not be at all. I like to think that all this is a misunderstanding or even a cunning plan of the association of Chinese clubs, implemented to combat fraudsters. Newbee has already responded to the allegations and promised to file an appeal – perhaps everything will really be decided peacefully. And young Chinese doters will surely remember that it is impossible to hide the plums of matches, even if eSports legends do it.

The question in this situation is not only that Newbee violated (or not?) The rules of fair play, but that the Chinese Dota 2 has long been mired in a web of contractual matches, scandals and various types of fraud. The region needs help understanding these issues and building a healthy ecosystem. Perhaps The International’s champion ban is a good reason for Valve to intervene?