Gaming News - StarCraft Cheating Scandal Rocks South Korea

We all know South Korea takes their StarCraft seriously, but here's a new window into just how seriously: Reports of widespread match-fixing and illegal betting is rocking the pro-gamer StarCraft community in the country, literally shaming some of the most popular professional StarCraft players into retiring.

As Gamepron reports, "various pro gamers" were involved in rigging their matches in coordination with illegal gambling groups, having some players intentionally lose their matches as well as leak replay files of their matches to said gambling groups. But it wasn't just a few current players involved in the deceit -- evidently the widespread match-fixing involved retired players and coaches who helped the gambling rings get in contact with the current players in the first place.

And what's more, reports state that the e-sports organizers in South Korea knew about the match-fixing (although for how long isn't clear), and attempted to resolve the issue themselves before actually discussing "the possibility of co-existing with the illegal betting sites."

As it turns out, South Korea's human rights laws prohibit the names of criminals from being released, so who specifically is implicated in this massive scandal is still unknown for sure. However, reports state the scandal touches "many A-list StarCraft celebrities," including Ja Mae Yoon (AKA "sAviOr"), one of the best-known pro-StarCraft players in the country. In fact, the cheating is so rampant and such a large story in South Korea that it's even been likened to the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which several Chicago White Sox players were discovered to be throwing matches during the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Yes, this is that serious in South Korea.

Interesting side note: The Black Sox scandal was partly the inspiration for the wildly inaccurate song "Kenesaw Mountain Landis" (note some NSFW lyrics) by Jonathan Coulton, who has of course written quite a few videogame-related songs as well (including "Still Alive" for Portal). We can only hope this means Coulton will some day write a wildly inaccurate song about the Great StarCraft Scandal of Twenty Ten. Thanks 1up...