At the MLG Summer Championship held in Raleigh, NC on August 24-26, Major League Gaming disqualified the top two finishers in their Summer Championship League of Legends Event. Curse NA and Team Dignitas were found to have engaged in collusion to throw matches during the competition. Both MLG and the developers, Riot Games, have issued punishments to both teams involved. Curse and Team Dignitas have forfeited their winnings, placing in the event and their Circuit points according to the MLG announcement.
Reaction from the community has been mostly supportive of Curse and Dignitas. Supporters of the two teams have claimed MLG’s reason for the forfeits was not collusion. Their claim is that MLG punished the teams for using ARAM, or “All Random, All Middle”, where all players used the random character selection and only used the middle lane. Such a tactic, while not illegal according to the rules, is severely frowned upon in competitions.
Curse denied the accusation of collusion the next day, stating that “Anything outside of this [ARAM game] is false, any accusations are false.” Team Dignitas had remained silent until the following Thursday, when they issued a statement, only confirming the agreement to use ARAM in the first game of the finals. Neither MLG nor Riot have responded to the collusion denial of Curse, or the apology from Dignitas which only mentions the use of ARAM.
The Line:
It’s sad that two of the top teams in the league decided to not actually try their hardest to win. It takes away from the game, the competition and the teams themselves. The public deserved better, and MLG and Riot are commended for their quick action in addressing this problem.
