Roughly a fortnight after 24/7 eSports made a splash by recruiting Vietnamese Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team Skyred, following some impressive international performances earlier in the year, the Australian organisation has dumped their foreign superstars amid claims of match-fixing.
The move, announced on the 24/7 website, came into effect immediately as there had been no contract signed between both parties.
“24/7 eSports cannot take any actions that will risk the reputation of the organisation and does not condone the act of match-fixing, so we have decided to part ways with our CS:GO team,” the Australian outfit said.
24/7 added that “there was no definite proof of matchfixing [sic]” but that the decision came following “allegations made by anonymous sources from the Vietnamese Esports Community” and that there was “overwhelming public opinion” against the former Skyred players.
“24/7 eSports will be re-evaluating our involvement with the South-East Asian region and currently looking into other eSports titles as we believe it has a strong market and many talented players deserve opportunities to grow their brand and gain exposure for their respective region.”
This comes not long after Valve reiterated on the official Counter-Strike blog that any players found guilty of rigging Counter-Strike matches would be permanently banned from all Valve-sponsored tournaments. “We will continue to take whatever action we think is necessary to protect the entertainment value created by professional Counter-Strike, including, on occasion, terminating our relationship with individuals who have demonstrated a willingness to exploit their fans’ faith in the integrity of the sport,” the developer wrote at the time.
It’s not clear whether a ban will be issued to the Vietnamese players given the circumstances, although it seems the Vietnamese community has made up its mind on the matter. The only match the five played under 24/7 eSports was a single best-of-three in the latest D!ngIT Asia Invitational, where they lost 2-0 (11-16 on de_cache, 10-16 on de_mirage) to inchk1ng in the loser bracket finals.
24/7 eSports were contacted prior to publication but declined to comment.
Comments
4 responses to “Australian eSports Team Drops CS:GO Players Following Match-Fixing Allegations”
As someone who has been around the Australian competitive eSports scene for around a decade now, who in the f*&$ are 24/7?! Did this “organisation” spring up overnight? Their website looks like it was created in a single night, their about section is literally two sentences.
Never heard of this organisation, nor the players involved. What a hokey pokey article, these people are nobodies. They literally just adopt a team on the 27th of December and less than a fortnight later they drop them. Such journalism, much important.
If this has happened in a proper Australian eSports team, such as Archaic, Exile5, VOX, Team Immunity, Trident, Qlimax etc etc, then maybe it’d be worth writing about.
The organisation is new, but what makes it intriguing is that any Australian outfit would pick up a foreign team (particularly one so far away) and then dump them over the match-fixing allegations.
Valve’s stance towards iBP and their subsequent lack of action over this team — they were accused in 2014 when they were under the team name Legends — also makes this interesting and worthy of following.
iBP were competitive at the majors, I’m somehow assuming this SEA team made it anywhere out of qualifiers, which would explain why they’re not even a blip on Valve’s radar.
Is it the fact the adoption was inbound to Australia that makes it news worthy, or are you comparing this to the old VOX team being adopted by a NA org?
Either way, jump on the Titan disbanding as an event worth reporting.
I can see it now: “KQLY’s VAC ban causes Titan to disband: How cheating affects more than just you”. Then fill the article with sob stories about Titan staff who are now jobless because of one fool’s actions.
Better yet, maybe I should moonlight for KotakuAU.
They competed at the Napoca qualifer as Skyred and put in some solid performances, which is what put them on the radar. I’m not drawing any comparisons to what happened with Renegades. You don’t think it’s worthy of discussion, that’s fine. I outlined my reasons above and we’ll just happily agree to disagree.