The purpose of all heavy sentences is to hide in the snow, and education is the source of chaos.
Text /Li Qing
It has been almost a year since the League of Legends tournament officially announced the "League Anti-Fake Gambling Tournament Results and Rectification Direction". Perhaps everyone thinks that there is no more chaos under the strict rules, but unfortunately, the LPL has once again appeared fake players.
On April 8, League of Legends tournament officials announced on Weibo that Jay players were reported by LGD Club for suspected violations. After investigation, the Jay players fake matches are true, and there are indeed improper acts that affect the fairness of LPL matches and participate in illegally organized bets on League of Legends events.
In response to the above-mentioned findings, the League determined that Jay's behavior not only violated Article 11.1.1.1 of the 2022 League of Legends Professional League Match Rules involving fake matches and Article 11.3 involving gambling, but also passively cooperated in the investigation process (Article 11.2.5 cooperated with the investigation), and then imposed a lifetime ban on him, and he could not engage in any League of Legends-related live broadcasts for life.
The alliance's treatment of Jay can't help but remind the industry of the anti-gambling fake game of last year's LPL and LDL.
Last year, on April 22, the League of Legends tournament officially launched a one-on-one investigation of all players, coaches and training managers of the LPL and LDL teams, and further investigated and inquired about those who had previously been punished. Under this big net, 28 players involved, as well as 12 coaches, managers, teaching assistants and other staff members, paid the price for their actions and suffered the consequences of the ban.
Of the 40 punished, 13 were banned for life. In addition to the above list of suspensions, the League has dealt with other minor violations, with fines or written warnings.
Taking the opportunity of this great inventory, the League of Legends tournament officially announced the "League Anti-Fake Gambling Tournament Results and Rectification Direction" (hereinafter referred to as "Direction"). "Direction" said that the event official will set up a league prevention mechanism, clarify the rules for the reward and punishment of fake matches, enhance technical means, and prevent the occurrence of fake matches and gambling events by strengthening education and training. It can be said that "Directions" is a new set of rules promulgated by the LPL for the prevention of fake gambling after the Financial Fairness Plan.
After 37 days of suspensions and investigations, both the players and the league paid a huge price. As can be seen from the above actions, the domestic League of Legends e-sports led by Tengjing attaches great importance to this - as we all know, the importance of "tournament credibility" for a top event brand, the new e-sports industry is even more intolerant of any shadow, and "eliminating fake matches" has become the most vigilant high-voltage line of the event.
However, after the results of the treatment of the FPX player Bo, the core figure of the last fake race storm, were announced, although the entire processing process and the results of the investigation have reflected the "procedural justice", the 4-month ban punishment was still painless in the eyes of angry netizens at the time.
In order to establish a fair positioning of the event side, Tengjing cannot handle the result according to the change of public opinion, but the FPX of the club involved did not let the players return to the field after the players were lifted, and finally it was regarded as pandering to the public opinion in the compromise of legal and reasonable.
Just when the new law is in place, the situation and facts are more serious "Jay fake game" East Window incident, then the gun hit the head bird, the league has the conditions and necessity, swinging the most stringent punishment stick, issuing the heaviest fine in the history of Chinese League of Legends e-sports to the players, from the qualification of professional players to the qualification of game anchors, the career in its related fields is almost completely over. This approach of the league, while expressing a serious attitude, is more important to show vigilance to other players.
In fact, the lifetime ban from the event's official is not the most serious consequence of such an incident.
The case of traditional sports tells us that fake matches are essentially suspected illegal acts, and there are not a few cases in which the situation is serious and therefore imprisoned, such as Shen Si, a suspected player in the 2003 A-A match-fixing storm, who was sentenced to "bribery of non-state workers" by the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court in 2012, with a fixed-term imprisonment of 6 years, a fine of 500,000 yuan, and confiscation of illegal gains.
To this end, we asked a number of professionals about the situation of this incident, and Feng Suying, the founder of the E-sports Law Society and a lawyer from Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, told ECO E-sports:
"According to the currently published circumstances, Jay's behavior is suspected of violating Article 163 of the Criminal Law of the Mainland, constituting the crime of 'accepting bribes from non-state workers', and if the amount is larger, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention and shall also be fined; if the amount is huge or has other serious circumstances, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years and shall also be fined; if the amount is particularly large or has other particularly serious circumstances, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years or life imprisonment and shall also be fined."
Among them, the criterion of "larger amount" is to accept bribes of more than 60,000 yuan, whether the amount of bribes accepted by Jay players has reached this order of magnitude, there is no public evidence to show; and if the players themselves have other illegal acts that have not been publicly disclosed, such as betting and inducing other people to commit crimes, they may also be added with a number of crimes such as "gambling crimes" and "non-state employee bribery crimes".
Fortunately for Jay players, the announcement issued by LGD, his club, only stated that he "reserves the right to pursue legal responsibility", rather than that he has handed over the relevant evidence to the police or filed an appeal. It can be seen that the club's attitude in the direction of the law is still young in the e-sports players, and it is easy to be seduced by extrajudicial honey. Therefore, he left a line, hoping that he could reflect on and deter others, and not really be sent to prison to get lost.
