Since the dawn of competitive and professional online gaming the “sport” has been plagued with cheating. To prevent this type of behaviour, players join professional E-Sports leagues like the E-sports Entertainment Association (ESEA). To join the ESEA a player must install their proprietary software. This software prevents players from cheating in popular competitive titles like Counter-Strike and League of Legends. So technically the ESEA acts as cyber referees within these popular sporting competitions. But who looks after the referees? What if some rogue ESEA employee uses their position for their own gain?

This exact question was raised by an ESEA member “Enjoy ESEA Sheep” recently. The player reported that the ESEA software he installed on his machine was using his GPU to run calculation intensive programs to mine BitCoins, even when he wasn’t playing! Turns out that an ESEA employee covertly installed BitCoin mining software along with the required “anti-cheating” software on about 14000 user PCs to rake in the BitCoin gold.

Strangely enough this employee did not even come up with the illegal BitCoin mining code. The ESEA were in a testing phase to use their large network of PC gamers’ machines to provide their users with the added benefit of large scale BitCoin mining.

ESEA co-founder C.L. Torbull released the following statement:

“On April 13, 2013, after the initial tests, ESEA informed those involved in the test that we were killing the project and they should stop using the beta test. It came to our attention last night, however, that an employee who was involved in the test has been using the test code for his own personal gain since April 13, 2013. We are extremely disappointed and concerned by the unauthorized actions of this individual. As of this morning, ESEA has made sure that all Bitcoin mining has stopped. ESEA is also in the process of taking all necessary steps internally to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

The ESEA employee raked in $3, 713.55 before the players realised what was going on. In an effort to save some face, the ESEA will donate $7, 427.10 to the American Cancer Society. The number includes the original amount “stolen” plus a matching contribution from the ESEA itself. In addition to that, the ESEA will also increase the prize money for its upcoming competitive season by $3, 713.55.

Source: www.bandwidthblog.com