Punishing players for Collusion?

There’s been a lot of hate on those who cause a collusion on stream, giving bad rep to the viewers and upsetting TOs and Stream Hosts. However, no one seems to find a way to prevent those who cause a collusion and just let the match play out.

Though, watching the anime section of the Frosty Fausting event today…

The top 2 winners of the BlazBlue CP tournament decide to collude for the grand finals. The TO for BBCP became very upset, and decided to remove the Prize Pot Bonus from the pot (which was his money to begin with as he was only supporting the scene). But, rather than taking all the money and returning to his wallet, he decided to give the entire bonus all into 3rd’s place hand.
From my point of view, I can’t help but respect his decision.

How do you guys feel about this issue?
Is Collusion still a thing among your tournament events, and if it happens, how do you’ll feel about penalizing players for doing so? Or, do you think it’s not a big deal at all?

I think it only became a big deal when the community became esports and image conscious. suddenly those people who stayed at home had an opinion that counted for something. not delivering an entertaining product or whatever. I remember when the thought was “if you don’t like it, show up and beat them.” that should be the only answer from a competitive standpoint.

gotta keep the stream monsters and the sponsors happy I guess? IDK, I don’t care too much about what any of those people think. they’re not showing up to locals so why does it matter if they aren’t entertained? it only really matters to people who are hoping there’ll be more money in this some day. for 99% of us that is not even a thing.

ShinSyn deserves tons of credit for stepping up, shutting down the collusion, and giving the money to the right person.

No, Evo’s had a longstanding rule preventing collusion, bracket manipulation, and match fixing. This isn’t a new thing, but most regional tournaments didn’t have anything in place to prevent it.

Imagine collusion happening in any other competitive sport whatsoever. What would happen to those involved? There’s your logical answer. This isn’t rocket science.

As far as im concerned collusion is kind of a hype killer. The idea of taking all of the stakes out of a match really takes away from any sense of suspense, its hard to really even root for someone if you know that they agreed beforehand on splitting the pot. Knowing that this kind of thing goes on puts a shadow of doubt in my mind whenever I watch a tournament (I always wonder “did these guys collude??” come grand finals).

This being said i say this exclusively from a fg enthusiasts perspective. I feel like its really easy for me to sit back here and say that to myself than it is for a competitor to say something like that. When money enters the equation, REAL money (talking in the 100s/1000s of dollars), the idea of putting it all on the line is a really daunting prospect, especially if participating in tournaments is a viable way of making part of your total income. If colluding means that somebody doesn’t have to work two jobs or that someone can buy something nice for their kids/significant other than who am I to tell them that they have to stop because it ruins the spirit of the game?? At the end of the day people want/need money to live, so with that in mind I feel that crucifying players for wanting to maximize their gains is unfair. While in a perfect world collusion definitely would not be practiced I cant say that I’m too terribly concerned with it due to the fact that I can kind of see where players that collude are coming from. I think before anyone really speaks on the topic its worth asking yourself whether or not you would collude if you had the chance. In all honesty if there was a lot of money on the line and someone approached me offering to collude i would probably accept it.

Anyone thinking stopping collusion only pleases stream monsters is a fuckong idiot. When M2King was nonstop colluding back in the day it made me and so many other players feel like shit, this dude beat us and didn’t even care enough to actually play it out, think about how the TO feels about his event not getting taken seriously? If you don’t realize how much that shits on people at the avtual event or you’re an idiot who beleives that shit is okay because “Just get good scrub and beat him” fuck you and everyone who thinks like you and the sponer we have less pieces of shit like you who turn a blind fucking eye to this shit the better.

Real talk good shit to my nigga Shin, happy for Chosen coming out $500 ricer, and hopefully Pops and his brother keep coming to events and never even entertain the fucking thought of this shit.

The argument on the other side is that they were technically weren’t “colluding” but apparently making a glorified button check that lasted half a round or so.

imo to satisfy everyone;

•Pot bonus goes to 3rd. ($500)

•3rd place will money match the 2 brothers for $250 each.

•The brothers can choose to accept it or walk away.

No the brothers don’t get shit, they admitted to planning on trolling GFs when Shin made it fucking clear before the tournament no fucking goofing off. They goofed, they got bopped end of fucking story.

