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Maingaming rules on cheating claims

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So yesterday I posted up a story about how one of the best Call of Duty sides in the country have been accused of cheating in the Maingaming League, I gave my frank opinions on the matter and called for Maingaming to take strong action. Action has now been taken but I wouldn’t call it strong.

Warning this is another long post.

So first up is Maingaming’s final decision that they posted on their forum last night

After carefully reviewing all evidence submitted by all parties concerned we have come to a decision regarding the match fixing allegations made against F34R ELITE.
A request was made by MainGaming on Sunday (19th August 2012) for all parties to submit evidence regarding this matter which gave everyone enough time to back their claims.
Evidence submitted by Dew Badenhorst were pictures of posts that were made on the SA Gamer forum, MainGaming is not associated with SA Gamer so these posts or threads are not considered to be called evidence.
Matthew Venter also submitted his confession, A confession cannot be considered as evidence as his claim results in an anti claim from F34R ELITE making this matter a ‘word vs word’ case, MainGaming replied twice to Matthew requesting additional pictures that Matthew claimed to have, Matthew has still not replied.
The only evidence submitted by the F34R ELITE team was a video showing their match which took place, F34R DELTA vs F34R ELITE, this video shows an unregistered player joining the match,This is against MainGaming rules and this immediately results in a forfeit which awards F34R ELITE a 5-0 win. F34R DELTA’s clan captain Jason Damon will receive a 5 match ban; a similar case that took place in the league had the same consequences (Team Dice-MoFaan).
F34R DELTA could have played the match 3 players versus 4 but refused, Since R4G3_SA1 is also competing for the Grand Final spot, F34R DELTA will not play against R4G3_SA1, R4G3_SA1 will be awarded the win with full 5 points.
NB: This decision was made based solely on the evidence presented to us.
With regards to the admin of the MainGaming League, Robert is not an employee of MainGaming and merely assists, however he will no longer run the league until we have other members from different clans taking part where he will then continue to assist.
We would also like to encourage all members to remain part of their clans and for clan captains not to pull out from the league, Should you or your team feel that you no longer wish to partake of this league, simply mail us your request at support@maingaming.co.za and you will be removed.
This decision is final and all matches should go ahead as scheduled.
The MainGaming Support Team.

Basically they decided to ignore everything posted on the SAGaming forum for no real reason as this is public domain and ultimately decided to punish team Delta for fielding an invalid player based on the evidence provided by the accused.

I received a phone call last night around this decision and we discussed it back and forth for close on 30 minutes and at no time was I comfortable with the decision. The questions I asked directly that I didn’t feel were answered were as follows

  1. If Delta forfeited then how can you punish them for fielding an illegible player?
  2. Why would you ban the Delta captain for 5 matches?
  3. How can you ignore the information posted on SAGamer?
  4. How can you ignore that 3 clan members actually admitted to the cheating?

In response it seems like this damning post by team Delta has been privately retracted and that no other solid evidence was provided which left Maingaming with no choice but to rule on what they had.

I vehemently disagree as you cannot ignore information in the public domain, which is what SAGamer is, and the proof that the log was changed which is against the rules.

I then had a chat with some other people who are part of the league and received these 5 images to back up the claims of cheating that have been levelled against Elite.

EVIDENCE1 EVIDENCE Fear2Fear1 ScreenShot_by_s4bb_2012-08-20_18-42-13

Unfortunately without dates and times on these screenshots there is no way to prove that this occurred before or after the event or who actually sent them. But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming and with the logs being edited there really is a case that needs to be answered.

Unfortunately Maingaming missed their opportunity to impose order on this league and do appear to have ruled incorrectly.

However as I said to them last night, I am simply an outside observer to this debacle and my sole intention is to shine a light onto the competitive gaming scene to try and ensure it stays fair and transparent. I understand that from their side they have received no solid evidence of cheating (besides the editing of the logs and confessions) and as such didn’t have any choice but to rule in the way they did.

The ended their decision with the comment

Should you or your team feel that you no longer wish to partake of this league, simply mail us your request at support@maingaming.co.za and you will be removed

Which is a terrible idea as it makes them look petty and apparentl
y a large amount of clans felt the same as the list of clans dropping out is growing rapidly

They also said their decision was final and yet a few minutes after our phone call this thread went up

UPDATE:
after now finding out that the match played between F34R DELTA and F34R ELITE was played as a "friendly" we’d like to apologize and retract our decision until further notice

So where do we sit now?

One of the largest online competitive leagues in the country has been rocked by a scandal involving the top team and the organising body has made a complete hash of sorting it out. People on both sides are pointing fingers and no matter what happens now there is no way that all competitors are going to believe that this years competition was free and fair. There is also talk of new tournaments being organised by other people which is only going to fragment the industry even further.

Can Maingaming save this debacle? I don’t think so, but a great start would be to evict the team that provided video evidence of Delta cheating now that they have agreed the game was a friendly. Talk about a low blow.

On a related side note, the CODCasting in Black Ops 2 would have helped avoid this with a neutral observer being able to listen into the teams chat in the game.

Last Updated: August 22, 2012

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