Counter-Strike eSport News: Top Level American Tourney Rigged?

There are allegations that a match-fixing scandal is happening at the top level of the Counter-Strike eSport competition.

IGN.com reported that in August 2014, iBUYPOWER, one of the top CS teams in the United States was playing against team NetCodeGuides.com. The US team was expected to win at the CEVO Professional Season 5 but suffered a lopsided lost 16-4. Fans were wondering why iBUYPOWER's play was rather strange, going for difficult knife kills and even appearing happy that they lost.

According to the team, they suffered from timezone hangover after spending time in Cologne, Germany for the ESL One Counter-Strike major and that they did not have enough practice on the map.

Daily Dot wrote that a young eSports journalist provided screenshots of a conversation he shared before the match with Shahzeb "ShahZam" Khan, a professional player. According to Khan, the match between iBUYPOWER and NetCodeGuides.com was rigged and that the former was going to lose intentionally. When Khan was confronted about the issue, he initially said that he will reveal the persons involved in the match-fixing and declared that he was innocent. Later on, however, he changed his mind and failed to comment.

Daily Dot also reported receiving new corroborating evidence from various sources that strongly pointed to the fact that the game was fixed and that several large bets were placed prior to the match by a player who was connected to players from both teams. Reportedly, the bets went over $10,000. On January 5, an ex-girlfriend of player Derek "dboorn" Boorn divulged new details about the match-fixing by revealing texts of Boorn confirming that the game was rigged.

GamesIndustry said that an employee at CS:GO Lounge, a betting site, confirmed that nine accounts that put the maximum bet on the match were linked to only one user. Each of the nine bets had a return of almost $1,200 worth of in-game items that are also worth the same amount in real money in the Steam community.

CS:GO Lounge stated, "We are always happy to conduct investigations when it comes to match-fixing and will continue to do so. We don't tolerate match-fixing at all. Hopefully this will now be the last of match-fixing drama that we have."

CEVO also issued a statement amidst the scandal, "With that said, CEVO prohibits players from participating in any form of betting on CEVO matches involving their own team, and any player who is caught violating this policy will be immediately suspended. We have in the past and will continue to investigate match fixing allegations with the cooperation of the various betting sites that host our matches."