A bunch of alleged Counter-Strike matchfixers determined to make a sudden swap to League of Legends professional play, leading to a “pretend” professional staff that bought caught after their very first collection.
It’s more and more frequent for tier 2 esports leagues to be a hotbed for matchfixing and rigged matches, to the purpose that it’s been alleged matchfixing is the one cause groups in these leagues keep afloat.
A Valorant scandal hit earlier this 12 months that alleged tier 2 groups have been betting lots of of hundreds of {dollars} on matches, and comparable scandals have come to move in League of Legends over time. China’s tier 2 league is especially infamous for this, with one bust leading to virtually 40 gamers getting banned.
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Nonetheless, one Lithuanian esports staff within the Rift Legends league was so dangerous at hiding it that they bought caught after their first match and have been thrown out of the league.
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LoL staff instantly banned for creating pretend staff to matchfix
It’s no secret that competing in tier 2 esports leagues isn’t essentially the most worthwhile enterprise on the market. The price of sustaining a staff is so excessive that Riot Video games needed to exempt groups within the LCS (now LTA) from fielding a compulsory tier 2 roster in order that orgs within the league may keep afloat.
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However, whereas there aren’t some ways to earn cash off of fielding esports groups on this league, some lower than authorized means are on the market for groups to make a fast buck.
A staff known as MY STAR dumped its whole roster forward of the Rift Legends 2025 Summer time Cut up and fielded a wholly new one, with not one of the gamers from the prior staff having something lined up. In addition they signed substitute gamers last-minute to skirt regional restrictions.
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MY STAR fully threw the primary recreation, with some gamers wanting like they’d by no means touched League of Legends of their lives. Balukos specifically had it tough, with him dying 5 instances in lane by the ten minute mark.
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By the best way, it’s potential to wager on how dangerous a sure participant will get beat in lane on sure betting websites, which could possibly be a potential motivation for this participant specifically fully throwing the lane.
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That is on prime of kory and LakatosD being accused of matchfixing in Counter-Strike, although they’re each nonetheless allowed to compete because the allegations have been by no means confirmed. kory’s LoL title is identical, whereas LakatosD goes by SZLOBESZKOV in Counter-Strike.
Viewers additionally observed that the gamers’ expressions within the webcams not often modified and that none of them talked for your entire length of each matches, a weird incidence for a professional recreation.
What’s extra, the webcam for the participant labeled as Balukos matches the looks of Lesterik, a former most important roster participant who had been moved to “substitute”.
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Balukos’ title is listed as Luka Glisic, whereas Lesterik’s title is Danijel Šego, making it not possible to inform in the event that they actually did get a brand new participant and simply looped their former participant’s webcam or if the “actual” Lesterik was actively taking part in for the staff.
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Ruf is the one participant who has proof he was truly taking part in, with the sport’s draft being mirrored in his glasses. Nonetheless, he wasn’t speaking in any respect. Quite, he spent a good portion of his time typing and gazing his second monitor, prone to talk with the true teammates he was taking part in with fairly than the folks on their webcams.
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Rift LegendsMY STAR’s webcams appeared like this for your entire collection, with gamers blankly staring in random instructions and saying nothing
Consequently, your entire org has been booted from the league efficient instantly for matchfixing and breaking a number of components of the league’s code of conduct. Extra data may be discovered on this Reddit submit from dudanced, a passionate fan of the league who recapped the leadup to this staff’s ban.
Rift Legends is bringing the difficulty to Riot instantly and should pursue authorized motion in opposition to the staff for damaging the league’s picture.
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