Popular esports tournament wiki platform Liquipedia has addressed an ongoing problem of match-fixing and suspicious betting activity conducted on the site. Taking to the Dota 2 Subreddit yesterday, the Liquipedia team explained what the issue was and how they plan to combat it.
According to the Reddit post, “bad actors” took advantage of Liquipedia’s event listing system to fix illegitimate Dota 2 matches. The individuals also allegedly threatened and harassed the site’s volunteers after their suspicious behavior was addressed, causing some contributors leaving the site. The post explains that illegitimate Dota 2 tournament pages have been submitted to go up on the site “almost weekly.”
Having a Liquipedia page is a “stamp of legitimacy,” the post says, explaining how many betting platforms use the wiki to track tournaments and results. Just having a page on the site is often “all it can take to have a match available for betting,” the post explains.
Once information on suspicious betting activity was brought to the attention of the Liquipedia team, the site discovered “many cases” of an “inappropriate use of Liquipedia.” The team found multiple fraudulent tournaments with illegitimate organizers and teams being put up on the site “for the sole purpose of match-fixing.”
In response, Liquipedia will be taking extra steps to vet incoming tournament submissions for their legitimacy. This will include new “requirements and criteria” for tournaments to meet before they can get their own page on the site.
Events are required to have a Dota 2 Ticket, which the post admits is relatively easy to acquire from Valve. Second, the tournament will need a publicly available rulebook and a document to track team roster and player information, as well as an official schedule. The post mentions a problem with events having “terrible rulesets” and organizers not following their own rules.
Incoming events will also need to have tournament announcement posts on their official social media pages. Past tournament submissions have also been caught listing fake sponsors, so any sponsors listed going forward will need to be confirmed to actually sponsor the event.
With these new requirements in place, Liquipedia can help uphold the integrity of the site and the professional Dota 2 scene.
Source: Liquipedia