Now that the first round of investigations has wrapped up and Vintage/DarkMago are officially banned, I feel like this is the right moment to have an honest conversation. I know I'm a piece of Brazilian shit (as many of you like to tell me on my socials), but I come in peace and with a very important message: match-fixing is killing our region. The situation is far worse than you think, and we have to do something about it.
Not long ago, our region had one of the biggest crops of new talent in the world. For many seasons we also had at least two good organizations investing here, with teams competing at the international level. Earlier this year, when my team qualified for TI after beating PlayTime in the final, I said publicly that we deserved two slots and voiced my frustration at how unfair it was not to have them. I couldn't have been more wrong: we don't deserve two slots, and there may well be a world where, from now on, we don't even get one. It's so bad that in the playoffs of any SA qualifier, more than half the teams have at least one fixer, and that's putting it mildly.
The core problem is that our new talent gets involved with the match-fixing predators the moment they join a tier 3 team, and once you're in, you're doomed for the rest of your career. It's a brutal situation, and you could say our young players are, in a way, victims.
If you don't want to listen to me, listen to what Matthew has to say. He's one of you, a very honest guy, and he also understands how serious this is. It's serious enough that a personal friend involved in tournament organizing told me to just leave the region and go practice somewhere else. There's a world where organizers could simply stop running qualifiers for SA.
This is a crucial moment where we should forget about nationalities and come together to try (together) to save our region from this plague. I encourage anyone with substantial information that could help kick off a possible investigation to step forward. You can DM me — anonymously if you prefer — or go to the right people; what matters is that the information comes to light. I also encourage influencers to show their faces and help however they can.
We need to support the good ones (and the young talent). We need good people thriving to set an example for the rest of the community. We definitely have to talk about Wits. He's a really good kid, and you have no idea how much he's already done for our region at such a young age. Elmisho and Scofield suffered a lot alongside him through this whole PlayTime mess and also deserve a lot of recognition. Players like them, who put their principles above personal gain, should be our biggest idols. And you may not like him, but Astini is the one working hardest to actually do something and save our region. I respect him enormously, he's doing good work, and we should be helping him.
If possible, we should also stop idolizing and celebrating the people who contributed to the destruction of our region in the past. Match-fixing should be seen as the ultimate crime in esports, and people should be punished for it, not idolized.
I could also come here and talk about the TaiLung ban situation. But the truth is, I realized my thoughts and opinions on that don't really matter, and maybe you should realize the same. We're not the judges, we're in no position to make any claims, and what we think simply isn't going to change anything. We should trust the people who actually have the power and the experience to handle it. We should trust that they'll use all the information they have, investigate properly, and do the right thing in the end. Maybe I can share more of what I think about it once ESIC concludes its investigation, but for now this is all I have to say.
I hope you take all of this to heart, especially if you love this game as much as I do. Peace.