[SEA News]AsGChobo & SeoHyeun's Smurfing - Summary and Punishment
What happened?
It was found that a well known top-tier player on the SEA server called "AsGChoBo" was actually a fabricated identity based on Korean "Semi-Pro" LoFseohyeon / vVvseohyeon who played under that account in nearly all his ladder games and tournaments which culminated in him winning one of the biggest SEA prize money tournaments, the "Masters Cup".
He carried on this identity deceiving site admins, his own clan, his own girlfriend and everyone in SEA for at least the last 6 months. Suspicions arose when the lesser rated chobo, surprisingly managed to beat some of the very best SEA players in succession, namely TargA, Ender, yang and Mafia with a total score of 9-1, winning the $300+ Masters Cup Tournament on the 3rd of June last Sunday.
Timeline
Day 1-3 - Led by game analysis by Rossi, Mafia and TargA - ChoBo was initially accused of map hacking. After many days of heated discussion with nearly 400 posts, the evidence proved inconclusive and if anything showed that he did not hack in many games.
Day 3 - The summary of all these posts can be foundhere, written up by crAzerk.
Day 2-3 - An anonymous tip of a possible smurfing theory is brought up to nirvAnA in a private message. He decides to investigate this and informs Rossi, Mafia, Revenant of the possibility of it as he had suspected something strange in the pasttoo. nirvAnA does a preliminary "smurf test" on skype/bnet with Rossi observing, but somehow ChoBo/Hyeon managed to deceive them both. It was again Hyeon playing as chobo and unaware of that they got tricked into giving up the smurfing idea.
Day 3-4 The anonymous tipper also provides an old archived video, which shows chobo using different hotkeys from the replays which immediately peeks Rossi and Mafia's interest.
Day 4 Rossi looks through Chobo's stream list and notices Chobo had favourited a low profile Korean player, seohyeon. Based on a hunch, he takes a look at an old replay of him vs seohyeon, he immediately realizes hyeon uses the same unique hotkey setup (from brood war) as "asgchobo" in the master cup games, and makes this near conclusive post.
Day 4 - Rossi contacts hyeon on battle.net to get a confession and 100% undeniable proof that hyeon has played for chobo
LofSeoHyeon: hey
나의 메시지: hey
LofSeoHyeon: why you make hacker?
i am not hacker you waste much time
but smurfing is ok
sry anyway
나의 메시지: you played on chobo's account?
correct?
LofSeoHyeon: yeah right
i dont want tell a lie
나의 메시지: did he pay you?
LofSeoHyeon: but not hack
ok?
no he just
want his ladder up
or tournament and his my fan
just play for him
idk exactly
나의 메시지: ok
yesterday, you play vs nirvana too? taldarim altar tvp?
LofSeoHyeon: yeah
all
you say
hotkey 4
its me
i talk to you all truth
any question
talk to me
나의 메시지: did he give you any money?
LofSeoHyeon: no
naama and me
sometimes play his acc
no pay
나의 메시지: european naama/
LofSeoHyeon: just fun or he want
yeah but
naama only
play
small time
not much
i play mainly 5month
나의 메시지: ok
LofSeoHyeon: hey
its my fault , dont make more noise
나의 메시지: some people are very angry...
LofSeoHyeon: yeah
you also maybe
so what ?
나의 메시지: yes me too
LofSeoHyeon: what you guys want?
나의 메시지: i dont like being lied to, insulted but in this case it was chobo
well most likely you will have to be punished in some way... What you've done is wrong and there have to be repercussions
LofSeoHyeon: kk how?
나의 메시지: im not sure yet
LofSeoHyeon: anyway
you waste much time
나의 메시지: also did chobo contact you just now?
LofSeoHyeon: sry
나의 메시지: and what did he say?
LofSeoHyeon: he talk to me 20m before
some problem
so
i talk to him
tell the truth
and he go to replay
reply
no answer now
idk
what he doing now
나의 메시지: ok thank you
i appreciate your honesty
LofSeoHyeon: i think
sea guys very angry
but i do not anything for sea guys
can no
can not maybe
just tell the truth
나의 메시지: just to confirm you also played in that tournament on Sunday yes... Vs Mafia and targa?
