Two e-sports stories this Friday....

One, good...  The other?  More endemic to this blog.

• First, the good one.  The NBA will partner to create a professional NBA 2K17 e-sports league.

Especially as the NBA is trying to clean up their image, I can see why this is a good thing.

One caveat, as my anonymous friend pointed out:  There is so much corruption in e-sports right now, any involvement may be a bad idea.  We'll have to see.

And what might bring all that about?  Try this League of Legends story:

• The Oceanic Professional League Challenger Series, the second-tier League of Legends competition in Australia, New Zealand, and associated areas, has been rocked by a scandal.

Quite a number of the players on the top rosters of this league have been banned from the game.  There are eight teams in the OPL.  Each team in a League of Legends game has five players.

Sixteen players in this second-tier Oceanic league (in which two teams are promoted to the Oceanic Professional League, the top tier) have been banned in a massive Competitive Ruling, three of which for toxicity.  Three more were penalized for sharing accounts.  Ten others, in a more disturbing development, were banned due to involvement in a process called "Boosting".

This, a year or two after the OPL had to become the first league in top-level play to expel a team outright for a number of suspensions.

"Boosting" is a process where a lesser player pays a player of more skill to advance their character.  It is, effectively, "power-leveling" through RMT (Real Money Trading) in the game, and is illegal on both sides of the equation.

Originally reported in Kotaku, they note that the standard Challenger Series salary for a "split" is only $6,000.

Banned for Weeks 2 and 3 of the season for in-game behavioral issues:

• Dmitry Botov of Team Noxide
• Milos Mladenovic of Team Regicide
• Andrew Licata of Outlaws

Now you go to Account Sharing.  Week 2 and 3 bans for:

• Jordan Middleton of Tainted Minds Blue
• Kevin Su of Team Regicide
• Alex Nang of Team Regicide

Wait, didn't this very league throw out a team from the top tier for accumulated suspensions?  This would be the same three Rich Gang got to get the bounce-out.

And now the Boosting bans:

• From Outlaws:  Morgan Khuu, rest of the year.  (Technically, the "2017 Competitive Season", which wraps with the World Championships in China -- expanded to 24 teams and a two-phase format)
• From Legacy Genesis:  Kalvik Raajendran and Cameron Douglas, both for this split only.
• From Team Regicide:  Adem Tontu for this split, Jaeung Han for the rest of the year.

Wait, this means that the ENTIRE Team Regicide team has been banned for at least two weeks?  Should see what happens down the way here.

• SIN Academy gets three:  Ryan Gibbons, Ari Greene-Young, and Daniel Ealam, all for this split only.
• From Corvidae:  Oren Hipwell, this split only.
• And from Tainted Minds Blue:  Luke Duske, rest of the year.

There are supposedly 8 teams in this ladder.  By my math, only Team Alpha Sydney escaped suspensions.

• Team Noxide got one two-week suspension.
• Outlaws got one two-week suspension, one for the rest of the year.
• Legacy Genesis got two one-split suspensions.
• Team Regicide had it's entire team suspended, three for two weeks, one for one split, one for the year.
• SIN Academy drew three one-split suspensions.
• Corvidae drew a single one-split suspension.
• Tainted Minds Blue:  One two-week ban, one for the year.

Well, it's obvious that there need to be major remedies at this level.

Two franchises are being worked with to allow them to continue, but there's no way, in my mind, at minimum, that SIN Academy or Team Regicide should not be immediately expelled from the Challenger Series.

In fact, the review basically indicates, to me, no advancement to the OPL should be made for the second split.  Also, no demotion from the OPL.

I think it is now clear that there are even more severe problems with the OPL than the expulsion of Rich Gang would seem to indicate.

And this comes at the worst time for Riot Games for a region like Oceania.  Starting this season, they are giving the "International Wild Card" lesser regions a more direct path to influence the seedings of the World Championships in the Midseason Invitational and a direct spot in a new first phase of a now two-phase system for the World Championships themselves.

That said, this is not good news.

My remedy:  End the first split now.  Throw out all of the teams except for Alpha Sydney.  Ban Sin Academy and Team Regicide for the balance of the year.  The other five teams join the top nine teams in the Oceanic Open Ladder to determine the other seven spots for a new Challenger Series starting after the Midseason Invitational.

No advancement to or demotion from the OPL itself until after the World Championships, and a full review of the entire situation.

But they did continue. One thing I am continually sickened by is Riot Games' inability to properly police their game, in the name of money and the show having to go on -- at all cost.

• Tainted Minds Blue was forced to forfeit their first match (unknown as to whether it was due to the rulings).  Alpha Sydney, seen as a NOTHING team (and was the only team to escape bans) defeated them in about 36 minutes in a complete rout.
• SIN Academy was allowed to continue.  And they drew Team Regicide.  HOW THE FUCK DID THIS MATCH TAKE PLACE???  SERIOUSLY!  SIN Academy were forced to forfeit they ban phase for this game -- each team can remove five champions from the selection pool, and SIN Academy was not allowed to take part in this process due to not fielding their substitutions for the banned players in time.  Regicide won in fairly quick fashion.
• Outlaws defeated Corvidae.
• Team Noxide defeated Legacy Genesis.