Illegal gambling websites from China are ruining League of Legends for pros and streamers in Korea

Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung has tried to raise awareness about illegal betting websites in China which allowed people to bet and even fix live-streamed League of Legends matches.

As it stands, Riot Korea has been extremely quick to react to these issues. According to an official Riot Korea statement which has been translated by Inven Global, Riot Games is coming forward with a host of changes and additions to the Korean region of League of Legends.

In China , there is illegal betting on pro's solo Q and abusers who intend to throw games to make money.I think it should be on Reddit to discuss.Especially Faker is the biggest victim among streamers.who knows NA/EU solo Q have the same thing? pic.twitter.com/bgItShHP3X

— Olleh (@Olleh) December 7, 2020

The official statement from Riot Korea also addressed the introduction of a hotline between Riot Korea and teams from the League of Legends Championship Korea(LCK).

This hotline is being introduced with the sole purpose of allowing teams and players to report issues such as “wintrading”, “virtual griefing”, and match-fixing, among others.

However, with this development, it remains to be seen if the match-fixing scandal on illegal gambling sites is limited to the LCK, or if it has managed to rear its ugly head in other regions as well.

Riot korea's done things for betting stuffs from china.I still think there are same stuffs for other regions.If you see any similiar stuffs on your favorite streams, post or make an email to your region's riot.

— Olleh (@Olleh) December 14, 2020

Here’s everything that fans need to know about the match-fixing scandal in the League of Legends Championships Korea.

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Illegal gambling websites in League of Legends

Riot Korea announced on December 14 that all League of Legends accounts that were in suspicion of overseas theft had been scrutinized, and that every account which was found guilty had been deactivated.

Other than that, Riot Games has also implemented a real-time detection software to ensure that players from other regions cannot use third-party programs to enhance their ping when connecting through a VPN.

Riot doing things to stop betting stuff coming from china for Korea server.1.Inspection and deactivation of accounts suspected of overseas theft2.Real-time blocking of unauthorized programs3.Established a hotline with the LCK teamhttps://t.co/FlrkOpwaXL

— Olleh (@Olleh) December 14, 2020

The new detection program is designed to detect and suspend accounts within a span of three minutes from the beginning of a game.

Regarding the virtual griefing saga that was mentioned by Olleh, Riot Korea states:

“Intentional feeding and illegal gambling on ranked matches is unacceptable under any circumstances. We, at Riot Games, will do everything in our power to fully eradicate such actions from taking place.”

However, the most interesting part of these illegal sites is that they are not available in Korea. As revealed by Park “MoMo” Min-sik on his stream, these illegal betting sites are only available in China, and they require an account created under the respective region to enter and place bets.

Given that illegal gambling sites allow participants to literally double their earnings by griefing in top-tier matches of League of Legends, pro-players are having an extremely hard time getting some proper practice in public lobbies.

Nevertheless, this series of steps taken by Riot Games goes to show how important League of Legends is in Korea, especially with their reputation of hosting some of the highest skilled League of Legends public lobbies.