LofSeoHyeon: yeah
hotkey 4
maybe all me
LofSeoHyeon:i saw today all thread and reply my eng not good so i dont understand 100% but except last thread about hotkey just waste time have no value
나의 메시지: well smurfing is very bad and stupid
LofSeoHyeon: i know so i tell the truth you not lie but i cant do for youguys anything it also truth just sry and tell the truth thats all
나의 메시지: ok when chobo responds i will show them this
LofSeoHyeon: hey i wanna talk to sea guys go to sea server channel rossi
LofSeoHyeon 님의 연결이 끊겼습니다.
i play for asgchobo sometimes cuz his my fan (mainly feb~now)
ladder and tournament
1time help make 2times more and more
and i understand your feeling . very angry
but i cant do anything for you guys . just tell the truth and tell sry about this .
i love sea community so i have sea acc also have sea friend also
i am really sorry all you guys
i think some sea guys really good sc2 (like pig tgun ender or etc)
i wanna see them soon , big major tournament
my sea server
nick is vVvSeoHyeon . 709
and in channel rossi
anyone want talk to me something
come to channel or whisper now
i wait 1hour cuz really sorry
its all my fault
dont blame korea or chobo or somethings just blame to me
T T
And from Jazbas's post
Direct words from Seohyeon:
만약에
sea서버 사람들이
해외팀 활동같은거
원하지 않는다면
당장 은퇴하고 접을게요 잘못했으니
미련이 없네요 실력도 없고
Translation:
If SEA server community wants me to stop my gaming, I'll gladly accept the punishment and retire. I know what I've done wrong and I know I deserve it if I have to. I have no more attachment and also skill..(I can't really translate the last line very well. No specific translation.. might want to just ignore the last line that I translated)
Okay so what happened?
My girlfriend thought I was playing master cup while really I was playing on a spare account on NA. So while watching the stream, little did she know I was not actually playing on those particular games. I will rectify this with her as she was misled.
How did I get away with the smurfing test from Nirvana?
I got Seo to do this. Yes it was wrong, and I’m willing to admit to that. If I want to come clean, I need to leave no ambiguity.
Why I refused to post recent games?
I had different hotkey setup to seo and did not want to reveal this. Obviously, because did not want to show inconsistency of hotkeys
Hacked?
No. Definitely not. So all the analysis here and there was kind of well.. pointless. Sorry to have your time wasted.
Game Farming?
Yes. However I did not use any hack/bot program. I did this manually. The fact other people used bots just made it really easy for people not using the program to accumulate wins much faster.
Maintaining my account..
I had a few friends along my gaming which played on my account to help my bonus pool while my real life commitments were overwhelming.
However, they did not ladder me to achieve GM, I did this in the past myself.
So to conclude..
I am sorry to everyone who spent time trying to disprove a hacker, when really that wasn’t the issue at all. It was something completely different.
To all my clan who defended me including my girlfriend, I have unfortunately misled you all in the sense of winning masters cup as this was clearly done by seo. I just want to take a moment to apologize for this.
I am glad I can finally reveal the truth as this has been far to overwhelming to try and cover for the time which it has blown out to. All I can say is that I am sorry and took my time to ensure everything I thought was crucial has been covered and is true.
Aftermath
There was huge tension between people who wanted a fair trial and his accusers who were too hasty in their judgments. PiG makes an excellent post summing it here up where he notes accusers raged/bullied/abused the neutral guys who were just trying to be 100% thorough. This attitude has popped up several times on sc2sea and is very worrying, there were people PMing iaguz and thanking him for speaking out as they were afraid to post because of the backlash they saw for the people who did.
Its important to note ultimately the hacking accusations were dead wrong, Chobo was not hacking but it was a Korean pro playing on the account and if not for them, chobo would have been condemned a hacker forever and the real truth would never have been found. Imagine how dangerous that would have been? I also hope people hold no blame to any clan or team after this on both sides of the fence, as you can see everyone wanted the same thing in the end - for the cheater to be caught and for justice to be done. AsG is a fantastic clan who of course were deceived by chobo, just like everyone else here was. In the end, it was fabulous to see the whole community working together in unison to catch him.
I also feel that certain key people should be awarded for their efforts in this case with a custom achievement. These would be posters such as Rossi, tgun, Mafia, iaguz, UHF among others. All of whom spent a lot of time and effort that ultimately brought chobo to justice. TheGentleman, I am looking at you for this logo
And as Maynarde said +1 to SC2SEA
Punishment
Obviously we can't cart people off to jail but we take these matters extremely serious and we will do what we can to show that. The following decision was decided as a whole by our SEAL group of admins, which also includes close to all the mods on the site.
It goes without saying chobo will not receive any of the Master Cup prize winnings and he has been immediately removed from his coaching position on the site.
