Russian rigging of ESL punished

Hello everyone,

in recent days, I have recieved numerous e-mails regarding this issue and its solution. I normally try to stay way from ESL (the same with Clanwars), but this was pretty blatant, so here it goes.

Some Russian teams (specifically, Dignitas and DeNova) have a nasty habit of rigging ESL matches by intentionally losing some. The entire point of that is the fact that under some circumstances, such a thing will allow weaker teams to pass to finals (those LAN finals that get sponsored with real money), making the opponents easier for Russian teams.

During the matches (linked above), Dignitas apparently intentionally used unviable tank setup (Caernavon, Tiger 2, AT 15, T-34-3, T-44), which allowed it to lose without drawing attention, but people noticed

DeNova was somewhat less smart about that and openly used HE shells only in the rigged match:

denova

ESL staff agreed with the accusations (in one case) and took action. Apart from banning one Polish team (unrelated), DeNova was found guilty of fixing the match with SPALE team and will recieve a “heavy prize money fine”.

33 thoughts on “Russian rigging of ESL punished

  1. - DeNova was found guilty of fixing the match with SPALE team and will recieve a “heavy prize money fine”.

    Why are they still getting any prize money at all!? They should be disqualified and band from future contests if you ask me.

  2. what about people who cheats in ESL ? I am talking about few incident with admins involved when some team get discalifacion for no reason or loose without a battle proving that admins was “bought” by other team. When money are in game it is not a surprise that this things happens but at the first of sign of that all ESL should have been reformed but this dont happened….

  3. Idea: instead of slapping players on the wrist for rigging, permaban everyone who was on the team at the time.

    Seriously. There should be a zero-tolerance policy for this sort of thing. “Fining” them leaves them to rig another day. And before the inevitable “well now they’ve learned their lesson”; it’s playing the system to gain an unfair advantage, there’s no lesson to learn, they knew EXACTLY what they were doing to begin with. The only thing this teaches them is that next time they have to be more careful about it.

    Taking a stricter stance and making an example out of them, rather than playing catch-and-release, will make people less willing to try and rig things to start with out of fear of instantly losing everything.

  4. How about actually working on a league system in which winning every single match is encouraged?

    Make up overly complicated rules, then complain about people understanding them better than you do. It feels like Brood war 1998 all over again.

    • I recommend the round robin pools followed by direct elimination system used in fencing tournaments. Teams are grouped in pools of 5 to 7 teams per pool. They play every other team in their pool, then the results are tallied by victories, damage caused, and damage received. All teams from every pool are then ranked in that order: most victories, most damage caused, and least damage received. (The last two numbers are usually combined into a factor DC/DR) When the direct elimination phase is set up the highest ranked team plays the lowest, the second highest plays the second lowest, etc. During the early phase of the DE (round of 64) the tough matches are those in the middle of the pack e.g. 32nd place vs 33rd place. The net result is that it makes no sense to throw a match during the round robin phase because that means you’ll be facing a tougher team during elimination.

  5. Just another proof that this Game is rigged.. RNG solely exist to be able to rig the Game! Why is it setup by such a wide margin (dmg – penetration e.g.) so you can do even Player Nerfs and Clan Nerfs whatever – what can be done, will be done.. simple as that!

    Still i like the Game, its just a bummer… so, to sum it up… its not surprising me at all.. its kinda “suposed to be”!

    gg WNG

    • Dude, what?…. Oh, I see.

      *puts on my tinfoil hat*

      It’s obvious that this conspiracy is connected to aliens taking over the world with WG as their puppets and RNG as the mind controling mechanism.

    • what i dont really understand is how u can have a balanced tournament (ESL , pro-league… etc) with a 25% RNG … i mean its just plain old bullsh!t …. 2 tanks with 400 avg dmg …. one shots for 500 other one shoots for 300. and regarding RNG in randoms we all know how that works

      • It’s a common complaint from people in the “pro” scene. The RNG as far as damage rolls in this game is fucking outrageous.

        It’s fun when you high roll 2-3 times in a row, but it’s highly toxic when you don’t and that’s pretty ridiculous.

        The RNG spread for damage should be NO more than 10%. It shouldn’t be static because damage spread actually makes sense “physics” wise, that said 25% is retarded.

  6. There are less obvious ways to throw matches… Russians need to step their game up, such fail at failing.

  7. disqualified!!
    if they are so noobs to not hide that they sell the game.. to bad..

    the mistake is not that they sold the match, the mistake is that they didn’t hide it well.

  8. I can only say that SPALE is very good team and such things “allow weaker teams to pass to finals” is not true. Every team which goes to the 1st 16 is very good team, so please have respect and don’t false accusations.

  9. BigBadvuk is russian biased at least, so..:)
    They should ban denova & spale, cheater are cheaters no matter how much votka ties them nationally.
    ‘heavy prise money fine’ – what a joke.

  10. Ban Spale? Because they played against a team using HE ammo to loose? Think before writing please ;)

  11. SPALE has benefits from that and they are Finnish team. They are not Russians at all, what is the problem to get it? Look at the 2nd campaign map SPALE members are from RSOP clan and they are in top players by Fame Points.

    Really guys?