Why does it matter what the other players think? Were people all up in arms when MOV waited until GF of 25th anniversary 3s and then switched to Ken and still destroyed Tokido to give the people a show? When is it okay to play a secondary character? Like a set of requirements… may not be close friends, only within a certain skill gap… who knows? All I know is that when ChrisG picks a secondary team people get upset, and when MOV picks a secondary character everyone delights in watching how much better he is than everyone else. The standards are not consistent for reasons that are not clear to me. I mean think about it - The best 3s player in the world is in the biggest tournament outside Japan since like 2008. And when he gets to GF he picks a secondary character. Why didn’t anyone feel that he was wasting their time or shitting on them? But no one felt that way and I think they were right not to feel that way.

If the tournament organizer feels like shit and he’s putting money or time out of his pocket that’s between him and the players. I can see it from a TO viewpoint. But no I don’t care if players feelings are hurt because they aren’t good enough to be in GF and force those dudes to pick their shit and play all out. When I show up to a tournament I’m there to find out if I’m the best player there. And if not and I’m out… oh well! I make sure I’m better the next time I come. It makes no difference to me whether the guys in GF play their mains or play random select. They both already proved they’re better than me and that’s all I want to know.

You said it yourself “M2King beat us and didn’t even care enough to play it out.” How is that anything but a bad reflection on the rest of the players? Why does that say anything about him? Everyone else is worse than him. So if they’re raw about it they put a target on his back and make sure they’re good enough to take him out the next time. That’s how it should work.

You’re a fucking idiot and I hope you get the fuck out of this scene soon.

BTW MOV has been playing Ken seriously now a days just a bit less than Chun and the Ken was in fact to show how much better he as a dedicated 3S player was, you could still tell from how he was playing and his physical mannerisms that he was playing dead serious still, He didn’t do stupid shit like pick SA1, just jump back throwing out J. Jab, or try to taunt to death. Bad fucking example like your thought process.

You can instantly tell from Chris G or the brothers had no intention of doing from body language and how they were playing. Yeah care more about the guys disrespecting your scene than the dudes how tried their hardest and actually gave a damn their whole time through. Shut the fuck up and get out.

Pot-splitting ain’t the big deal here, not so much as the side effects of it. The reasons for pot-splitting are there (otherwise it wouldn’t be happening) and you can’t really police it anyway. Once you give out the checks/money, what’s stopping the people from sharing it out later? (I mean, hell by that point it’s their money, they’re free to do whatever they want with it right?) Unless of course, you give out non-monetary prizes that aren’t easy to share (sticks, trophies, etc.)

The real issue is when dudes decide to make a mockery out of the tournament and play sub-par just because they think their winnings are already guaranteed. Doing so shits on everyone’s hard work to put on said tournament and destroys the very integrity of competition. You can still play hard, give it all you’ve got, respect the tournament and share the prize(s) later after the fact. Although knowing that your winnings are already guaranteed will give you less incentive to do so, which is why it happens (we’re lazy creatures by nature, so it’s no wonder we’ll follow the path of least resistance at times, even if it may not always be the correct path). Just because you’ve already decided to potsplit does not mean the tournament is over, so play like you’re still in it and fight for the top place.

Either way works for me so that’s fine with me. Was a stupid idea to follow it through well knowing the consequences and shouldn’t test your TO’s patience or even consider on disrespecting the tournament itself.

It’s funny because that exact situation (testing the TO’s patience on the subject of colluding) happened with Sanford, ChrisG, and Spooky pulling the plug. You’d think SOMEONE would bring up that hey, maybe this is a bad idea, but this is the FGC.

yes I know who MOV plays and I know why he did it. doesn’t change the fact that you are reading into player intention to decide what’s collusion and what’s sick. and from that determination deciding what the limits of what they’re allowed to do in what is supposed to be a gathering to play a game we all enjoy.

what is the cut off point for collusion? okay, so if you’re jumping back jab and mocking it on purpose it’s a problem. but literally no one was doing that until the big names in the modern community got together and made rules about collusion. players do that shit in protest I’d imagine. what it originally sprang from was players like Justin or Chris G playing secondary teams or random select and people being upset about it. so that’s why I bring up MOV at all. yeah he plays Ken and he’s one of the best Ken players in Japan. no one thinks he’s disrespecting anyone or the game by playing Ken. everyone realizes that he could beat that entire top 8 with half the cast anyway and it was pretty cool watching him do what he did to Tokido.

so given that we’re all cool with that, are we cool with it when other people do it? it’s not like people were doing dumb shit/jump back jab/whatever when this collusion stuff started in the first place. they were just making it to GF and then not picking their main teams. why is it different? does it become ok if ChrisG plays his secondary team throughout the whole tournament? or how about another 3s example, where ChrisG picks Sean. he’s unlikely to beat anyone good picking Sean but we know he likes the character and as far as I’ve seen no one has been upset with that. what if he plays through all tournament with Yang and then picks Sean in GF? is it collusion if he picks Sean in GF or is it only collusion when he treats the match like a button check and giggles?

