On January 29 2015 03:22 Djzapz wrote: You don't need to report your CSGL winnings to the IRS because you didn't win money and you won't find a court in the world that'll say you need to declare your earnings before they're even sold for money.
Sure, I agree, but then people have to stop calling what IBP did illegal. Either skins are real money and treated as such or they are treated as nothing but some pixels. So IBP intentionally lost a game for no value. Professional sports teams arguably lose on purpose all the time for actual value(draft picks).
On January 29 2015 00:07 DEN1ED wrote: Just by playing CSGO you can accumulate quite a bit of money if you just sell your cases(yay more gambling, SLOTS!), it's not just pennies.
Sure, parenting is a big factor as well. You seem to be living in this world of extreme black/white though. There are many causes and effects of every problem and thinking Valve has no role in it seems insane.
As for the "quite a bit of money you accumulate", it's steam money, it's not money you've earned, and it's money you wouldn't have had without skins or if you played another game. You can bet it away. Whatever. It's bad if you buy crap and you bet it, but that's a parent's responsibility.
And this is exactly the opposite of what kids/young adults should be learning. Gambling addiction is a very real problem and it starts with this kind of fucked up logic.
If you think so, don't let your kid bet items on CSGL.. Take some responsibility. Don't like gambling, don't gamble. Don't like driving? Don't drive. Things have risks, you make choices.
I'm not a parent nor do I have any kids. Do you really think that parents have 100% control over their kids though? I highly doubt they even realize that they are able to gamble like this. Also, you don't seem to understand addiction. There is a huge difference between liking something and being addicted to it. Gambling is highly addictive and even more so in youth. I've seen a lot of gambling addicts and it's really scary. It destroys lives.
With your logic why don't we just make heroic legal and have it available to kids at lunchtime. No problem there. The parents will just tell their kids it's bad so they won't do it.
Your logic is so hard to follow, I don't even know where to start.
#1. IBP fixed a match for personal gains. Huge ban in any sport, end of story. Stop arguing it.
#2. Addiction is completely irrelevant to this conversation. So is parenting. Stop it. If you want to start a thread about "Should there be a system for gambling skins?" then fine. But get it out of this thread.
#3. Your heroin argument is the biggest "slippery slope" logical fallacy I've seen in a long, long time.
Keep your posts to the discussion topic. As it is, I can barely follow what you're trying to argue, since every sentence is about some random half-baked idea.
On January 29 2015 04:19 Djzapz wrote: I mean there's a case to be made for regulation, sure. But it's not the main problem as far as this thread goes. I'd be in favor of a 18+ clause for using CSGL. But this has nothing to do with what IBP did. Trying to prevent betting altogether is the equivalent of telling people it's illegal to drink. You can be addicted to drinking, if you tell people they can't drink though you don't fix anything.
Exactly, not once did I say people shouldn't be allowed to bet at all. Just the current system needs a lot of fixing.
On January 27 2015 11:19 lestye wrote: I can't believe they did something so reckless when they're scene and future were looking so bright.
Kids get greedy and think they're invincible. Put it up to the fact the eSports community is still quite young and there's not many mature figures in the community.
This. It's a classic problem in college sports. You're 18, 19 years old. All of a sudden, thousands of people are cheering for you, you're popular, you're making money (in esports that is. Only scholarships for college). Your professor lets an assignment slide because you've got a game that week. You start to feel like you're above the rules.
So then you do stupid shit. Break the law, do drugs, gamble on a game, take money from boosters. You'll be fine, you're the big man on campus. Who's gonna do anything about it? And then, inevitably, it all comes crashing down. It's a damn shame, and careers have been ruined over it.
It's gonna happen a few more times in eSports. Guarantee it. All we can do is hope that older players will help guide the young blood along the way. Teams really have to be more proactive about it also. C9 ban betting on ANY matches for their players. Would love to see more teams take that attitude.
There will always be a few bad apples here and there, but at least with this the scene just took a step towards maturing properly. As many have said, it'll take time, but with Valve's involvement as well as leagues following suit, things are looking great.
I'm more concerned with the anti-hack features in online matches now, if anything, and tournaments/teams requiring players to have proper DDoS prevention measures set up.
I'm not too familiar with the current leagues' anti-hack systems, but how good are they really? Do we need Valve to step in on that front too?
The only one I feel bad for is swag. He was 17 at the time and it's probably really difficult for you to assert yourself against the peer pressure to the older teammates. Ironically, he is currently the only one and the first to make a public statement or apology in the matter.
He was the best player in NA and he had so much more potential due to his age. I want to see his sentence reduced at some point :/
On January 29 2015 04:45 Souma wrote: There will always be a few bad apples here and there, but at least with this the scene just took a step towards maturing properly. As many have said, it'll take time, but with Valve's involvement as well as leagues following suit, things are looking great.
I'm more concerned with the anti-hack features in online matches now, if anything, and tournaments/teams requiring players to have proper DDoS prevention measures set up.
I'm not too familiar with the current leagues' anti-hack systems, but how good are they really? Do we need Valve to step in on that front too?
