E-Sports League Mined Bitcoins with Subscribers' Computers

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Distributed computing is cool...except when it is done without your permission by some asshat...that was mining Bitcoin. :rolleyes:

ESEA League, one of the largest PC gaming leagues, has admitted to putting code into the league's client software to "mine" bitcoins, the open-source Internet currency now exchanging for around $130 per. Further inspection, Thunberg said, discovered that the code had been running for more than two weeks and that about 29 bitcoins had been mined, worth $3,600.
 
Is it just me... I wouldn't mind if they mined.

But that's if there are no ads or fees.
 
Forget the mining thing... "E-sport"? really? those still around? silly neck beard smelly basement guys :p
 
Nice lie, it began as an april fools joke, Umm I am pretty sure that no one in their right mind would think possibly damaging peoples computers and making money off of other peoples computers without their consent is a good april fools joke. It is obvious they were hoping no one would notice. Now they are back tracking and creating a lie to try to save their organization from disaster. Corporate psychopath on top....
 
Posted by Torbul :
Throughout the history of gaming and e-sports, there have been scams and straight up theft by players, teams, event organizers, and even “sponsors.” Over the past ten years ESEA has prided itself on being an upstanding member of the gaming community by providing a high quality service, paying out prize money, and being upfront and transparent with you, the community. We worked hard to build your trust and often took the longer, slower, and more meticulous road than others. That approach has paid off as we had success with our premium service and league. Over the two weeks we failed our community.

ESEA’s goal is to provide our community with cutting edge technology and tools. Whenever possible, the management and owners at ESEA initiate private tests on potential new products and tools that might interest our community. With the whole fervor around Bitcoin, we did conduct some internal tests with the Client on only two of our own, consenting administrators’ accounts to see how the mining process worked and determine whether it was a feature that we might want to add in the future. We thought this might be an exciting new tool that we could provide to our community. Ultimately, we decided that it was not.

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. What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company’s resources. We are extremely disappointed and concerned by the unauthorized actions of this unauthorized 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 owners and management at ESEA all apologize to each of you that were impacted by the recent events and intend to make things right. ESEA has issued a free month of ESEA Premium to all of our community members who were enrolled in Premium for the month of April. We also ask anyone who has experienced any physical damage to their computers to open an ESEA support ticket.

In an effort to maintain complete transparency, we have released all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses as well as data dumps of the wallets themselves. The value of the mined Bitcoins was $3,713.55 and ESEA will be donating 100% of the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. ESEA will also match 100% of this amount for a total of $7,427.10 donated. ESEA is also increasing the Season 14 League prize pot by $3,713.55.

As a team, we work hard to create cool things and we’ve worked even harder to consistently do things the right way. While it’s incredibly disturbing and disappointing that this happened, we’re committed to improving ourselves and rebuilding trust with our community.
 
The people mocking esports are seriously embarrassing themselves. Especially on a site dedicated to a site all things technology related. yikes
 
The people mocking esports are seriously embarrassing themselves. Especially on a site dedicated to a site all things technology related. yikes

Pretty much this.

That is like playing chess with friends and then mocking people that do chess tournaments. Pretty hypocritical and silly. E-Sports is a growing thing, not go anywhere any time soon. Not sure why people in this thread are in denial that it is a legit thing.
 
The people mocking esports are seriously embarrassing themselves. Especially on a site dedicated to a site all things technology related. yikes

How are they embarrassing themselves? You play video games, you may play them competitively. That's fine, but it's not a sport it's a game. That's like calling a checkers, poker, chess, monopoly league a sports league. It's not, it's a gaming league. Only the smelly neckbeards who never actually do anything active must justify their laziness by saying they are an "e-sportsman" in an "e-sports" league. Also I find it funny that you bring up the fact that this site is centered around technology, yes, it's a technology forum not a competitive gaming forum.

I still play css, I still play tf2, I still make fun of all the competitive neckbeards who make those games their lives.
 
GSL

MLG

ESEA

CEVO

IPL

IEG

Shall I go on?

These peopel draw salaries that are probably higher than yours, not just from single tournaments, but from sponsorship and broadcasting too. It's growing, and you need to get with the times pops.

