As Esports grow in popularity in western markets, with the continued growth of games like League of Legends, DotA 2 and SMITE, organisations managing them and the players themselves, must be careful not to fall into the same pitfalls as the South Korean StarCraft 2 scene.
While in Korea Esports have been a major competitive arena and viewer sport for many years now, the established nature has meant that there is a huge betting side-business and that has infected the games to a great extent. Indeed it was recently revealed that some of the world's best players competing in StarCraft 2 were taking bribes and dives.
You can't necessarily blame the players, as they were offered many times more than the top winnings in several tournaments to throw just one or two games, but it does call into question the legitimacy of the tournaments and the entire pro-esports arena.
If companies like Riot and Valve want to avoid killing organised esports in the west before they can truly take off, they will need to avoid something like that happening in their games.
Measures should be taken, but perhaps the best we can hope for is that players take their job seriously enough not to throw away their integrity for a few thousand dollars.
What do you think organisations can do to help stomp out this sort of match fixing in Esports?
Image source: Wikimedia
