It was Game Over for what, according to Chinese authorities, was the largest gang of video hackers in the world. Ten people have been arrested for selling fraudulent software for top-selling games, including Call of Duty and Overwatch.
Authorities seized $ 76 million, along with luxury cars and other goods from the alleged illegal business.
Fraud has become an epidemic in Sports, also known as competitive video games, and as Lucy Craft News of CBS News reported, it made fertile ground for burglary.
Video game analyst Serkan Toto said fraudulent syndicates such as those plagued in China and hackers have long worked with impunity.
“They are extremely professional. If you look at some website listings, they have shopping carts, they have price lists, they have customer service,” Toto told CBS News. He compared the sites that hackers create and use to Amazon. “Some of these companies [are] listen millions and millions every month. And the scale is really incredible in some cases, and so are the profits. ‘
China’s repression reveals the dark side of competitive video games, where top stars playing solo or in teams earn seven figures.
Online gaming grabs so many eyeballs that it has become a political tool. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed live on the Twitch gaming platform last year while hundreds of thousands voted.
Japan has an entire hotel dedicated to Sports. Hotel e-ZONe opened last year in the western Japanese city of Osaka. Manager Takahiro Shimamoto said most adult customers come into the hotel on Friday and play all weekend. Upstairs, guests have access to sardine bunk beds bathed in arcade lighting.
Most people do not have lightning-fast reflexes like the professional gamers, which is part of the fact that cheating is so irresistible to some. Instead of getting crushed in competition, using cheats can give gamers the purpose of the sniper and make them look like superman through walls.
Sport is lagging behind in Japan compared to South Korea and China, where they have seen astronomical growth, but online players are known to use shortcuts wherever they are.
‘When we first opened [the hotel]”We caught three fraudsters,” Shimamoto said.
This year, nearly half a billion fans are predicted to watch Esports. With revenue at its highest point of $ 1 billion, the fraudulent plague of the industry will remain at the forefront.