Slashdot Mirror
StarCraft Cheating Scandal Rocks Korea
dotarray writes with this snippet: "The largest scandal in e-sports history is currently unfolding in Korea, with revelations that a number of current pro gamers are involved with match setups and illegal betting. While the gamers are unnamed at this point, the story is said to touch many A-list StarCraft celebrities, including sAviOr, Ja Mae Yoon, one of the best-known and most successful players of all time."
Some people will do anything to get even more money. Its also possible that some of the Starcraft players are seeing a dead end of their time playing gaming professionally. As in they might not be that great at most RTS games, but amazing at Starcraft. And with Starcraft 2 coming along closer and closer, it might be the writing on the wall for Starcraft 1's viability. Cash out while they can and all?
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Actually, if I was betting on the outcome of a contest between two people, I would sure as hell care if they were fixing the outcome and I wouldn't say I am stupid.
Oh, I get it, you just wanted a first post and had nothing better to post than racism. Guess who looks stupid now?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
"You can't know criminals' names in Korea? Kind of weird."
It has it's positives i.e. vigilante justice and not getting ones life ruined if accused of a heinus crime (pedophelia, sexual assault, etc).
In america I find the fact they publish the names of sex offenders grotesque because rehabilitation and re-entering society to lead a normal life is impossible, this vigalante mob justice has never sat well with me.
It's most likely you can't know alleged criminals names for their protection. A concern I have with current US society is the media's influence on our views of 'alleged criminals'. If you're in a high profile case and it turns out you're not guilty the inertia of public opinion against you for being accused can haunt you for the rest of your life. I believe these laws are in response to such situations.
Probably because his name is typically written in Hangul?
For starters, try googling it in Korean?
It's a similar principle as in the West, where you generally can't release the names of suspected offenders (or victims) who are minors (or at least that's how it is here in Australia ... you often hear 'the offender's identity cannot be revealed because s/he was under 18 at the time of the crime). This applies to both those merely accused and awaiting trial, as well as those convicted (or for that matter, exonerated).
The Korean law just goes a step further and extends this protection to all people involved in criminal matters.
I kinda like the idea actually, although there are some obvious caveats. The general public certainly has no right to demonise someone accused of a crime before it's been proved. And even once they are convicted, it is not really the general public's business to know criminals' names, other than obviously those connected with the crime (victims/families etc). They will pay a penalty under the law (a fine, community service, jail time etc) ... but once that debt is paid they have a right to move back into society without being discriminated against for the rest of their lives. And keeping their name out of the media is one way to do that.
The counter-argument is made that people have a right to know if they are living near/employing/otherwise engaging with people who have been found guilty of serious crime (particularly sex offenders or murderers). And it's a good counter-argument. Perhaps we can draw a line and say "people convicted of the most serious crimes or those with no hope of rehabilitation can have their identities revealed, but for minor to moderate crimes, the criminals should remain anonymous". Either that or we toughen up sentencing so that serious criminals don't GET reintroduced into society in the first place ... then the whole argument becomes moot.
I doubt they have an equivalent. Even in other ~Western~ countries there is often no equivalent of such a registry. It's one of those things I always found a bit odd about America actually.
Where I live, you either don't release a serious criminal who is going to have a tendency to re-offend, or tabs are kept on them in other ways (house confinement, surveillance, radio bracelets etc.). I mean sure, the people who live nearby to the to-be-released sex offender will be notified and have a right to object to/block the offender moving into that area. But that doesn't extend to the whole world being able to punch in a random address and see who's around.
I'm not American so I may have misinterpreted what the Registry actually does. If so I apologise. But my impression was that ~anyone~ can search for nearby offenders ~anywhere~, even if that location has nothing to do with them.
If you were betting on the outcome of a football game, I'd say that you were stupid.
Actually I may be able to point out a reason why Koreans are having a shitfit. While I doubt anyone here is old enough to remember the quiz show scandals that hit in the early days of TV here in the US, but it pretty much killed the format for decades after it turned out that the games of skill were basically just pro wrestling, with the outcome decided before the contest even began.
Now for those that don't know Pro Starcraft competitions are BIG business in Korea, with folks buying merchandise and tuning in to their favorites, a lot like the quiz shows we had in the 50s. Now it may turn out that just like those quiz shows the games were rigged, only by the contestants themselves instead of the networks.
So I can understand why Koreans are seriously pissed. it would be like finding out the players were rigging our baseball and football games to win bets in Vegas. While it won't be a big deal to those of us here in the USA, to them it will probably cause as big a stink as our quiz show scandal did here back in the day. And of course you have to add the human element, as nobody likes to find out the athlete you're cheering for is a scumbag and rigging the games.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You're confusing the concept of "news for nerds" with the concept of "news which is personally interesting to me". Nerds cover a wide spectrum of interests and nationalities. The development of these competitive tournaments in the field of gaming are certainly interesting to me on one level, even though I'm neither Korean nor into Starcraft - it's interesting to see where this is headed, and similarly interesting to see the parallels with sports (in terms of the fame of the players and even match fixing scandals now). I don't follow this too closely, I'm mildly interested, but other people follow this passionately, for that particular group of nerds, this is definitely "stuff that matters".
Why is it any different than the "sport" of running into someone as hard as possible so another guy can throw a ball that is not even round for another guy to catch?
Any game that features a competitive element can be raised to the level of a sport if it attracts enough spectators that become interested in the outcome.
Blizzard worked very hard to tune the original SC (with help from players in Korea) to balance the 3 sides to enable it to be a stable enough base for a competitive sport (ie, there's no argument that the Terrans are better than the Zerg or the Protoss etc - they are evenly balanced). Some might say it's even more evenly balanced than a sport where the team with the most money can buy the championship (or at least make a very good go of it).
I realise your AC post was nothing but a troll, but I thought it was worth saying. I've never followed competitive Starcraft, but I can fully understand how people could.