The StarCraft community has been hit extremely hard in the past few days, with the news that the Korean pro gaming scene has been rife with cheating for numerous years. Details are still pretty hazy, but it seems several players, tournament leaders and even coaches have been involved with illegal betting sites, earning huge amounts of money for criminals and themselves by fixing the results in televised matches. This isn't the first instance of cheating in the Korean pro gaming scene, as anyone familiar with the WarCraft 3 community will tell you.
Some of the accused are not only unbelievably good players, but have a huge following of adoring fans. The popularity of top StarCraft players in Korea is akin to that of the top sports players in countries more familiar to us, which of course means there is a great deal of money involved. Like the E-Sports scene, cheating is evident in almost all sports in some degree, whether it be on a small, often comical scale such as this, or on a much larger and more damaging scale.
These are the "players" that give football a bad name
Those of you who follow football will remember the Italian betting scandal of 2006, which lead to 5 of the top teams in the world being docked points, fined, banned from future tournaments and even lead to the league champions being relegated. The scale of this scandal was over and above anything seen before in professional sport, and its effects are still being felt today, as some of the culprits still lie in jail.
All this beggars the question: What drives these players to criminality? Simply put, money talks. The sad fact of the matter is that people involved in such sports can make much more cash down illegal avenues than they can through honest involvement. Despite the fantastic amount of money that is in these sports, illegal betting rings are so much more profitable, even the largest teams cannot compete financially. This is the reason for the fall from grace of so many players of various sports, and it has threatened the competitive future of many over the years.
We can only hope that the recent revelations about the StarCraft pro gaming scene will not harm the development of the E-Sports community in the sequel, which has had an extremely promising start in this, a fledgling Beta test. With any luck, the StarCraft 2 community will consist of only those players proud enough of their play to let that be the focus.
