Alleged League of Legends Cheats Fined 30 Grand

The Wooster

King Snap
Jul 15, 2008
15,305
0
0
Alleged League of Legends Cheats Fined 30 Grand


Professional League of Legends team, Azubu Frost, is down 30 grand thanks to its screen watching antics.

By most accounts, the recent League of Legends World Playoffs have been troubled. Not only has the competition been marred by numerous technical issues, the results of the quarter-finals have now been called into question following accusations that some players used the venue's giant monitors (the ones meant for the crowd) to cheat.

For some reason, it never occurred to the event organizers that a giant screen showing where each player is might confer an unfair advantage to players who glanced at it. Rather than say, spend twenty bucks on a screen to put between the players and the giant monitors, officials elected to rely on the honor system. Players were instructed to face ahead their monitor at all times. This worked about as well as you'd expect, numerous players were caught looking at the screens. Most were let off with warnings after officials decided their bouts of screen watching didn't give them a real advantage, but one team was found to have cheated, and they've been hit with a sizable fine as a result.

Officials found that one player, Woong, gained a clear advantage in his quarter-final match by looking at the big screens, and that his team, Azubu Frost, changed their tactics after he passed information onto them. Despite the fine, which covers the prize money Azubu Frost would have received for reaching the semi-finals, the matches aren't being replayed, as Riot believes Woong's cheating didn't decide the winner of the game. TSM, the team which lost, could possibly complain, but it turns out they were screen watching too.

The $30,000 will go to a charity program in Korea.

The traditional punishment for screen watching, as decided by the court of TimeSplitters 2, is a quick elbow in the ribs followed by a medium-grade titty twister for repeat offenders.

Source: League of Legends Forums [http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2663221]



Permalink
 

Shockolate

New member
Feb 27, 2010
1,918
0
0
Saw screenshots on the LoL forums. Looked pretty incriminating.

League of Legends just can't catch a break lately, uhh?
 

Treblaine

New member
Jul 25, 2008
8,682
0
0
Rather than say, spend twenty bucks on a screen to put between the players and the giant monitors, officials elected to rely on the honor system.

Click and press 9

Who is running this mickey mouse operation?!? Honour system? WTF?!?! PC gaming should not have to deal with console woes like BS social rules on screen looking.

Anyway, my rule when playing split screen games is Screen-Looking is not against the rules as you can see my screen as well as I can see theirs. No unfair advantage. It just adds an interesting dimension to the game of seeing what your enemy sees at the cost of what you see.

Even games without split-screen, I'd love to see a "perk" or special ability that allowed you with either the push of a button or a picture-in-picture in top corner (like Radar in COD) showing what the enemy sees. A kinds of "second person story telling".
 

Andy of Comix Inc

New member
Apr 2, 2010
2,234
0
0
Riot's ineptitude has been pretty astounding. I dunno how hard it is to look at, say, MLG, and just do what those guys do (as far as functionality goes). I know that organizing events like this is hard and all, but it really does make Riot seem unprofessionally incompetent. Like the internet connections dropping out mid-game! In their own game!! Their own server! They couldn't have worked around that at all? Jimmy-rigged a LAN client for the event? Set up an in-house internet server or something? Considering the money that put into this, they really could have organized it better. And I really don't want to dismiss their effort - this is the first time doing this kind of thing and there are going to be elements they've overlooked. But the kind of things that SHOULD have occurred to them but somehow didn't... it's sad.
 

Evil Smurf

Admin of Catoholics Anonymous
Nov 11, 2011
11,597
0
0
there is no honour among Thieves LOL.

I like how everybody was cheating
 

Tanakh

New member
Jul 8, 2011
1,512
0
0
Andy of Comix Inc said:
Riot's ineptitude has been pretty astounding. And I really don't want to dismiss their effort - this is the first time doing this kind of thing and there are going to be elements they've overlooked. But the kind of things that SHOULD have occurred to them but somehow didn't... it's sad.
Wait, is this Riot organized? Wow, how incompetent can they get!

I guess if it's their first time, but then talking about a frist time DotA torunament brings to mind the international organized by valve and makes them look even worse -.-
 

Andy of Comix Inc

New member
Apr 2, 2010
2,234
0
0
Tanakh said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
Riot's ineptitude has been pretty astounding. And I really don't want to dismiss their effort - this is the first time doing this kind of thing and there are going to be elements they've overlooked. But the kind of things that SHOULD have occurred to them but somehow didn't... it's sad.
Wait, is this Riot organized? Wow, how incompetent can they get!

I guess if it's their first time, but then talking about a frist time DotA torunament brings to mind the international organized by valve and makes them look even worse -.-
I don't know it's completely Riot organized, but it is 100% independently funded by Riot, so I assume they had most of the hand in organizing it, too. But even if they weren't, it's an official event with their company's name stamped all over it. It's embarrassing for and is on their shoulders that this event was the mess it was.
 

AsurasFinest

New member
Oct 26, 2010
90
0
0
Tanakh said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
Riot's ineptitude has been pretty astounding. And I really don't want to dismiss their effort - this is the first time doing this kind of thing and there are going to be elements they've overlooked. But the kind of things that SHOULD have occurred to them but somehow didn't... it's sad.
Wait, is this Riot organized? Wow, how incompetent can they get!

