Abstract
Match fixing is an increasingly popular phenomenon in e-Sports, namely competitive computer gaming between professional players. We first revisit the notion of security for computer games in the context of match fixing, which was never considered before. Then we offer a security economics analysis, and discuss potential countermeasures for addressing this threat. We propose a novel crowd-sourcing method for match-fixing detection. Our approach is incentive-compatible and it works for both traditional sports and eSports. We expect to raise awareness of these new issues and encourage further academic research.
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- 1.
I spent several months visiting Microsoft Research (Beijing) in 2004. During the visit, a project which we conceived and investigated in the Systems Group was to support online game spectating via a peer-to-peer infrastructure. This vision has become reality for years.
- 2.
In 2012, several high-profile referees were convicted for fixing football matches in China [6]. At least the following contributed to their arrests and convictions. First, the referees’ judgement calls and decisions had repeatedly triggered controversy and anger. The referees were either addicted to the easy money from match fixing, or blackmailed by the fixes they did before; they cheated again and again but did not stop after a single fix. Their behaviours exhibited somehow systematic suspicious patterns that smelled fishy even to outsiders and spectators. Second, whistle-blowers and suspect-turned-prosecution-witnesses offered substantial incriminating evidences. These Chinese cases appear to suggest that it is likely to catch the fixers without correlating suspicious behaviours (of players, referees or both) to betting patterns and game odds in some circumstances.
References
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The Economist, Match-fixing goes digital, 21 September 2017. https://www.economist.com/news/international/21729428-esports-are-likely-see-much-more-corruption-coming-years-match-fixing-goes
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Acknowledgements
I thank Ross Anderson, John Chuang, Dah Ming Chiu and the workshop attendees for their input and stimulating discussions. This work was supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
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Yan, J. (2018). How Does Match-Fixing Inform Computer Game Security?. In: Matyáš, V., Švenda, P., Stajano, F., Christianson, B., Anderson, J. (eds) Security Protocols XXVI. Security Protocols 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11286. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03251-7_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03251-7_19
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