Presentation
Streamers & Gamers: Esports riddled with doping, cheating, and match-fixing
Following the discovery of the misappropriation of funds raised by a gamer for a charity, the world of esports and video game streaming is slowly preparing to regulate its ecosystem and address certain harmful practices and behaviors.
In December 2019, a streamer well-known in the Twitch community, with over 80,000 subscribers to his channel, admitted to misappropriating nearly €5,000 in donations collected for the French Multiple Sclerosis Association (AFSEP).
Disavowed by his community, who verified the legitimacy of the transferred donations and removed them from the Twitch platform, the streamer admitted to the acts and is awaiting potential criminal and civil proceedings against him. Some subscribers estimated the amount of his fraud to be between €10,000 and €15,000.
This affair tarnishes the image of esports charity marathons, popular events where France – streamer Zerator – recently distinguished itself by raising over €3.5 million in a single weekend for the Pasteur Institute.
A legitimate extension of sport into the digital world, esports and the strength of its community must now confront the abuses and risks already observed concerning the integrity of video game competitions, primarily match-fixing, cheating, and doping.
Video game competitions: Esports match-fixing and betting
Originating in South Korea, numerous cases of match-fixing through bribery of video game clubs or players are being denounced repeatedly. The motives can be many: to recoup a larger share of the winnings, increase the notoriety of the winning team, and multiply the profits associated with esports betting—real money, cryptocurrencies, or skin betting.
Examples have already been revealed in the esports world, with varied responses from esports stakeholders: lifetime bans of players from games and streaming platforms, termination of advertising contracts, criminal and civil lawsuits, etc.
Below, you will find several cases related to the difficulties facing the esports world.
- Match-fixing in Paris: The cancer of esports
- Cybersecurity in video games and esports: the imperative of co-regulation in the sector
- Bans and exclusions: The power of video game publishers to sanction
- Esports and video games: The regulation of loot boxes by video game publishers
Video game competitions: Cheating & doping
The growth and continued existence of esports competitions necessitate guarantees regarding regulations and controls on player and team fraud. For several years, cases of cheating and fraud have emerged, particularly through software manipulation, player doping, and corruption.
Software Cheating. The world of video games is rife with code inherent to the game itself or computer tools that allow for modifying the integrity of the game to give a player an unfair advantage in competition.
Alongside the controls implemented by video game publishers on their software code, esports competition organizers have demonstrated a variety of responses, primarily focused on physical measures: sound and visual isolation for players during competition, real-time analysis and monitoring of players’ computers and screens, etc.
Cheating through doping. Numerous professional clubs and players have been implicated during competitions for using pharmaceutical products designed to optimize their performance, improve their physical and mental endurance, maximize their concentration, decision-making, stress management, and so on.
In the absence of an existing legal framework on this matter, it falls to the organizers to implement an official policy and allocate the necessary resources to conduct doping tests during their competitions.
“For example, the media outlet Connect Sport reports that a member of a team’s management witnessed a case of ‘Adderall blackmail’: players, seeing their competitors using this drug, allegedly threatened their organization with joining another team if it didn’t provide them with it.” Esport Avisa Partners