Their case will be made known to starcraft communities around the world, publicly shaming them. Their team managers will/have being informed as will the admins of major tournaments. This is the biggest punishment in my opinion, and something both players will never be able to recover fully from. This is probably enough to effectively end their playing career, which in SeoHyeun' case might seem really harsh if he was indeed fully aware of what he was doing.
The both of them will be banned from all online tournaments in SEA up for a period of 1 year for the deception and smurfing caused.
Dox highlights a good concept in a post: "I reckon with all maphackers/smurfs/cheaters of any capacity, banning them from online tournaments is more than sufficient. I'd never ban them from a LAN event where they can irrefutably prove their skills." I agree with this idea, but only after a minimum time frame and I guess the LAN organisers will decide that themselves if the situation pops up.
The last few days have been hectic as hell, thank you to the detectives mainly Rossi who solved the case and the many others who spent countless hours analyzing replays. Also to tgun, UHF, nemo and others and the AsG team who fought for a fair trial which lead to uncovering the real truth. I'm glad all this is finally over. Case closed!
I think one year is too short personally. Could you say 1 year minimum and will be reevalued after? If he shows a lot of regret and puts in a lot of effort to make things right a case could be made for allowing him to play competitively again. However as things stand he cheated and then lied about it for days. He was really close to having us all tricked. He did the worst thing you can do to esports and therefore having him play again so soon is something I find atrocious. I will never be able to trust him again and I will refuse to play vs him in an online tournament ever again.
Last edited by Strafe; Fri, 8th-Jun-2012 at 3:06 AM.
I think SeoHyeon doesn't deserve such a harsh punishment, yes maybe he knows that its bad but he probably doesn't know it was that serious this does not mean that its wrong to give him such a harsh punishment but it will literally make him quit his pro gaming career. As other people have said that they already chat to him and most people knows that he already regret very bad as he said he will quit pro gaming if that's the punishment but making this whole thing public is actually going to make him quit his pro gaming career. Also does this seriously have to end someone's pro gaming career we don't really want to do that do we, don't we want people to learn and grow and not make the same mistakes instead of ending their pro gaming career. Please reconsider i think that's just a little to harsh even though its a really serious case we shouldn't end his gaming career by having this on reddit and TL
I have not posted it on TL/reddit yet, will await tgun/rossi and others who have talked to him in the channel after the incident, and them edit the OP to include SeoHyeon's side / understanding of the whole matter.
i doubt making this public is going to end his pro gaming career (if wider community's reaction to major last time is anything to go by). any fans he has, any tournaments he enters, any teams he represents (present or future) deserve to have this information available to them.
if he would suffer serious consequences from this being made public, those consequences would be exactly what the wider starcraft community feels is appropriate for an offence like this. when that is essentially his only punishment, how can you argue that's too harsh?
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i guess i need to learn how to play now...
i also feel that certain key people should be awarded for their efforts in this case with a custom achievement. These would be posters such as rossi, tgun, mafia, iaguz, uhf among others. All of whom spent a lot of time and effort that ultimately brought chobo to justice. Thegentleman, i am looking at you for this logo
With regard to any LAN and Online events I am affiliated with Chobo will experience a 1 year ban. He has irrefutably proven his worth as someone who has absolutely no regard for the community. Online or on LAN, at the end of the day it's the same community he is willing to harm.
I think Chobo should just be told to **** off for life.
He repeatedly lied and messed people around until he was found out and forced to admit what he had done. It is disgusting and dishonorable.
There is no shame in being a lower level player, no shame in not being GM or never winning a Masters Cup. But doing this, is ******* shameful. Cheating good players, wasting peoples time and lying about it when caught out is unforgivable. He had the chance more than once to own up and be a man, yet he repeatedly took the cowards way out.
If there is one thing our community should take a stand on, it is shit like this.
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= Units that are usually controlled once and closed to efficiency.
= Units that are overpowered by repeat and precise controls.
= Units that are capable for early, mid and late games
This punishment is more than enough imo when you take into account that not only are both banned for a year, but their names are marked with shame. They'll never be looked at the same way in the competitive SEA scene ever again, I'd be very surprised if we saw either of them competing in SEA events again.
EvetS's map hack ban would be up by now, seen him in any tournaments lately?
sharing could have really saved the whole community a whole lot of time....
bit of a dick move there tbh
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Some Ling-Roach-All-in-Fake-Expo-10-pooling from Jerry there - Dox's bauss casting
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