When Garena Taiwan was first caught betting on the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational, Twitch viewers were immediately enraged by the digital entertainment platform’s illegal activities. Now, it looks like the League of Legends community is getting at least part of its wish.
The LMS region’s official MSI broadcaster and official Riot partner has announced that the person in charge of the stream has been terminated.
Rumours on the LoL reddit
Many on Reddit had demanded for the individual’s release, but were quick to say that they were confident nobody would be punished. The League of Legends community called Garena corrupt and discussed the possibility that this wasn’t the first time the company had been involved in illegal activity.
Last year, the Garena client was accused of infecting PCs with cryptocurrency mining malware.
A player from the Philipines went to Reddit to reveal a program called Coinhive had been loaded into Garena’s game client. This cryptocurrency mining program would basically use customer’s machines to mine for digital currency.
But based on the program’s use of Javascript, it was speculated that Garena hadn’t actually implemented the program. Rather, a third party had most likely gained access to the client’s back-end and loaded in the program themselves, hoping to gain access to Garena’s audience.
More recently, Dragon Gate threatened to sue Garena after the company suspended the organization from the LMS for alleged match-fixing and betting. According to Dragon Gate’s owner, Hu Wei-jie, Garena didn’t allow the organization to contact Riot during the ongoing investigation. They claim this led to a biased decision, which resulted in Garena “covering up the investigation.”
Despite no specific proof being offered that Garena was directly at fault in these alleged scandals, their proximity to each of these issues has left a sour taste in the Taiwanese League of Legends community’s mouths, one that a single firing won’t immediately wash away.
