I’m back in Los Angeles after a week of the World Cyber Games doing video production for GGL Wire, and still find myself marveling at the event. You may be surprised at what I’m really marveling at, though.
I’m speaking, of course, about the massive amount of disputing, cheating, exploiting and general all-around bitchiness during the WCG 2007 competition. If this was the Olympics of e-Sports, a few of the players and teams would have been stripped of their medals already and disqualified from further competitions. Want me to break it down? Let’s start with StarCraft.
Stork
He might be getting paid big bucks to perform Dark Templar rushes at 300 actions per minute, but Song “Stork” Byung Goo proved he’s no different than a pro boxer paid to take a fall when it comes to the World Cyber Games.
In StarCraft Group F, Korean team member Stork faced off against IP.EX (Russia), Ra (Ukraine), Thuoclao (Vietnam) and Fire (Italy). Those in the know picked Stork to advance in first place easily, but he had a different agenda.
First, Stork busted out a banned turret/observer exploit in a game against IP.EX. We covered that exploit with a back story by The Storm Observer Nick “Tasteless” Plott here at GGL Wire. At the time, it wasn’t clear why the Korean e-Sports Player’s Association’s #1 ranked StarCraft player would use an exploit (that is even banned in his home country) in an international competition.
Stork’s next actions muddied the waters even more. After referees forced him to replay the match against IP.EX, he started losing on purpose against Ra. When a player like Stork wants to lose, it’s blatantly obvious. His loss, however, set up a three-way tie between IP.EX, Ra, and himself. Only two players can advance from the group stage, and Stork wanted second place, not first.
In throwing the match, Stork delayed the tournament for several hours. Three way ties required all the matches between IP.EX, Ra and Stork to be replayed until one of the three was eliminated. Stork purposely lost three times until he finally decided to take first place, beating Ra and preventing EX from advancing.
The reasoning behind all this attempted match fixing? Stork wanted to avoid Hwasin, another member of the Korean StarCraft team, in the round of eight bracket stage of the tournament. They were on the same side of the bracket, so if both of them kept winning they’d play anyway, but Stork needed to delay the matchup until the round of four.
After that, it wouldn’t matter, because if sAviOr kept winning on his side of the bracket, Korea would sweep the medals in StarCraft. Amazing how nationalistic pride is allowed to subvert one of the very best events of the year, isn’t it?
In the end, Stork decided to go ahead and beat Ra in the group stage after many hours of delays; maybe he just got tired of the whole ordeal. He then went on to eliminate Hwasin in the bracket round of eight, foiling his own plot once and for all.
Also, Chinese dark horse Junchun “PJ” Sha dominated sAviOr in the round of eight, and took the silver medal after losing to Stork in the grand final.
I was elated at PJ’s success, but he disappointed me in a different way (more on that later). He and Mondragon (Germany’s StarCraft bronze medalist) did an amazing job of bringing home medals for their home countries.
The Koreans actually lowered their own status thanks to the attempted match fixing. Olympics of gaming, indeed.
Counter-Strike
I already knew that the Counter-Strike community was full of cheaters and exploiters, but didn’t expect that kind of epic douchebaggery to go down during the World Cyber Games. Man, was I ever wrong.
First there was the controversy between MeetYourMakers (Norway) and e-STRO (Korea). In the round of 16, MeetYourMakers took down e-STRO 2-0 — or so they thought. Apparently after several hours of reviewing demos, e-STRO claimed to the referees that MeetYourMakers used a crouch jump during their match.
Let’s segue into something else for just a second. Crouch jumping allows you to perform several jumps in quick succession, letting you move around the map faster. In any case, in my opinion, crouch jumping isn’t an “I win” button. You still have to pull the trigger and not die, and all that.
Anyway, after long discussions and arguments, it was decided that MYM should win the match and advance. That was when a Korean S-VIP and VIP stepped in and told the head referee that the match needed to go to a one map decider.
Sound fishy to you? It sure does to me. Check Gameriot’s lengthy and hirsute interview with MYM CS manager nostra for his side of the story.
The whole thing was enough to make MYM’s Øyvind “KF3″ Magnestad get hammered, go nuts and and urinate in a hotel staircase.
