You’ve heard the jokes – yes, Koreans apparently really, really love StarCraft II; in fact they famously even watch StarCraft II tournaments as if they were major sporting events, with stadiums and everything. And now, the country is apparently in the midst of a match-fixing scandal that is beginning to resemble some kind of video game version of Watergate.
Eight people have been arrested by Korean authorities as part of an investigation into match-fixing allegations in StarCraft II competitive play. According to a report by Gamasutra, one player is alleged to have been paid ₩70,000,000 ($61,439) to throw one match, while other players were claimed to have been paid around ₩35,000,000 ($30,716). Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so funny any more. 11 individuals have been indicted. Eight people have been arrested, with two people avoiding charges. One person “remains at large.”
All of this comes after news in October of last year that multiple arrests and lifetime bans had been handed out in investigations into StarCraft II tournament match-fixing. StarCraft team Prime head coach Wae-Sik “Gerrard” Park and pro players Byeong-Heon “YoDa” Choi and Jong-Hyuk “BBoongBBoong” Choi were arrested at that time.
And the scandal didn’t end there. Brokers and financial backers were also arrested as part of the investigations, including former pro-gamer and esports journalist Jun-mo “Enough” Seong, who acted a broker. It seems that this scandal just keeps getting bigger, and starting to go way beyond players to a large and pretty sophisticated conspiracy.
We’ll keep you up to date on this scandal, which just seems to keep getting bigger and crazier. If you are a StarCraft II fan, The First Nova Covert Ops Mission Pack was just released on March 29th.