There is a big push-back playing out on reddit, twitch and on youtube videos about a website promoting gambling on aoe2 games. The website is apparently paying several top players to play games against each other for the purpose of gambling some form of crypto purchased with real money.
I think this is a very negative development for our community and the game. There’s is a big incentive for the players involved to place bets on their own games and to throw a game in order to profit. I believe this will ruin tournaments and competitive gaming. It will also promote gambling to Aoe spectators many of whom are minors. I believe gambling is as addictive and destructive to individuals as drug or alcohol abuse.
If you agree with me please reach out to all the players involved and let them know that you will not support them if they continue to pursue this course. Its wrong, its immoral, its bad for aoe2, if you love the game lets stop this.
Shoutout to Hera, Margougou, MBL, T90, and any others who original refused to participate and came out against gambling before the pushback. True Heros of the game. The ones that came changed their minds after the fact–not so much–but you can still redeem yourselves. The ones who still support this gambling site, shame, shame, shame….
Gambling has completely infected E-Sports and normal sports in general. There is basically no team anymore hat is not sponsored by gambling nowadays. It’s awful.
The only thing we can do is boycott anyone who promotes gambling. When they lose followers/subscribers they might reconsider if they want to do gambling ads.
Also of course no one should gamble. If no one would use those gambling services they wouldn’t have enough money to sponsor anyone.
If it exists, it’s inevitable there is some gambling about it. You can even gamble on election results these days (and funnily enough it makes a very reliable poll of who’s going to win)
But it can be ignored, so long the game isn’t rebalanced around making it more appealing for gambling at the expense of regular gameplay.
Yes gambling will always exist and people are free to choose not to partake but that’s not the issue in this case. There are several problems with this new development:
1. It’s being actively promoted by some top players.
2.It provides a way for these players to profit by betting against themselves and throwing a game. Even if this does not happen there will always be a suspicion about it with all the negative implications and controversy. People may lose interest in tournaments because they think “the fix is in”.
3.It provides an easy and alluring way for people with addictive tendencies to engage in self damaging behavior.
4. It will change our community for the worst by attracting people who don’t care for the game.
All of this is true for any sports gambling but as far as I know, until now AoE2 was was relatively unaffected by serious gambling. I hope we can keep it that way. Please do not support anyone who participates in this awful scheme. Please do support those who came out against it.
Matches can be replayed with quite advanced tools. If a pro player does weird moves, it will be easy to see. Even more if they already have the spotlight of an official partnership. Not many would sacrifice their hard-earned reputation (including how much they could negociate contracts) for a quick buck. I think you overestimate that risk
If they are into gambling instead of the game itself, they won’t put much investment into the game itself that is relatively complex and stick to simpler ones, and that have a bigger market. And the game is more number-based than the average, meaning players are naturally quite good at simple math, it also builds some immunity to gambling, if you can calculate an earning average and see the house always wins (and it’s still middle-school level maths). So in both cases the risks you identify seem limited. As for kids, they will rather be lured in by the likes of Fortnight instead of AOE. Hopefully gambling companies will throw in the towel about AOE2, if signing official partnerships isn’t profitable enough, as there is little that can be done otherwise.
I don’t even understand how e-sport became an industry, as for gambling I just ignore it (I know the house always wins so why bother…), the closest I gambled was a few bucks in Vegas to get a casino chip as a souvenir. Zero risk on that.
We can agree on that. As far as how bad it is for the game, it’s a question of degree. But bad is bad even if just a little bit. I’m just humbly doing my part–for whatever it’s worth–to speak out against it. Other people have done so much more eloquently than me. Hopefully you and others will join us.