Then there’s the case of Virtus.Pro (Russia) and e-Mazing gaming (USA). Apparently Virtus used the flashbang bug to blind everyone on the map during their match with eMg, and the resulting fallout delayed the tournament for about three hours (again).
eMg actually felt it necessary to refuse to play their main match until the issue was resolved.In the end, French team emulate won the gold medal anyway. Somehow during all the whining, crying and exploiting, they managed to pull it together and beat heavy favorite NoA (Denmark).
Project Gotham Racing 3
How could a game that doesn’t even have collisions enabled lead to any controversy? Country flags, that’s how.
When Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) representative You-Shen “D2C-BURBERRYqq” Liu took third place in PGR3, he decided he would be bold and fly the Taiwanese flag during the closing ceremony instead of the Chinese flag. Big mistake.
As it turns out, when he proudly displayed the Taiwanese flag, over ten people from the Chinese team, including StarCraft owner PJ, rushed him and started an altercation. The police were called to break it up, and in the end, the story got a little bit buried, but it was pretty shameful.
Burberry nearly caught a beating at the hotel, and the spirit of togetherness, of the festival, was violated by nationalistic actions yet again.
I guess I could leave you with something about how national pride is very important and the World Cyber Games is the main stage to represent your country in gaming, but then that would run counter to the message that gaming is meant to transcend those artificial boundaries, wouldn’t it?
It certainly seems to me that there are some … nationalistic inequities in the World Cyber Games, at least from my perspective, and the e-Sports community still has a lot of growing up to do when it comes to finding our place in the world.
So instead, I’ll leave you with one word: disgraceful.
23 Comments
Wow I can’t believe I missed all the drama this year!
StarCraft: Those guys were just playing the game the best way they knew how. The illegal exploit I don’t agree with it being illegal at all. I fail to see how the mechanic breaks the game. All it does is add depth.
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As far as the bracket abuse, this is all a part of the game. Like it or not Stork was playing the game which best guaranteed himself, and his team success. If we don’t want to endorse these kinds of actions then a different tournament structure must be considered.
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Counter-Strike:
This is why I had the game and the community so much. Banning something like crouch jumping which again is a mechanic built into the game, which does not break the game, is childish. Furthermore supporting a game that is broken from mechanics like boosted bomb plants, phantom bomb plants, Flashbang Bugs, 16bit Smoke, Wall Clipping, etc… is retarded. With all the problems the game has, it is obviously not suitable for tournament play. Possibly CSProMod will change my opinion on that however CS1.6 and CSS are NOT tournament worthy games.
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Project Gotham Racing 3
International competitions, and competitive competitions on the whole have always been stages for political or social statements. It has always been that way and always will be.
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The only disgraceful thing that I do see is the childish rules that we place on our games for equally childish reasons. Everything else is to be expected from any event of this magnitude.
Starcraft : (that(t/o bug) is even banned in his home country)->it was wrong. it is not banned in our country.
i heard differently, but you could be right.
The Turret bug is banned in every major korean league. WCG is originally (and still is) a korean event and it has always been banned. The issue lies in the fact that the official rules look for an intentional exploit of the bug. When Stork then said that he had no idea about the bug, no one wanted to step on any toes - Samsung, international sponsor of WCG is also his team’s sponser (Samsung Khan).
Obviously he would have taken the match either way but it’s still very fishy
@Khonsu, i have to agree with you points on starcraft. The foreign players admitted to fiddling a bit with their performances to force 2 koreans into a match up. While i agree with you on the glitching as a gameplay mechanic (it is accepted in open arms with pushing through mineral walls) the fact remains that if it had a been a foreign player who had done to T/O bug he would have been disqualified instantly
Regarding the Taiwanese player’s choice of flags:
From the words “instead of the Chinese flag” in your post, it seems you think the PRC flag is our official flag, and the kid chose to be bold and fly a different flag instead. That is a misconception.
It’s not at all about being bold or brave. That is in fact the flag we grow up with in Taiwan. It actually IS a Chinese flag. It was the flag of China before 1949, and is currently still the official flag of Taiwan. That is the flag we have on our passports. That is the flag that flies over our schools. That is the flag you see when you land at our airports. That is the flag that flies in every street and avenue today, on our National Day October 10th.