I think it’s shitty when people take it to that extreme “looks like a button check” and I’m not arguing that ya’ll should be cool with that. but it wouldn’t be happening in the first place if people hadn’t been upset about dudes picking their secondary teams in GF. which really does not strike me as a big deal. if ChrisG wants to pick his secondary team, and he beat everyone else to get to GF let him. that’s not shitting on the other players or anyone else. that’s just having fun playing a video game that you like. which is what it is supposed to be about.

btw please cut the aggressive tone. I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve that. does it make it better if I say I used to post as IglooBob and I’m definitely the best local 3s player and treat all the local players with respect every time we play? I’ve never shit on a match or made anyone feel shitty for losing to me - to me it’s more important to make sure everyone’s having fun so that they’ll keep playing the game I love. maybe that makes no difference to your response. but jesus stop talking to me like I’m some nobody scrub who’s never played in a tournament. all I’m saying is that if someone outs me in LF and then picks Necro in GF I’m not gonna be upset about it. that really should not be as controversial as you are treating it. as far as hoping I leave the scene soon, I’ve been playing a couple years now and have put in a lot of work in building a local community around 3s while keeping in touch with the local general FG community. I don’t see any reason to stop doing that. it’s been pretty successful and we’ve got a bunch of cool people playing 3s here and leveling up. to me that is a success. and no one here is worried about whether people are colluding or whether they’re being disrespected. it’s not even a part of the conversation. I don’t think it’s normal to have that reaction which is why I said what I said originally - this attitude has to come from the majors/stream/stuff that started getting big with SF4. because at the local level no one is thinking like that. we’re just happy to be playing a cool game together.

I didn’t want to get too involved in this, but my view is pretty simple:

  1. Players can pick whatever character they want.
  2. Players can do whatever they want with their own money.
  3. Players cannot act like blatant douchebags.

If you’re trying to tell a player that they have to play a certain character, or aren’t allowed to split their money with someone else, then you’re just overstepping your bounds as a human being. This isn’t professional sports, and these guys are not contractually obligated and paid a salary to please you.

There are some things I’m not okay with. Acting like a clown on stream, wasting everybody’s time, blatant trolling in-game, this stuff obviously shouldn’t be tolerated. I didn’t watch the Frosty Faustings stream so I dunno what exactly happened there. But if two people decide to split the money that they rightfully earned, and decide that they don’t care about the pride of the title, is it really okay to say “You guys must sit here and play as hard as you can”? How do you even enforce that? How do you ever know if someone is throwing a match or not playing as well as they normally would? Why does it even matter?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to find solutions. It just doesn’t look good when stuff like this happens. Some tournaments are high-profile enough or have badass trophies that the players care about, but not every tournament can be so blessed. It would be nice if we could figure out incentives for players to not want to collude, rather than punishing them for doing what makes them happy.

is what happened.

They can do whatever they want with the money, but yes, it is OK to tell them “No, you cannot make a joke out of this GF/this tournament and disrespect everyone involved”.

At least in this case ShinSyn was pretty much told, “Yes we are just screwing around in GFs.”

what kind of shithead refuses to give people an interesting match to watch when the pot is five hundred big ones

lol, people in here screaming at the top of their keyboard lungs over this shit. i didnt see any of frosty faustings, but i mean that guy can do what he wants with the money, i just think its kind of bitch made imo. unless they were playing like 2 10 year olds who have never played a fighting game in their lives.

only people who dont play competitively give a fuck about grand finals collusion (well there are some other reasons to care, which i shortly addressed below). if the two people who are better then everyone else decide its late, theyre tired, or whatever, and they wanna play some secondaries, or just have a bit more fun with their mains, going for riskier setups, combos, not playing uber serious because they are gonna split it, then thats on them. if i was watching that, id either stay and lol, or walk away and do something else. throwing a fit over it as a player, viewer, TO, isnt even worth it. im not saying dude didnt have the right to pull out his cash. the TO for blazblue still got 98 percent of what he wanted out of his tourney from all the players, and somehow thats all completely negated because he was unpleased about grand finals. i could see if your entire tournament was a big troll, and by grand finals you had it, but that wasnt the case, and im sure blazblue still had a great tournament overall.