I guess if it's their first time, but then talking about a frist time DotA torunament brings to mind the international organized by valve and makes them look even worse -.-
Wasn't even their first time, they've run two seasons now, that they've fully funded and organised, with backing from Tencent, one of the biggest companies in the world. Valve has ran The International two times and got it essentially perfect the second time.

They don't really have any excuse except stupidity. But then that's Riot all over isn't it? Stupid design decisions, stupid and abusive financial decisions, stupid ploys to stop other games in the genre from being played at events. Honestly hope they suffer a real kick in the pants from this, they are ruining competitive gaming with their dodgy practices and hopefully this is step one on the road to that path
 

surg3n

New member
May 16, 2011
709
0
0
Fined? - is that really the right word to use?, or is it just plain misleading?
They weren't fined, nobody has the authority to fine them, they were disqualified - but then that wouldn't sound so catchy as a topic title I guess.

President Obama is dying...

...to see the new Tim Burton movie.

Could the Escapist be any more tabloid!
 

The Wooster

King Snap
Jul 15, 2008
15,305
0
0
surg3n said:
Fined? - is that really the right word to use?, or is it just plain misleading?
They weren't fined, nobody has the authority to fine them, they were disqualified - but then that wouldn't sound so catchy as a topic title I guess.

President Obama is dying...

...to see the new Tim Burton movie.

Could the Escapist be any more tabloid!
Except a sporting organization (or indeed any organization) can fine its members. They don't have to pay, but if they want to play in sanctioned events they have to.
 

Tanakh

New member
Jul 8, 2011
1,512
0
0
surg3n said:
Fined? - is that really the right word to use?, or is it just plain misleading?
I agree in that is misleading. A fine usually implies the fined person will lose money, in this case they will win money, they won't get the $ 150,000 but $ 120,000. About a DQ, the link to the official posts in the OP says nothing about it.

A prize reduction for cheating is better wording IMO.

AsurasFinest said:
Valve has ran The International two times and got it essentially perfect the second time.
IMO it was perfect the first time, and by perfect I mean it was as good as the other e-sports tournaments. The second one was the best e-sport tournament in history in therms of organization, have never seen the players, the casters and the viewers so happy about the whole event; especialy the players, they seemed wide eyed about it.
 

Guffe

New member
Jul 12, 2009
5,106
0
0
Love the picture in the article.
Other than that not much to add, don't cheat!
 

Zeriah

New member
Mar 26, 2009
359
0
0
This whole tournament has been a bit of a joke. This had the potential to (and despite everything, probably still will) be easily the biggest e-sport event ever, with $2 million in prize money and some ~280k viewers watching live on Twitch and ~150k watching live on Own3d, broadcasted in dozens of languages, just for the group stages. If they would have pulled it off you could have been looking at 1 million+ viewers tuning in live for the grand final. This would have been huge for the entire gaming industry and even bigger for League of Legends.

Instead the event has been just one giant derp, with multiple issues throughout. They had to restart games (some of which one team was so far ahead they had a good 80% chance of winning) simply because of technical issues and no lan support, the stream was dropping over and over again (which forced them to postpone the games until days later) and finally their absurd logic with the big screen showing the locations of everything to anyone who tilted their heads.

The audience (as you might expect) has not taken kindly to this and the viewer numbers have dropped pretty dramatically, with the semi final viewer numbers down about a quarter from those of the group stage.

Also considering that games are won by snowballing from early advantages all the time and Dyrus (the person who would have got the kill and first blood bonus if they didn't cheat) losing his lane was a huge part of the reason they lost the first game, it most certainly could have affected the outcome. Honestly in my opinion they should have dq'd Azubu Frost or allowed a remake. Now Azubu is in the Grand Final and losing 30k for the chance at a million is absolute chump change for them.

Edit: Agreed with others here, the DotA 2 Internationals have been organized so much better and the game is still in beta!
 

Vivi22

New member
Aug 22, 2010
2,300
0
0
I find the idea of fining the team for their own poor planning to be laughable. I don't follow LoL so I haven't seen it, nor do I care to, but the idea that they would punish players because they made it possible for them to see everything is so ludicrous it almost hurts. Sorry, but I just can't take anyone seriously when they punish others for their own stupidity, and especially so when the problem should have been self-evident before hand, and so easily solved.
 

Soak

New member
Sep 21, 2010
139
0
0
It's not a cheat. It's the introduction of the new Summoner skills system:

innate - "you're now playing LoL, duh" your skills accumulate dickhead-points, increasing your LoLiness, resets on being punished by the tribunal, which is very unlikely to happen
Q - "peek" take a peek at the big screen, oldest skill in the book there is, accumulate a dickhead-point
w - "basic flame" insult an opponent or teammate for no good reasons, accumulate a dickhead-point
e - "participate in blamewar" deny responsibility and maturity by randomly blaming others, prepare to be blamed at, accumulate a dickhead-point
r - "Honour is for loosers" behave like a total prick before you vanish into a final rage-quit, accumulate 10 dickhead-points
 

ksn0va

New member
Jun 9, 2008
464
0
0
Didn't The International have teams inside booths? Why is this a problem here in LoL?