UK-based competitive integrity body ESIC, the Esports Integrity Commission, has received flak from the esports community after announcing an anti-corruption and the first ESIC anti-cheat partner this week.
Cheat preventer Denuvo by Irdeto has become the first ESIC anti-cheat partner. Denuvo Anti-Cheat will be deployed to fight cheating and game manipulation to support ESIC’s mission to prevent cheating in esports.
The quote tweets were critical of the announcement below, and ESIC turned off the ability for anyone to reply to the tweet:
An even stronger reaction was seen to ESIC’s other partner announcement this week – GGBet as ESIC’s anti-corruption education partner.
At the time of writing, this has received around 800 quote tweet comments, with many criticising the announcement:
The CSGO subreddit also commented on the partnership.
ESIC later made the following statement to explain the partnership: “GGBET have been an Anti-Corruption Supporter of ESIC since 2019, providing ESIC with data related to suspicious betting and match-fixing. ESIC works with numerous licensed betting operators in this manner.
“With regards to match-fixing, the betting industry’s interests are aligned with ESIC’s members in that match-fixing is a criminal behavior which has a negative effect for all stakeholders.
“This partnership enables ESIC’s independently curated and historically successful Anti-Corruption tutorial to be relaunched.
“The tutorial will cover information about how participants should treat insider information, prevent cases of corruption, and act if they become a witness of corrupt behavior. The tutorial will be accessible at no cost to the participant. Stay tuned for further updates.”
ESIC has several betting anti-corruption partners, including Unikrn, Betway, Rivalry, ArcaneBet, SkyBet, Skrilla, the Gambling Commission, Malta Gaming Authority and more listed on its website.
One of ESIC’s members, GT Sports Leagues, was accused of suspicious behaviour last year.
About Denuvo, the first ESIC anti-cheat partner
According to an ESIC press release and Irdeto’s research, 77% of global gamers are likely to abandon a game when cheating occurs. Denuvo and ESIC will work together to develop a framework to implement anti-cheat technology within the esports industry.
As an ESIC anti-cheat partner, Denuvo will provide ESIC with Denuvo Anti-Cheat software as well as periodic reports gauging particular data metrics related to integrity and industry risk. In a press release, the pair say this will help the parties to ‘gain insights to the industry pain points and promote fair play in esports’.
The news comes as the 2023 ESIC Global Esports Summit took place on February 9th and 10th 2023 at ExCeL London.
Stephen Hanna, ESIC’s Director of Global Strategy and Partnerships, commented: “ESIC is proud to announce this new partnership category targeted at strengthening the critical role of anti-cheat solutions in the maintenance of competitive integrity within the esports industry. As a distinguished partner in the games industry, we are pleased to welcome Denuvo as our first ESIC anti-cheat partner. We look forward to working together to find and execute upon more sophisticated applications for anti-cheat technology to tournament operation.”
Steeve Huin, Chief Operating Officer for Denuvo, added: “We are proud to partner with ESIC to fight cheating in the fast-growing esports segment. As gamers ourselves, we at Denuvo are dedicated to bringing fairness and fun back to online gaming and are therefore thrilled to ensure the same fair game opportunities will be available for the players of esports.”
Denuvo says its anti-cheat is ‘developed by security experts who are gamers themselves and the solution has no negative impact on in-game performance’.
Denuvo operates on the binary, not the source code, and integrates directly into the product build process. It doesn’t require APIs or SDKs, which means fewer tools for build engineers to manage and fewer tools for developers to install.
Denuvo Anti-Cheat provides cheat monitoring in real-time. It provides data to the game publishers, supplying them with insights on cheats and game cheating, making cheat data available to and owned by the game publisher.
Denuvo claims to have issued and revalidated 350+ million software licenses and secured more than 1,000 games. It works with various game studios and offers cross-platform technology to combat cheating and piracy on PC, consoles and mobile (iOS, and Android).
Lastly, ESIC has a mixed reception in the esports community, with some looking at ESIC as a needed entity in the space, and others unsure of some of its operations, particularly around the CSGO coach bug situation.
Related article: CSGO coaches break silence on ESIC bug investigation
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
