German Twitch streamer complains about betting mafia in LoL: “Can’t do anything about it anyway”
The German streamer Noway4u regularly shows its matches in League of Legends on Twitch. He recently stumbled more and more over players who apparently manipulate the outcome of the games. In a video he explains the problem and complains about the betting mafia.
What is the problem? Noway4u, one of the biggest German LoL streamers, explains the situation as follows:
- There are stream snipers that are specifically waiting for known players to sign up. You then try to get into the match with several players.
- It’s best to have players from this group on both teams because it gives them the flexibility to manipulate the match either way.
- After that, large amounts are bet on how the game will end. But since the groups can quite certainly influence the outcome of the game, they can make real cash with it.
The streamer himself showed what such a manipulation can look like in a video on YouTube. Everything was relatively harmless there at first, but later his teammates do strange things.
Although Noway and the streamer TheBausffs who plays alongside him are both really good LoL players, they fail to win the match:
The betting mafia is about a lot of money
How exactly does such a manipulation work? At the beginning it is important that you get players from your own circle of acquaintances into the matches – as mentioned above, preferably in both teams. If necessary, the manipulators also leave matches for this, which is why Noway often has to deal with several queue breaks.
After that, the game is played quite normally at the beginning, so that the manipulation is not necessarily noticeable. In the course of the match, minor errors are then built in. Matches are then lost, for example if your own team constantly has to fight 4 vs. 5 or gives away important objectives such as the Dragon Soul or the Baron.
But even if you are not active in the match, there is still the possibility to manipulate. This offers other players on the team money to lose on purpose. It is about sums in the range of 100 dollars or even more. Noway4u says:
Players who play Masters or higher would like to have League as a job. You can’t make a living from it unless you’re a pro player or streamer now. And $90 to inten 20 or 30 minutes is a lot of money.
Is the problem really that big? The problem of match fixing is not completely new, but the complaints have increased in recent weeks. In addition to Noway4u, other streamers such as TheBausffs have also commented on the problem. For example, he said in the stream: “Noway is one of the few normal players in the queue.”
But the manipulation does not only exist in Europe and especially not only in ranked matches:
- In China, 28 players and 2 entire esports teams were banned for match fixing in August. Tournament matches in the second Chinese league were manipulated here, which roughly corresponds to the Prime League in Germany. However, it was probably not about getting better rankings, but coaches and players bet on wins or losses.
- In November, 14 players from Turkey’s second division were banned. They too have manipulated their matches in the tournaments.
Match fixing makes the really big headlines, especially when professionals are affected. Normal ranked games, on the other hand, don’t attract as much attention and don’t seem to be scrutinized as intensively by Riot Games.
In another video, Noway4u showed a Turkish player who is said to have had something to do with the scandal in the league. He’s specifically only played with Noway in the last four games, although the German has played a lot more matches in that time. “So he just paused while I was playing,” he notes.
In addition, the player achieved very mixed stats: 2/7/9 on Yuumi – later simply going AFK – 2/16/9 on Nami and 2/12/1 on Sett. It looks like he was trying to lose on purpose.
The only match he played against Noway he won 7/6/11 on Tristana.
Can’t you do anything about it? The German streamer states: “Meanwhile I’m away from this mindset that I [die Manipulation] guess everywhere. At the end of the day, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He also reports the player directly to Riot Games, which is probably of little use. The streamer says that he keeps coming across the same accounts and can even identify them at the start of the matches.
For Noway4u, the entire LoL year was an up and down. With his team NNO, he made it into the first German LoL league, but then there was bad news:
Disappointment in Germany – The 5 Twitch streamers will not play in the 1st league, despite the miracle promotion
Reference-mein-mmo.de