AUTHOR'S NOTE: From the start of 2015 I have avoided doing investigative journalism work and been hesitant to ever consider myself a journalist. I don’t break news and I don’t perform investigations, I simply promote storylines and write up my own analytical opinions. However, when I receive extremely damaging and harmful evidence of corruption at the top level I have no choice but to bring it to light.

Ultimately nothing I report in this article would stand up in a court of law without official investigation; I won’t reveal my sources and I don’t know the names of the individuals accepting and making the bribes. I have spoken with the players at the bottom level, but due to Riot’s punishment track record I won’t ever disclose their names. I’ve toyed a lot with writing this article, I feel a full scale investigation is necessary and it is my hope that that will be made possible in part due to this article.

The following is a paraphrased account from one individual, with various key details being confirmed by other sources.

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“I first became aware of Elo boosting in 2012, a friend of mine was a trainee for a top Korean team, but he fell out favour and found himself needing money. He said the money from Elo boosting was good and asked me to go in with him.”

“By 2014 I was living in a house with other boosters. Basically, we’d spend all day Elo boosting accounts in the same room and split the rent however many ways. This way we could share contacts, duo queue to increase win rates and have dialogues about secrecy methods. When scripts came out we started to use them -- they allowed us to play a larger variety of champions, get accounts to Challenger and made the process much quicker”

“Before long, the Elo boosting community became dominated by large websites, another friend of mine made $20,000 through a website he owned. One day, he told he’d be shutting down the website immediately due to personal reasons and evicted us all from the house. Back against the wall, I travelled to a PC bang in the Sinsa-dong ward of Gangnam-gu in Seoul because I heard people Elo boosted in that cafe a lot.”

“I was amazed by what I saw when I arrived. There must have been 100 people Elo boosting with scripts, they made our old operation look like amateur hour. Some of the people I spoke to said that there’s been times when there were 200 scripting Elo boosters in the cafe, but late at night sometimes it’s as low as 10. After a few conversations I managed to get setup again, the new website paid me less and the living conditions were worse, but I didn’t have any choice.”

“The problem was that Riot Korea started to get wise, detect the scripts and ban accounts. Sites began to be taken down and I wondered what I’d do in the future. My boss said our site would be fine, that he’d reached an agreement with Riot and as long as we followed some new rules we would be allowed to continue.”

“The amount of accounts in Challenger, Master and Diamond 1 that’re scripting is far higher than most of the player base seems to realise. They use champions not typically associated with scripting so other players don’t realise, but the account in Challenger gives them credibility. I said to my manager I wanted out since I was worried about getting a criminal record and I wanted to go back to studying. He told me not to worry and said I can’t go back to studying. He told me my family won’t accept me and that if I walk away I can’t come back.”

“I’ve left now, but it was 6 months later than I originally planned. I believe the manager was paying money to Riot Korea employees to turn a blind eye to the script; how else would the website survive? I wonder if that’s why the original website was closed -- it wasn’t shut down by Riot Korea.”

“What annoys me is that Riot can easily detect the script and punish scripters all the time, but only those that haven’t paid the money. Kyahaha is difficult, because he has evidence he paid Riot Korea and will release it if they confirm he is scripting.’

I got into contact with the owner of the original website and he neither confirmed nor denied that he shut down the website due to not wanting to bribe Riot Korea employees, but he did say, “I can’t conceive how these websites are continuing without paying Riot. I got out when I did because some of my lazier operations got shut down.”

I personally don’t know how many employees the relevant section of Riot Korea has but I’ve heard 5 or 6 employees are on the Elo boosting scripter’s payroll. The script that all Korean players use is a [...removed to prevent scripting promotion] (originally designed by a Canadian) derivative designed specifically for the Korean client. It’s preinstalled on 100s of PC Bang computers in Korea.

Currently, the most high profile scripter is Kyahaha (???), a former trainee for CJ Entus who was on an amateur team sponsored by Bigfile with Wraith, Bengi, Ssumday and Faker. He’s a popular streamer and Youtuber in Korea.

Many professional players have publicly stated that he is scripting (Pray, Insec, Imp, Chei) and Cpt Jack said he would donate his monthly pay to the streamer if he was found to not be scripting. The evidence against him is damning; it’s virtually impossible to conceive that Kyahaha isn’t scripting. Kyahaha says that his stream is proof that he isn’t scripting, but if you look at his mouse movements, there are giveaway signs that say the contrary. If Kyahaha isn’t scripting, then his APM is over 700, much higher than even the very best Starcraft: Brood War players managed. Riot Techsam says Riot Korea have launched an investigation and can’t confirm whether or not he is scripting, which is suspect. Cpt Jack has since donated his monthly pay to charity saying:

“Hello, this is Hyunwoo Kang. Regardless of if my claims are true or not, I want to apologize for making the issue intensify by making such a thoughtless remark. While the issue hasn't been concluded yet, I will stand by my words and donate my money to the charity. I will make sure to think for carefully next time. Thank you”

If Kyahaha is innocent, then why doesn’t he go to PC Bang in Korea and in front of a crowd? All he needs is ~3 viewers to watch his mouse and keyboard movements and confirm he isn’t scripting -- surely it would be a significant boost to his popularity as well. It’s not like lots of people wouldn’t show up.

Reddit post detailing the evidence can be found here if you’re interested. Kyahaha has hired a lawyer to sue the the individuals who’ve accused him, including the professional players. I write this as someone with no real capacity to pay legal fees because I am simply unable to walk away from this.

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Cover photo image by @LolFroskurinn with art properties courtesy of Riot Games.