Forget the mining thing... "E-sport"? really? those still around? silly neck beard smelly basement guys :p
 
What is up with this sudden stupid fascination half the people here have with calling people neck beards. I have seen that term pop up like 500 times in the last week.
 
rudy said:
What is up with this sudden stupid fascination half the people here have with calling people neck beards. I have seen that term pop up like 500 times in the last week.

I dunno. I'm not even sure how these internet slang words appear on forums. Have to look up most of them.


Posted from Hardforum.com App for Android
 
GSL

MLG

ESEA

CEVO

IPL

IEG

Shall I go on?

These peopel draw salaries that are probably higher than yours, not just from single tournaments, but from sponsorship and broadcasting too. It's growing, and you need to get with the times pops.

Two words, Gaming Leagues. You listed gaming leagues, not sports leagues. Making a high wage != pro sports player it just means you're good at something that is able to be monetized.
 
No, it's not. A sports league is a always a gaming league, but a gaming league is not always a sports league.

It depends entirely on your definition of 'sports'. Is there a valid reason why sports cant adapt to changes and advances in technology and society? They seemed to do fine with the invention of motor vehicles and firearms.

E-Sports are still sports and while not all games are as physical as most sports there are some that require just as much skill, training, reflexes and physical exertion.
 
Really? All they are offering is one free month of service. People with damaged/destroyed hardware are getting nothing. How is that the right thing?

In an effort to maintain complete transparency, we have released all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses as well as data dumps of the wallets themselves. The value of the mined Bitcoins was $3,713.55 and ESEA will be donating 100% of the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. ESEA will also match 100% of this amount for a total of $7,427.10 donated. ESEA is also increasing the Season 14 League prize pot by $3,713.55.

That's what I was talking about. Plus the whole, "If we broke your computer, let us know, we'll fix it." thing.
 
Neck beard basement dweller huh? :p

You are like a child that just keeps chanting the same insult.

Please grow up before posting. You add nothing meaningful to this forum or discussion. All you are doing is insulting a group of people(professional gamers) for doing something they enjoy and get paid to do. Extremely immature. If anything you are the one coming off as a "Neck beard basement dweller" by trying to stereotype others.
 
The people mocking esports are seriously embarrassing themselves. Especially on a site dedicated to a site all things technology related. yikes

It goes both ways. I drive but I have had an internal discussion on whether race car drivers are Athletes and whether its a sport. But it depends on what is considered a sport. In the end Gamers really on a lot of same physical traits that makes other sportsmen great. Vision both in front and peripheral vision, reflexes, precision movement. But lack a lot of the things that most Athletes require, things like low BMI, increased strength, height, and true workout regimes. What I think is probably the big issue is that Sport=Athlete. I don't think that is true, or ever has been. Competition and recognition makes a sport. Some sports are played by Athlete's.

An example being Football. You really can't play football except in rare cases without being an athlete to one degree or another. But you can in Baseball (I watch the Tigers, I know that Fielder is not an Athlete and Cabrera would be a stretch), a sport sporting more beer bellies than any other major american sport, even more than Nascar.
 
E-Sports are still sports and while not all games are as physical as most sports there are some that require just as much skill said:
E-sports are video games. Is Madden an e-sport too? Does Xbox Live host sporting events? I'll give you a hint... (no) it hosts video games, some of which are competitive in nature.
 
E-sports are video games. Is Madden an e-sport too? Does Xbox Live host sporting events? I'll give you a hint... (no) it hosts video games, some of which are competitive in nature.


Sorry don't understand your point exactly... Are you saying that where you play or where it is hosted determines if something is a sport?

So if I play baseball in a place where "someone" doesn't host sporting events, then baseball is not a sport?

A followup... If I play baseball somewhere, could it be said that I AM hosting a sporting event then it would be considered a sport?

Sooo confused by your logic.
 
It goes both ways. I drive but I have had an internal discussion on whether race car drivers are Athletes and whether its a sport. But it depends on what is considered a sport. In the end Gamers really on a lot of same physical traits that makes other sportsmen great. Vision both in front and peripheral vision, reflexes, precision movement. But lack a lot of the things that most Athletes require, things like low BMI, increased strength, height, and true workout regimes. What I think is probably the big issue is that Sport=Athlete. I don't think that is true, or ever has been. Competition and recognition makes a sport. Some sports are played by Athlete's.