So it really isn’t about being bold, or about making a statement about independence. It’s simply about flying your own country’s flag, just like the Dutch winner in the center. I’m sure the Dutch player didn’t have any political considerations when he displayed his flag. Well neither did the Taiwanese player. Simply put, it’s the Chinese players who have a different opinion about which country the Taiwanese players’ “own country” should be.
I think the media should stop emphasizing how he was being bold and how he was defying China. He was only doing what was natural for him to do. Wave his own flag, just like everyone else.
On a side note, the Hong Kong team competes under the Hong Kong flag. Why is it that Taiwan cannot?
Kennigit, you are completely wrong about the observer bug. It is completely legal in Korean leagues, simply because it is an easy bug to fix (just simply press ’stop’ on the turret and it will return to normal).
With my opinion on the ‘match-fixing’ matter, the Koreans knew the only way to get as many medals as they could is to ‘throw’ away the games to get favourable brackets. Last year, oov, july and Midas did it (I think), and I don’t see people going off about that. It’s more of a sense of national pride, to rack up as many medals as you can for your country, so thats the reason why they did it.
I can’t believe the situation with MYM - that really sucks, feel for them. As for the Starcraft exploiting Koreans that sort of stuff has been happening for years in competitions so it’s not really anything new.
Finally I had to lol at the Chinese guys, including the starcraft player PJ rushing the guy on stage - is it just me or would that be more funny than scary? Oh noes it’s the starcraft pros! Run for the hills!
Haha nice…Resistance has freeway_RICK, and Starcraft apparently has Stork. Glad to know that weakness of personal character spans all platforms.
“Like it or not Stork was playing the game which best guaranteed himself, and his team success.”
Bracket manipulation is just shameful. Play each game for that game…Not the game 3 rounds ahead. Don’t act like it’s your birthright to play in tournaments like this. The tournament doesn’t owe anything to you or your countrymen.
Especially on a grand stage such as WCG where these players are representing their country, they should try to show a little class.
What should shame have anything to do with competition? Being shamed is a flaw in the western mindset of what is honorable.
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To quote Sun Tsu: The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
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These guys are professional competitors. NOT using every advantage available to them is what is shameful and dishonors their opponents. They were not there to play StarCraft, nor should they be. They were there to play WCG.
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When ever you enter a competition the game becomes more than just the game. If you want to win, you have to play more than just the game. That’s the way it is, don’t try to make it any other way.
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If the WCG wanted to stop play patterns like this, they could easily scrap group play for Swiss play then take the top players and put them into a final elimination tournament.
“Throwing matches” in ANY form of competition, any game, any sport, is shameful. Lifetime bans are handed out for this in physical sports. E-Sports are a special exception because you don’t like the way the brackets are set up? No thanks.
I’m not saying that I don’t like the way the brackets are set up, I’m saying that this is a fact of the play patterns that occur when you set up tournaments in this way. If you did not want to endorse this kind of play pattern, you could run a hybrid Swiss-elimination tournament; however that is not with out it’s own faults.
Stork ala WCG 2002, when Cooler intentionally lost to Ni3 on DM6 so he could knock out ZeRo4 from even making it to bracket stages.
The demo is actually quite classic, and has been the topic of debate many times. I was there casting the game live in the tournament area, and from my eyes, it was definitely a clear throw by Anton. I personally think it was a brilliant move by the Russians…
The Taiwanese guy was heroic, and the Chinese team were asshats. They should have just ignored it. There’s nothing wrong with holding your own nation’s flag.
(And BTW, what is that thing instead of a flag under Liu’s name on the screen?)
If an Israeli won and held up his flag, and a bunch of Arabs rushed him, would you think he was the asshole?
The Chinese players should be sanctioned by the WCG.
As for “making an political statement,” it was an International competition. The simple act of flying the flag of, or being from, China/Taiwan, Ireland/UK, Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, Indonesia/Timor, is a politcal statement. Should people from disputed regions be banned from international tournaments? No. If someone from China agrees to be in a tournament with someone from Taiwan, they need to be civil about it. Flying a flag is not “provocation.”
As for Stork: (1) it’s a legitimate strategy, and (2) he’s still an asshat for using it, because it ruins the fun for spectators. If he keeps this up, tournaments should just stop inviting him.
@Kunochan: The flag next to Liu’s name is the Chinese Taipei flag. Taiwanese athletes compete under this flag due to various disputes between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan over which government is the legitimate government of China.
