On February 07 2023 05:56 geokilla wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2023 03:58 Balnazza wrote:On February 07 2023 02:49 geokilla wrote:On February 07 2023 02:47 Balnazza wrote:On February 07 2023 02:42 geokilla wrote:On February 07 2023 00:32 Balnazza wrote:On February 06 2023 23:26 geokilla wrote:On February 06 2023 15:24 Balnazza wrote:On February 06 2023 14:10 geokilla wrote:On February 06 2023 03:02 Balnazza wrote:
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Using your arguments, I want to say: Maybe NBA is just not harsh enough?
To give you a different perspective: In german football Bundesliga, there was a big betting scandal 15 years back or something like that. I believe a referee threw three games. And you know what? he got banned for life, never to pick up the whistle ever again. Because of the games he manipulated, a coach lost his job (and had trouble finding one afterwards) since his team lost an important game. Another referee was accused to be in kahoot with him and also had his career ruined, even though he was innocent. Iirc the damage this scandal produced was so massive, it even damaged the financial success of the Bundesliga in terms of viewership etc.
This one referee produced a gigantic form of damage and he did it for peanuts.
The NBA might not have too big troubles, but that is the luxury of a franchise league. In other sports, losses can have tremendous consequences for your staff or even the team as a whole, for example when your team gets relegated, has to fire people and maybe get financial damaged so hard you never get back to the first division.
Life and the BW pros before him damaged the game aswell. It wouldn't even surprise me if part of the reason Proleague ended would be connected to this scandal, because it destroyed the trust people have in the sport. If the NBA (and I take your word for that) is too lenient, that is there problem. But in Esports, we should not allow matchfixers to have any stand. They forfeited their right to participate, forever. You can definitely say the NBA isn't harsh enough, but at the end of the day, the NBA is a business. The bottom line is most important. Keeping these shady refs, lightly punishing star players, and issuing directives on how games are to be officiated help drive revenue and profit. No one wants to see a playoff series end in 4 games in a best of 7. So if the referees can change the outcome of the game by calling it to the advantage of the underdog team in order to extend the series, they will do so. They did everything in their power to protect the league, teams, and players and did so successfully. I would like to see these match fixers get punished too but we know this will never happen. Not the way we want. The rich and powerful always gets a slap on the wrist while the poor are the ones who suffer. It's like how insider trading and pump and dump trading is considered illegal but if you're rich and powerful, you can do it with little to no worries. Look at the various senators involved in insider trading these past few years. Or Elon Musk manipulating DOGE, TWTR and TSLA. On February 06 2023 12:33 Fango wrote:
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Absolutely not. The impact of a crime factors in the punishment. If the NBA or CSGO were ruined because of fixing, then those same refs/players would definitely get banned.
Life wasn't the first, he would have been aware of the BW scandals and their impact. A lifetime ban should be the absolute minimum when your actions have ended the careers of countless others, and many more potential future ones that never happened.
Additionally, is there not any sympathy for the innocent pros and staff? Can you imagine how much of an insult it would be to allow Life to play in tournaments against players from the very scene he ruined financially? There are players who never got the chance to have fulfilled careers because of him. They didn't deserve their scene and infrastructure getting cut. Life deserves the ban. The NBA was put under a microscope during the betting scandal. David Stern swept it under a rug and Tim Donaghy took the fall and FBI had to end its investigation into the NBA because of how the events of the scandal unfolded. If I remember correctly from the documentary, the investigator from the FBI was convinced other officials were involved and it wasn't just Tim Donaghy. Also what constitutes match fixing? Wikipedia describes it as, " The act of playing or officiating a match with the intention of achieving a pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. Again, using the NBA as reference, one can argue match fixing has occurred multiple games in a NBA season. Or what if a team intentionally rests its players or intentionally tanks for a better draft pick or so they can play an easier opponent in the playoffs? All this seems to fit the definition of match fixing. While what Life did was a clear example of match fixing and has been punished appropriately for it, we can't pretend it won't happen again. How are we going to protect the game, the league, the teams, and the players? Gambling is going to continue in virtual sports and physical sports. We see the NBA, NHL, NFL, and European football leagues embracing it because it's a business and it helps bring in additional revenue. We can't just pretend gambling doesn't exist and match fixing won't happen again. Players, teams, and the leagues itself are incentivized to do it in some way. Either directly through the exchange of money or indirectly. My dude, I'm sorry if I come across a bit rude now, but it is 7am here and I literally can't figure the fuck out what point you are trying to make. Is your argument for unbaning Life really "But the rich and powerful never get punished, so he can't get punished either, even though he clearly was wrong"?! And I still don't get how "the NBA seems to be unwilling to do anything against matchfixing" (if that is true) is any argument why SC2/Esports shouldn't be harsh to matchfixers? How is a system you yourself identify as broken your prime example how Esports should do it? "North Korea is an unjust dictatorship that starves its people to death...exactly how every state should operate!" or what? And as I and others have told you before: "Protecting the player, the game, the league" means exactly what they did with Life - punish people who destroy the trust in the game. Yes, a 4:3 grand final gives "greater revenue" as a 4:0 sweep, but only if it is legit. If at any point there is even the idea in the mind of people that the 4:3 wasn't legit, it loses all revenue. If I think soO is a matchfixers and because of that he lost all those finals (I don't think that, it is just an example, I love soO!), his entire appeal as a player is lost. You watch sport for the thrill that anything can happen. If you want scripted events, why even bother having players, just make a Starcraft 2 anime every year. And as a last, probably useless attempt to give you a glimpse why matchfixing might be bad and not "good revenue": Imagine you are an aspiring player and suddenly win an important series against a World Champion or S-Tier player. It is probably the best moment of your career yet, you are pumped to reach higher, you are...oh, wait, no, sorry, a month later it gets revealed that your opponent threw the game. Sucks, huh? Last but not least: If your entire point and argument is "I like Life, can he please play again?"