Esea Bitcoin Mining Scandal

[Broseephus]

So for those of you into competitive CS or Esports in general, looks like one of the premier leagues is in some hot water. They've piggybacked a bitcoin mining process onto their Anti Cheat Client. It's been cause a lot of issues for users from BSOD's to even a couple of reported hardware failures. .

 

Read the reddit link for all the details.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1dglil/popular_competitive_gaming_league_esea_admins

 

UPDATE- Kotaku Article

 

Update- Official ESEA Statement thanks Crabby

[Crabtr]

This is incredible...they've always seemed shady as fuck to me, this just confirms it. I used to play during it's prime in CSS, but ever since CSGO came out it's just seemed to me like it's became a money-grab. As a lot of people in that Reddit post mentioned, his excuses and backpedaling is phenomenal. What irritates me the most though is he's trying to come off like the good guy without actually giving the money back. Giving people free sub and putting the money in a prize pool a fraction of the userbase will ever achieve doesn't fix GPUs and pay for electricity, but damnit if it keeps people using the league. If this thing catches wind they're going to be in some serious shit and rightfully so.

[Broseephus]

Craig "Torbull" Levine (Co-Owner I think) is supposed to release an official statement soon. I'll update the OP with the link if/when he does.

[Guest]

Moved to mining section.

[Crabtr]

This is actually turning out to be a really big thing. There's even talk about it in the little netsec subreddit...

[Broseephus]

Well it's on Kotaku now.

[Crabtr]

The official statement is out: http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=12692

So more or less Torbull realizes his inability to run the company has landed them in deep shit and is now trying to clean it up by putting the blame on an unnamed employee and doing some good deeds. It's nice they'll supposedly be working to fix anyones computers that got damaged, but they've still ruined their reputation and customer-trust.

 

Edit: Going through that Reddit post again people seem to be finally fed up with their crap.

[Whaler_99]

Back in April there was a Skype malware that installed a miner on infected systems...

 

http://www.zdnet.com/bitcoin-mining-malware-spreads-on-skype-as-price-rises-7000013676/