An example being Football. You really can't play football except in rare cases without being an athlete to one degree or another. But you can in Baseball (I watch the Tigers, I know that Fielder is not an Athlete and Cabrera would be a stretch), a sport sporting more beer bellies than any other major american sport, even more than Nascar.

Yeah but the thing is sports require athleticism of some sort. Vision, so near sighted is better? It's not difficult to see something 12" in front of your face. Reflexes, I'll give you that one. But video games are more focused on twitching of hands/fingers reflexes rather than whole arm, body movement reflexes. Precision movement, video games require tiny amounts of movement to keep track of while sports have a lot more and a larger variety of movement. I'll give the e-sport subtitle to video games that simulate the whole ranges of movement and abilities needed to do that action in real life.

competition and recognition make a competitive recognized game. some of these games are played by athletes. These games that are part of both classes, are competitive and recognized and are played by athletes are sports. game is the base class for both sports and competitive video games, they are each a subclass of game.
 
Sorry don't understand your point exactly... Are you saying that where you play or where it is hosted determines if something is a sport?

So if I play baseball in a place where "someone" doesn't host sporting events, then baseball is not a sport?

A followup... If I play baseball somewhere, could it be said that I AM hosting a sporting event then it would be considered a sport?

Sooo confused by your logic.

No, I'm saying that the term "e-sports" is stupid and they're really just video games. The people playing them are not atheletes they're gamers playing...video games.
 
No, I'm saying that the term "e-sports" is stupid and they're really just video games. The people playing them are not atheletes they're gamers playing...video games.

Even calling them "gamers" is just a categorization method that human minds need so that people can be mentally sorted in accordance with stereotyped attributes for easy processing. I think e-sports is something of a stretch.
 
You are like a child that just keeps chanting the same insult.

Please grow up before posting. You add nothing meaningful to this forum or discussion. All you are doing is insulting a group of people(professional gamers) for doing something they enjoy and get paid to do. Extremely immature. If anything you are the one coming off as a "Neck beard basement dweller" by trying to stereotype others.

I take it your one of "em" huh:p
 
Yeah but the thing is sports require athleticism of some sort. Vision, so near sighted is better? It's not difficult to see something 12" in front of your face. Reflexes, I'll give you that one. But video games are more focused on twitching of hands/fingers reflexes rather than whole arm, body movement reflexes. Precision movement, video games require tiny amounts of movement to keep track of while sports have a lot more and a larger variety of movement. I'll give the e-sport subtitle to video games that simulate the whole ranges of movement and abilities needed to do that action in real life.

competition and recognition make a competitive recognized game. some of these games are played by athletes. These games that are part of both classes, are competitive and recognized and are played by athletes are sports. game is the base class for both sports and competitive video games, they are each a subclass of game.

Just saying that I think overall we treat what we consider sports to be competitions played by athletes. I think that definition barely held water before and that in truth and Competition based contest that requires specialized talent has become and really always was the definition. I wouldn't call a Pro gamer an athlete, but that shouldn't stop me from calling the tournaments that he plays in not a sport.
 
1 language changes we now say google instead of search the internet and I don't see 12 page threads arguing about that

2 the word sport has many definitions and many of them clearly would allow gaming to qualify

3 even if physical activity had to push you in some way PC gaming would still likely qualify. The hand eye coordination and speed at which you need to strike keys and control the mouse to play any of the top e-sports like starcraft, CS, tribes etc.... Is in fact physical activity that is just as demanding of your body as sports like bowling. It is true that e-sports do not have a heavy aerobic activity that would result in you being winded but that has not stopped a ton of other games from being labeled sports including golf.
 
1 language changes we now say google instead of search the internet and I don't see 12 page threads arguing about that

2 the word sport has many definitions and many of them clearly would allow gaming to qualify

3 even if physical activity had to push you in some way PC gaming would still likely qualify. The hand eye coordination and speed at which you need to strike keys and control the mouse to play any of the top e-sports like starcraft, CS, tribes etc.... Is in fact physical activity that is just as demanding of your body as sports like bowling. It is true that e-sports do not have a heavy aerobic activity that would result in you being winded but that has not stopped a ton of other games from being labeled sports including golf.

Bowling is a sport? Since when?
 
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