...just say that and don't give lectures on how to not handle matchfixing with examples of the apparently completly useless NBA... Welcome to real life and real sports leagues. Okay, so you seriously just want Life back without any sense or argument, got it. Could have just said that, you know? I'm saying we need to get with the times and learn from other sports leages, real and e-sports. On February 07 2023 02:35 xsnac wrote:On February 06 2023 23:22 SHODAN wrote:
Life must remain banned from all eSports activity, not just Starcraft. when players cheat or match-fix in sport, they are banned from the entire sport, not just a specific league or format of the sport. the precedent has already been set in football, baseball, volleyball and other sports. when there is indisputable evidence against a player, it's a lifetime ban from all activity within that sport. Life's cheating damaged eSports as a whole. ah he cheated at backstroke. let him compete in the butterfly race instead. what sense does that make? I sorely miss watching him play, but this is the way it's gotta be. what are you even saying, so lets ban flash too cuz of his crypto scandal since it was not on broodwar but it was something on the same level just on a different "game" or "platform". Exactly. It's a double standard. Why do we need to learn from other broken systems? What do you expect? If everyone on the IEM openly matchfixes we double the viewer numbers or what? That has to be the weirdest and most stupid logic I've heard this decade... Maybe I'm explaining my points wrong but just go read up on how the other leagues, real and virtual, handle their scandals and protect the game and its players. There needs to be a middle ground. Matchfixing is not as simple as you make it out to be. It's not a clear black and white. As I provided with examples in my previous posts, match fixing can occur in various ways, directly or indirectly. Life took money to throw multipe games so people get high betting prizes for it. I think that is pretty much as black and white as it gets. And you protect the game, the players and the league by punishing this, as hard as you can. And this is how a lot of sports handle these kind of things, because it is extremly hurtful to the product you want to present if the scores are in doubt. Doping nearly killed the biking sport as an example and even though it is much cleaner now, no one can do anything exceptional anymore without there being some doubt. That is what happens to a sport when you don't stomp out shit like this with it roots. Because guess what, when people think the score isn't legit anymore, they don't care about the game. If that was true, then the value of most (North American) sports leagues would be in the gutter. Except this is not the case. NBA and basketball is more popular than ever before around the world, league value and market cap is growing at an exponential place, and it's gaining international attention. Another example would be the 2022 FIFA world cup, practically the biggest sport in the world. There were talks and a general consensus that one of the teams was deliberately not trying in their final match in hopes of a better seed in the playoffs. Despite this, the world cup was very successful. Let's not forget there was also the fact the world cup was held in Qatar and the issue of human rights. We can continue to disagree with each other but in my opinion, what you're hoping for is a fantasy. Either we get rid of match fixing, directly and indirectly through things like tanking for draft picks, resting players, and not giving 100% effort all the time in the hopes of a better playoff spot, or we learn to embrace it and learn ways to mitigate the impact of it while continuing to grow the sport. Indirect match fixing happens everyday in every sport whether we like it or not.
How is "not feeling 100%" or "trying to avoid a certain seed" the same as literally throwing a game for the sole purpose of earning money through betting? Yes, there are instances of that in games, but guess what, they are not watched favorably by most fans...apparently except for american who don't care for the sports, just the entertainement. Ever heard of the "Schande von Gijon"? It was a match between Germany and Austria during a World Cup, where the teams agreed beforehand on the score, to get through groups together. Still to this day this gets hated on in Europe and the FIFA even implimented the rule that all last matches in a group must be on the same time, just because of this. And I can guarantee you: While the US leagues are expending, they certainly don't advertise in Europe to fix matches, because no one would care about it here after that...
I don't "hope for a fantasy", we literally have a system in place in Starcraft that protects the sport from bs like cheating or matchfixing. Of course it isn't perfect, but what system is and catches everything. Because evidently, as machfixing scandals destroyed Korea two times (in BW and SC2), it is not something that helps the game. Unless of course we take your approach and just pretend it didn't happen and never reveal it...kind of hard in case of Life who was arrested for that...
Last but not least: If the US sports (the least sport in every possible sport btw...) are the great image we should adapt to...why stop at matchfixing? I propose that every SC2 match should get paused every 30 secs to play a one minute commercial, just like the NFL does. Because it works there it has to work for SC2, right?
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