The Major League Gaming Summer Championship took place over the weekend with the top League of Legends, StarCraft 2, Soul Calibur V, and Mortal Kombat players coming together under one roof to fight for a large cash pool. But it's League of Legends that's in the spotlight in the wake of the event as the pro scene is once again engulfed in controversy.
The controversy stems from accusations (and one alleged confession) that the two top teams, Curse and Dignitas, colluded to share the prize money from the top two spots (rather than risk walking away with only second place earnings.)
They also gained the ire of MLG when the two teams agreed to play the first match of the championship series in an all-random, middle-only style (characters randomly assigned, only fighting in the middle lane.) Which GR's resident LoL fan Hollander Cooper likened to a Counter-Strike championship match in which the two teams agreed to only use knives. In other words, they weren't taking competition seriously, and in the process being disrespectful to the fans who tuned in to see top-level play and MLG who, after all, was paying them tens of thousands of dollars to compete.
The two teams were stripped of their earnings in the tournament, and will receive no season credit for their placement. Team Curse has issued a formal apology to the fans and to MLG in a video statement.
This isn't the first time that the League of Legends pro-scene has seen some controversy. At the World Cyber Games late last year several allegations popped up that, interestingly, also included Team Dignitas.
Recently, Riot Games announced a big investment in the pro-LoL scene complete with player salaries, designed specifically to make playing LoL more lucrative in order to avoid controversies like these.
On the other main stage at Major League Gaming, the competition was less controversial though still entertaining. The StarCraft 2 bracket featured a string of upsets as major players like Taeja and MarineKingPrime were knocked out fairly early while the Korean Zerg, Leenock, walked away with his second MLG championship.
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