I'm pretty sure ESEA/CEVO anti-cheat systems are better than Valves, and even then I don't think it catches everything.
This is great! Goodbye to trash and well handled by valve. I have only just installed CS:GO at the urging of a starcraft friend, and still have zero competitive games played. Still, even bad press is press. I'm preparing to join the competitive player pool in NA, let's count that as growth in the CS scene and keep the party going.
I have spent some time thinking about how I wanted to word a statement that would best portray my feelings & emotions towards my actions but also in a way that doesn't seem fake, cheap, or disingenuous.
First and foremost, I would like to apologize to the community for the set back and embarrassment I've caused to the game, and to my fans.
Additionally, I would like to apologise directly to Richard Lewis. He was an old friend and provided me a place to sleep and play games rent free when I was homeless. He stuck his neck out for me and I couldn't give him the decency to own up to my actions. We have confided in each other many secrets to which we still possess to this day, but I was afraid of what he would do with the information as a journalist.
Out of all of the players on the team, Skadoodle was the only one with enough integrity to not accept any skins. Unfortunately I did not have the same integrity as I was at a weakened emotional state at the time having just lost at a major CS:GO event and having decided that I was going to quit the team. I do not know whether I did not profit off of the scandal or if I've only convinced myself of this, but looking back at my trade history, I can see a net of -1 skin directly from the ordeal. It was never a plan for me to get rich quick.
The part of the situation which hurts the most is the amount of time, money, and energy I have put into building the NA community since CS:S through various ways including funding teams to go to events out of pocket, creating a website with free content including match commentaries, tips & tricks, demo reviews, shoutcasts, and more. I never made a profit from any of this content and I did not make a profit from paying for teams to go to LAN events. Everyone was quick to forget all the good I had done. The longer I stayed in this community, the more I ended up getting burned by it to the point that I stopped putting in so much time, effort, and energy. I stopped looking at the game with defined moral values and I in turn exploited it where I could. But even if I was getting burned by the community, it still doesn't make what I did right, or acceptable.
Somewhere along the lines I lost perspective of everything and stopped seeing everything black & white. At the start of this new year I had big plans for making CS:GO bigger in NA and was eager to put the work in to see it happen. I wasn't proud of my past decisions but it had happened and I had to move on. Now I am at the point where everything that I worked hard for has been taken away. I was hurt more than everyone else by the punishment but that is something I have to deal with for the rest of my life.
I am still a host of knowledge about Counter-Strike. I will try to make all of this information available to everyone for free. It's the least I can do. People will try to boycott my content, and I understand this. I will continue to stream and endure. I wasn't in CS for money. I played and competed because I loved the game. Everyone who knew me before 2013 knows this. What I am today is not what I used to be. I hope I can again change into the person I once was. I hope in time everyone can be the supporters of me that they once were.
I've lied to myself about what happened and in effect I've lied to my friends, family, and supporters. I'm still grasping the severity of the situation and working to rectify it. In time I hope that in time I can be remembered for what I've given to the community and not what I've taken from it.
Statement from Hiko regarding his and Skadoodle's plans.
As far as Skadoodle and myself are concerned regarding our plans for this season of CEVO / ESEA, we do not plan on picking up 3 new players to continue out the season and will most likely take a little time off to see what happens with upcoming talent in the American scene. Going over our options, we have decided there aren't three players we would feel comfortable enough with in the short AND long term to make this season worthwhile.
By no means are either of us retiring. We both still have the itch to play and win, it's just not realistic at this moment in time. Hopefully by next season we will have promising opportunities and will be able to field a roster we both believe in. I have informed the leagues to mark our rosters as dead as we move forward and consider options in the future.
The beginning of 2015 was marked by one of the biggest scandals in Counter-Strike history, implying various players from the north american scene, including some former iBUYPOWER players. The protagonists got banned from all of Valve's major tournaments for an indefinite period. After Epsilon and Robin "GMX" Stahmer parted ways, the latter tweeted a threatening message about whether he should "drop a bomb" or not.
We went to see him to learn more about this. The former Epsilon captain revealed us that he had information about a rigged match implying his team. He also admitted that he was implied in this case with all of his former team mates. He added that acquaintances of the Epsilon players also benefited from this fraud.
"First of all, I want to thank the Epsilon organization, its director and the staff members who truly are great people. They always supported me and my team mates since June. The Epsilon staff was not aware of what I’m about to say.
I want to apologize to them, and to all the community for what I’m about to say. There are things you regret, and this is the case. In last September, we deliberately lost our ESEA match against OverGaming in order to win skins for ourselves and for friends of us. All of my team mates and some of their friends were aware of this. We however did not planned this together, and every player acted on its own to get their skins back. I won some skins via a friend on this match, and I know some of my team mates also won skins."
So now it's either a shitstorm because Epsilon gets permabanned by Valve for match fixing, or a shitstorm because they don't get punished and iBP(and their defenders) think they're being treated unfairly. Good shit.
EPT