What headphones/keyboard is he using in that top pic?
Kuno, tournaments like WCG do not INVITE players. Players earn their way into the WCG.
a taiwanese player who won the gold(?) medal in age of empires 2 at the wcg circa 2002 waved a small flag of his own country at the awards ceremony, and got a lot of heat for it afterwards from china and wcg organizers. his team had to issue an apology, for example. at least he wasn’t physically attacked twice, though.
I was a CS ref at this years WCG and the VIPs and SP did not choose to play the third map it was the idead of an MYM player. You are getting a lot of info wrong in this post.
The author wrote:
“I already knew that the Counter-Strike community was full of cheaters and exploiters, but didn’t expect that kind of epic douchebaggery to go down during the World Cyber Games. Man, was I ever wrong.”
The epic douchebaggery is when a news site writer talks down a whole community based on his (good/bad) personnal experience and decides to apply that personnal experience to a community bigger than any other. Does GGL hate on CS because doing so racks up points with the smaller communities it caters to? Yes, the event was far from the best but it did succeed in many aspects. I as a spectator enjoyed it very much, thanks in part to GGL’s excellent casting and to the venue which was superb. The matches were intense, the upsets might have prevented for an epic PGS vs fnatic final but these great matches still went down, they just happened earlier than you’d expect in an international tourney.
As far as the Taiwan/China controversy goes, I think no one here is in a position to discuss it, the matter is complicated way beyond what most of you think. You have to consider current political events + historical events, along with a different sense of nationalism in these countries compared to our western mentality.
I was actually the CS Chief Referee and trust me there’s been a lot of misinformation for the CS situation. First off: the VIPs were in fact the e-STRO manager, the MYM manager and the 2 representative for the WCG delegation of both countries. Other than them, there was the Tournament director wich oversee the whole competition, the Head Referre who’s in charge of leading the referees for every games and another guy (wich would be the S-VIP according to your article) who is actually one of the organizer for WCG. All those people were there after e-STRO and MYM contested my decision of calling a DOUBLE FORFEIT for duckhopping and then play a third map. In case e-STRO would have won that third map, therefore making it 1-1 + 1 forfeit for both team, they would have played a sudden death (basically an OT on the tie-breaker)to see would go through. Both teams were against this and decided to get the WCG Committee. I personnally think that my first decision was the fairest possibility and it would have save some time in the end.
For the USA vs Russia situation; Russia disputed the first match but the dispute got cleared so USA had 1 match. Russia then won the 2nd map: 1-1. Tie-Breaker went down and ended 16-14 for Russia however they illegally flashed twice in the match. Out of those 2 rounds they’ve only been able to win 1 so that round got overturned. It was then 15-15 setting up the table for a dramatic OT. They lost in OT. Then they disputed the USA for duckhopping (again, even though all teams were warned that they could only false dispute once for one rule. Their first dispute was a false one so they couldn’t use it anymore. I decided to review the demos anyway and couldn’t find any duckhopping from the USA. Russia then wanted to dispute for Bunny Hop (what leagues allow a team to re-dispute a match after the first one got cleared: none) Being the motivated referee in search of fairness in this CS world, I did review the demo again to only find one instance where an american player dropped from the ladder leading towards the rafters in nuke making 2 normal without the jump penalty (this isn’t an exploit). Meanwhile I could find 3 instance of duckhopping from the Russians. Add the rail sliding, the illegal flashing (twice), I don’t see how they could have gone away with this. They also had a yellow card (just like the USA) and start threatening of my referees for calling the duckhopping they did during OT. Just that could have been enough to disqualify them.
As fcNz said, this event wasn’t as bad as it seems. The event ran smoothly until fnatic lost and start this whole automatic disputing stuff. I also wants to congrats Pentagram, emulate and NoA for their professionalism and their attitudes. They were models of sportsmanship and I think a lot of “pros” could learn from them. (You can also noticed that two of these teams made it to the finals and the 3rd one was the previous champions).
Being a pro gamer has nothing to do with your skills and the level you compete in. It’s an attitude, a work ethic and how you play the game through that!
WCG-Tee
WCG Grand Final CS 1.6 Chief Referee
WCG Canada Event Director
WCG Canada Head Referee
thierry@worldcybergames.ca
TAIWAN FOREVER
Taiwan better than china
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