this fg shit is not sports, its not even esports (what little i know about that financial structure in popular esports games), and with all the sports analogies that have been going on about this topic since its existed, i just have to once again say, collusion in an fg tournament is in no way compared to that of lets say, baseball, where the known players who are out on the field to actually collude are making millions, and have signed fat ass contracts for this, making them much more obligated to be competitive and legit, then a tournament you pay your way into, maybe get a nice little bonus from a sponsor, and spend 2-3 times more time at that tournament for a single game then a baseball player would for one single game.

i mean the guy laid down the rules, he felt they broke them and disrespected him, so he said kick rocks. pretty much the end of story. i think its kinda wack, but whatever. more power to the players, dont let yourselves be dictated by the dollar. this fg shit aint nothing to live off of in the short or long run. if i feel like fucking off a little in top 8 because i want to, then thats on me. im not obligated to put on a show and shoe shine for anyone if i do not want to. i mean im grateful for all the money TO’s have been able to get for the players to have a bit more incentive to come play and play hard, but im just not mad at anyone who doesnt really care about that.

i know previously it got all melodramatic with wiz saying we didnt know how serious this collusion stuff was in reference to hurting sponsors, and then thats when srk hammered down some rules to road to evo events, and any event with no anti collusion rule not getting in on the front page. silly school yard bullying nonsense. as if the world would end without any tournament whatsoever. we would still group together and play, run tournies, etc… if a TO doesnt like the lack of control they have over players tourney performances, then dont run a fucking tournament, and go do something else. its just the shit that happens sometimes, and the more negativity you shine on it, the worst you make it. most of these angry streamers and TO’s would have done better to handle the shit publicly a lot more low key, not even commenting on it, and then off camera said their piece. everyone trying to be mr big dick on stream and be like nah, not happening here son, im gonna embarrass you so people know how serioius i am. lol, my sides.

you got spooky screaming on chris g and sanford for playing secondaries after a long day of playing already, and its like going on 12am. just let em rock, its late, im sure theyre tired just like you, but i digress, thats old shit, and its said and done with.

collusion in an fg tournament has to be the least serious thing, first world problems, nonsense ive ever been told to take serious. lol. i mean i get it, running tournaments cost a grip (or in the case of small side tourneys, is heavily time consuming and tiring), and a lot of people are still coming out of pocket for majors, just out of the love for it, and theyre financially fine doing it. so anything you can do to bring in more sponsors and everything that can help circumvent that cost, or even net you a profit to put on an even better tournament next time, is definitely a priority. i get it, but at the same time dont pretend like even with all the big flashy sponsors and what not, this shit still aint grass roots. no one shows up to your tourney, your bill still has to be paid, and with thousands of dollars less to contribute. so i think some people need to get off their high horse and realize that while you may put in more work as a TO, this is still a two way road, and you NEED the players more then anything else.

clearly the two in grand finals for blazblue didnt give a fuck about the money, if they decided to fuck off anyways, and power to them. until you start just straight up banning people for collusion, or not playing to their fullest capabilities, people will continue to do whatever the fuck they want, and dont get mad because your financial incentive wasnt anything they gave a fuck about.

to be honest this topic gets far more shine then it deserves. its such a small part of what happens at tournies sometimes, and overall, majors are still getting far more out of players for their tournament, brand, etc…, then they arent. for every 1 match of collusion you may get at a major, you got 200 matches hard fought, and giving more shine to it is just going to bring out more trolls who are actual decent players, to get on your stream and just play like a dick just to be a dick.

if you made it to grand finals, you are better then me, and from a competitors view, i dont give a fuck what you do, because i know even if you pressed jab for 3 rounds straight, you are still better then me. if TO’s and streamers want to really hammer down the law so that production for their tournaments is top notch, and players are always playing their best, theyre gonna have to slam down with a bunch of subjective ass rules that wont be able to truly be enforced, making the tournament less fun, and more tyranical, or have some strong financial incentive or consequences for players.

we dont get paid to enter tournies, we pay to play, and sometimes we get nice pot bonuses. until we play to get paid, players are just gonna do what the fuck they want, and who cares, next, because the overwhelming majority are still interested in playing their best, so they can get some of dat ego shine for their pride as a great player.

You really need to look up the term brevity Jimmy.