Korean authorities have investigated a player’s claims of match-fixing in the region’s premiere tournament last year—claims he made shortly before jumping out of a 12-story window.
Cheon “Promise” Min Ki, who is recovering after his fall was stopped miraculously by a collapsing garage roof, alleged that his team, Ahq, had willingly thrown games after their manager told them that they would be kicked out of the tournament by the organizers if they won.
The Korean eSports Association (or, KeSPA), an official arm of the South Korean government that manages and regulates esports, immediately took action and promised to find out what really happened last year, even if it meant requesting a police investigation.
Earlier this week, they released their initial findings, and fans have quickly posted translations to Reddit. According to the report, “most of what [Ki] said was true and had evidence to back it up.”
No Dae Chul, the team manager, was discovered to have repeatedly pressured the team with outright lies. The biggest one? According to the report, here’s what Chul told his players:
“OnGameNet has a tradition of receiving money from big company teams that join the league as a ‘Advertisement fee.’ However because our sponsor (ahq) is from Taiwan, they couldn’t understand and refused to pay. When I told OGN that ahq doesn’t want to pay, OGN said if you cannot pay the fee, you must lose the game against the big company teams.”
No such fee exists, and there was definitely no command from OGN to lose games on purpose.
Further on, the report clarifies who exactly was involved with the match fixing. One of Ki’s teammates, Yeon “ActScene” Hyeong Mo, had also been approached by Chul, and had agreed. But it turned out couldn’t go through with it—a study of the matches showed that he played his best.
“We conclude [Mo] is innocent,” the report stated.
The match-fixing lied solely upon the heads of Ki and his corrupt manager, whom Ki alleges was attempting to fix match results to win money by gambling against his own team.
There has been no discussion yet of any possibly punishment for Ki, but for his manager, KeSPA has already begun several proceedings. A KeSPA official went on record saying “We currently have filed a lawsuit against Mr. Chul, and the evidence report here will also be used as evidence in the case.”
KeSPA has also stated that they will be looking into other teams to make sure that no other players are being pressured as Ki and Mo were.