Just being treated at league and club level is already the best ending for JAY.
Having said that the Jay fake game incident itself and the penalties imposed on all parties, we continue to explore the reasons for the problem. Jay players are the first single players of the LPL club, although they are not the star players who can enter the first, second and third teams, but both their social status and salary will be much better than the LDL players.
In this context, it is clear that he was forced to "take risks" because of insufficient treatment and inability to meet the needs of life, which is obviously not as convincing as in the previous LDL incident.
It is true that allowing every player to live better and focus on competition is the axiom of maintaining the fairness of the event in the commercial sports world, and the famous four major leagues in North America are typical representatives of the implementation of this concept, league of legends e-sports as a latecomer, in the alliance, commercial management has a lot of north American shadow, improve the treatment standards of players naturally put on the agenda very early.
According to publicly disclosed information, the treatment of the main players of Jay's LPL club, if not financial freedom, is definitely far beyond the average working class.
But unlike the four major leagues in North America, in the case of MLB, a player must complete all the school education before landing in the major leagues, from a naïve teenager to a social natural person, and then after the baptism of the 6-level minor league, become a mature and skilled athlete, only to have the opportunity to sign a big contract in the major leagues, so as to complete the goal of changing lives by sports.
But in e-sports, "sports and education combination" is almost a non-existent option, although the LPL has the basis of LLD, it seems that the relationship between major leagues and small leagues, but the LDL selection system, the education level before the selection of materials, the education level during the team have obvious deficiencies, and even today, the phenomenon of "catching a Rank passerby king on the top" still occupies a high proportion.
Perhaps the management of the club will think that the current material selection model is the best solution to the cost performance, to the education of mature undergraduate students to recruit, has long exceeded the "golden age" of e-sports players, let alone the development value; in this logic, the practice of rigidly copying MLB is not of practical significance, but if the players are not mature in education, the legal risk is huge, so how to enhance the investment of clubs, especially LDL clubs, in the education side of players is very critical.
Of course, juxtaposed with this logic, it is difficult for clubs with excellent financial conditions to take the initiative to increase the investment in player education, after all, the probability of accidents is still relatively small, and the cost performance of investment in education is far less than that of investing in training. Then in this case, the league establishes strict rules, makes the players and clubs in the accident pay a higher price, and establishes an open and reportable player education system to force the clubs to move towards the norms.
Also different from the four major leagues in North America is that whether it is LPL or LDL, except for the top individual cases, the role of the player's agent is generally missing.
In traditional sports, the athlete agent is not a professional bag, takeaway assistant, but the existence of athletes and teachers, playing a role in their career supervision and gain value, and the outside contact players, even club contact players must first pass the agent. It is conceivable that if in the Jay fake event, there was a player agent who knew about it and advised it at the first time, maybe the tragedy would not have happened.
The esports industry also needs ace agents like Jeff Schwatz.
If we take a longer-term view, in fact, the "golden age" that initially affected the logic of e-sports club selection is slowly being broken - Faker, born in 96, has a month to celebrate his 26th birthday, recognized as the elderly of e-sports, and he has just won the LCK Spring Championship as the main force; also in the LPL, there are Doinb and Lvmao in 96, Rookie and Karsa in 97, they are all older players who were previously considered by the outside world. The spring race was also amazing.
We can even boldly make a judgment that the previous "golden age" is precisely because of our unscientific and unscientific understanding of e-sports training, and with the exploration of more professional fields, the end line of this golden age will be longer and longer, which is also the path that traditional sports have taken.
Similarly, players with higher levels of education, more mature individual mentality, and longer service hours can also leave better memories and cultural products for the tournament and clubs – just as walker biller has now become the Dodgers' ace starter, but who doesn't like to see Clayton Keshaw, who loves the city and loves the public good, still standing on the pitching hill to pitch?
Therefore, for e-sports players, the lack of a complete school education is a pity, or it may be a hidden danger of many adverse consequences, then the club's educational significance to them is particularly important, so that they first become a mature sports athlete, and then achieve their own legendary road. If all parties are willing to show more patience, this investment in education is extremely valuable in the long run.
Unfortunately, there is no remorse in the world, and the brand damage caused by Jay's fake game storm to the LPL League and the LGD Club is irreversible, but this time the rapid response and heavy punch of both sides finally won back some impression points.
In the era of social media, people's memories of events are superimposed, and the attention of this event may soon pass, but the next time there is a similar storm, people will string together all the new and old accounts, and the blow to the brand is doubled.
Therefore, how to further solve the existing contradictions and problems from the root causes will be the focus of the next discussion between the league and the club, anti-gambling strict regulations have been established, salary and well-being are sufficient, and all the purposes of the establishment of heavy sentences are for the sake of hiding, so improving the education of players and legal science will become the top priority.