As reported, the VCS organizing committee and Riot Games recently announced the suspension of 32 individuals across all 8 teams in the tournament. The reason is to allow the organizing committee to investigate negative behaviors and work towards cleansing the VCS tournament. This incident has quickly become a highly controversial topic in the League of Legends community both domestically and internationally due to the large number of individuals involved.
Furthermore, the VCS incident has raised concerns about the fairness and integrity of other tournaments. In a recent article by the owner of the H2K organization (which previously participated in the LEC) – Richs Wrath, he revealed that the issue of match-fixing is rising sharply in League of Legends. In fact, Richs Wrath even stated that players involved in negative behaviors in the LCK or LPL would soon be discovered.
“Match-fixing is rising sharply in League of Legends. Matches in the LPL are often pre-arranged. The community may be shocked when players from the LCK or LPL involved in negativity are uncovered in the near future. What if a former World Champion also receives a penalty like this?” – the owner of H2K revealed.
Immediately after being published, Richs Wrath’s article attracted significant attention with over 800 thousand views. If what the H2K owner says is true, this would be explosive information as it could completely undermine the fairness of the League of Legends scene. It would be dire if match-fixing is happening even in the highest quality tournaments like the LCK or LPL.
Clearly, this is a very hard claim to believe, so many viewers have turned to criticize Richs Wrath for providing such information. It should be noted that the leader of H2K, apart from the aforementioned post, has not provided any reliable evidence to support his claims. Therefore, many League of Legends fans believe he is merely leveraging the VCS drama to attract attention.
The truth is that negativity in Esports is classified as an official crime under South Korean law. There have been several cases of Starcraft players in South Korea being punished by law for involvement in negative behavior. Therefore, the likelihood of a Korean player “going bad” is almost impossible.
In the LPL region, negativity occurs more frequently, with several players in the LDL league or a few names like Jay, Weiyan having been banned in the past. However, the involvement of renowned players from former World Champions in negativity has never occurred. Therefore, what Richs Wrath said is very hard to believe and it is highly likely that he is “creating content” to increase his fame.
Basically, negativity and match-fixing are unacceptable in an Esports title like League of Legends. Whether the statements of the H2K owner are accurate or not, it presents a very “dark” outlook for the League of Legends scene. Hopefully, in the future, Riot Games will take necessary actions to investigate and eradicate this issue thoroughly in all regions it manages.