The 2010 StarCraft Match-Fixing Scandal: How Korea's Kings Threw Games

In 2006, Ma "sAviOr" Jae-yoon was the best StarCraft player in the world. Fans called him the Maestro, and he was the first player to be universally hailed as a "bonjwa," the undisputed king of his era. Four years later, prosecutors and Korean newspapers were describing him by a different title: ringleader.

On 13 April 2010, reports broke that South Korea's professional StarCraft league had a match-fixing problem. Within weeks it was confirmed: a group of eleven current and former pro gamers, working with brokers who supplied illegal betting sites, had deliberately lost matches for money. Guinness World Records later listed it as the first match-fixing scandal involving a video game.

The setting: a boom and a black market

By 2010 StarCraft was a full professional sport in Korea. The number of pro and semi-pro gamers had grown from 180 in 2001 to 763 in early 2007, according to the Korea Times. There were twelve pro StarCraft teams, including one run by the Air Force, and StarCraft made up more than 70% of Korean esports.

Where there is a sport, there is betting. Korea's legal sports betting system did not offer esports, but private websites did. KeSPA, the Korea e-Sports Association, said illegal StarCraft betting sites first appeared in 2006, faded under pressure, then came back strongly from late 2008. By 2009 there were several dozen.

How the fix worked

The scheme was simple and sordid. Brokers approached players and offered them 2 million to 6.5 million won, up to about $5,400 at the time, to lose specific matches. The players agreed to throw one to three games each. People with inside knowledge then bet on the results.

Sixteen people were eventually implicated: eleven players, plus brokers including the owner of a gaming academy, a semi-pro footballer from Korea's third division and an alleged gangster. The fixed matches were played between September 2009 and February 2010. Reports said around twelve games were affected. Some players also bet themselves, with one reportedly making about 35 million won from illegal wagers. Not every promised bribe was even paid.

sAviOr's role was what made the case unforgettable. Reports at the time said he did not just throw games but helped recruit other players for the brokers, acting as a middleman, and pocketed 2 million won that was meant for others. For fans, it was as if a reigning football champion had been caught selling his teammates to bookmakers.

The punishment

KeSPA handed all eleven players lifetime bans from Korean professional competition. Their careers ended overnight, and sAviOr's titles and honours were stripped from the record books, including three MSL wins and an OSL title.

The courts added criminal penalties. The players faced fines of up to 12.5 million won, community service and suspended prison sentences. sAviOr received one year in prison, suspended for two years, plus 120 hours of community service. Another banned player, Jin Young-soo, was reported to have been ordered to forfeit 6 million won and pay a 6 million won fine before entering military service.

Korean fans gave sAviOr a cruel new nickname: "Ma-jujak," a pun on the Korean word for manipulation.

The long tail

A lifetime ban in Korea did not stop sAviOr from trying to play elsewhere. He began streaming on AfreecaTV in June 2011, while still on probation, which caused an outcry. In late 2013 he played in a Brood War tournament in China, outside KeSPA's reach, and won a team event; the association said it would work with organisers to keep him out. In 2015 AfreecaTV banned him and other match-fixers from broadcasting.

The scandal also helped finish off an era. MBCGame, one of the two TV channels that had built Korean esports, cited falling ratings and the match-fixing affair among the reasons it was turned into a music channel; its last broadcast went out in February 2012. You can read that story in our history of OnGameNet and MBCGame.

It happened again: StarCraft II in 2015 and 2016

The lesson did not stick. In 2015, the Changwon prosecutors' office investigated StarCraft II. Twelve suspects were identified and nine were indicted and arrested, including a 31-year-old head coach known as Gerrard and a player known as YoDa. Five matches across the SPL and GSL had been manipulated. YoDa was reported to have received 20 million won for losing a single Code S match, and the coach had spent more than 57 million won on internet gambling.

The biggest blow came in 2016. Lee "Life" Seung-hyun had won StarCraft II's world championship at BlizzCon in 2014, aged just 17. On 29 January 2016 KeSPA said he was under investigation. In April he was convicted of fixing two matches at the KeSPA Cup and sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, plus a fine of 70 million won, and was banned for life. Another player, Jung "Bbyong" Woo-yong, was convicted in the same case, along with 11 financial backers and brokers.

When KeSPA announced on 18 October 2016 that the StarCraft II Proleague would close after 14 years, it pointed to the two match-fixing cases as a big part of why the league was "impossible to revive."

Why it still matters

Fifteen years on, the same pressures exist at a much bigger scale. In April 2026 alone, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) announced 14 disciplinary actions, mostly for match manipulation linked to betting, including lifetime bans for two Dota 2 players and a four-year ban for a Counter-Strike 2 player. Riot Games now lets top League of Legends and Valorant teams in the Americas and EMEA take betting sponsors under strict rules, while Korea still has no legal esports betting. KeSPA has proposed changing that by adding esports to Sports Toto, Korea's only legal sports betting product, together with a dedicated Korean integrity body nicknamed "K-ESIC" to educate and monitor players. We look at that debate in our guide to esports betting rules.

The StarCraft case set three patterns. Fixers target players who are underpaid or short of money. Illegal sites thrive where legal options do not exist. And the damage lands not only on the cheats but on the league, the sponsors and every honest player.

By the numbers

• 13 April 2010: the day the scandal broke
• 11: players banned for life by KeSPA
• 16: people implicated in total, including brokers
• About 12: Brood War matches alleged to have been fixed
• 1 year, suspended for 2: sAviOr's prison sentence
• 18 months, suspended for 3: Life's sentence in 2016
• 14: ESIC disciplinary actions in April 2026

What to watch next

For the career sAviOr threw away, read our bonjwa feature, which traces Brood War's kings from BoxeR to Flash. To see how esports is trying to handle betting now, follow ESIC's public sanction notices and the rules leagues publish for betting partners.

WGC's take: The scandal is not a reason to fear esports betting talk; it is a reason to take integrity seriously. Fair pay, education, monitoring and legal, regulated markets all make fixing harder. Korea learned that the hard way first.