We recently received some extremely concerning reports about match fixing and match fraud in one of our communities. After some months of investigation, we regretfully can confirm that those allegations were true.
Specifically, this involves tournaments organized by Yami and Time. What we discovered was that at least two players, Yami’s parents playing under the names RazSharpie and Stars Dad, over the period of several years, were:
- encouraged by Yami to throw their matches by launching outside of the stadium.
- allowed by both organizers to constantly forfeit their matches by not playing them; both organizers would then submit these mass forfeits as legitimate losses without any annotation.
- documented as present at a tournament they did not actually attend. Neither Yami nor Time were the organizer in this instance, but this activity was encouraged by Yami to another organizer.
Both RazSharpie and Stars Dad only have wins against each other; we have no way of knowing how many of their battles were legitimate, but it seems likely the number is near zero. Because of this, tournaments that did not meet the minimum number of players were illegitimately run and processed under WBO regulations, and many players earned points from winning matches they didn’t have to play. (That said, these accounts were present at events that had already exceeded 8 players without them.) This also means that WBO fees were collected from players in the community under false pretences.
It’s important to consider the context of this. It happened over the course of
years and many of these tournaments were multi-format; with only a handful of legitimate players it would of course be easy to fly through two or three formats in a day and collect Faces and Credits for each.
While we can’t verify whether everyone at a tournament is a legitimate player or not, we do expect organizers are attentive to inexperienced players of all types — newbies, someone’s friends or parents, anyone — and instil the values of good sportsmanship in all participants. These incidents obviously fly in the face of that.
The end result of all of this is misrepresented tournament results with rigged or outright fake matches, artificial inflation of players’ BeyRanks, and illegitimacies in the player records and entire worldwide ranking system that, due to technical limitations, we have no way of reversing.
While none of these incidents undo any of the good both Time and Yami have done for the WBO and Beyblade community, they betray our values as an organization and our commitment to fair play and credible rankings. Because of this, both Yami and Time are no longer WBO organizers. Additionally, they will be suspended from the WBO website and all WBO events — Time for one month and Yami for three. Both RazSharpie and Stars Dad are banned from all future WBO events. We thank both Time and Yami for their co-operation so far.
We’d like to remind organizers that if a mistake happens, or something goes wrong during a tournament or with the submitted results:
we understand that mistakes happen, and you will never be punished for coming forward and communicating with us to help make things right. We just want your help to deal with the situation as best as we can. But at no point during these incidents did any organizer reach out to us, so we were never in a position to help
Some positive things we will take from this:
- We commit to developing a WBO-sanctioned format for less than 7 players. We can’t say what form it will take yet, but we really don’t want our organizers to feel like there are no options in the event that they are under the minimum of players. Furthermore, we think these events could be beneficial to local blader communities and the WBO as a whole.
- We will develop clearer processes on how to handle unplayed matches. It’s not currently totally clear how forfeits or drop-outs should be handled, so we will address all of them in the upcoming revamp of our organizer’s guide.
Finally, one of the organizers involved in this incident told us that, “you may punish me for any reason, but just keep in mind it only means killing the Maryland community.” While this incident is a notable setback, we strongly believe that the Maryland community can persevere and will only become stronger in the future, and the WBO committee is committed to helping. If there’s anything the WBO can do for anyone the Maryland community, or that community at large, please feel free to message me or anyone else on the team directly.
We were all caught off guard by this and are still absorbing it all; we’re sure some of you feel the same, and we’re hoping we’ll hear your feedback. Even the best of us have something to learn from this whole situation, so let's work together to keep the WBO fair and fun. However, let's also be respectful of the organizers involved and keep the discussion limited to the thoughts presented here and how we can improve.
Wow, almost 150 views already, yet no replies hah. This whole fraud and its consequences clearly got people reacting, so I just wish they were reacting publicly here. Silence never solves anything. We are just as shocked as anyone.
Time asked me to post this here, since he can't do it himself. I completely support his decision and his opinion on the situation.
http://bit.ly/WBOAdios
What would any other judging entity have decided in our place though? And no, it was not all the same people who investigated and then chose the punishment. With the respect of the Organizers in mind, we of course did not just leave it up to the community to dissect and destroy them on the public place; we are not like back in Middle Age. Plus, come on: this is a message board, not a full-fledged system in any sense of the word.
What does he mean, he was not allowed to defend himself and explain? We did reach out to him and his replies were both meant to confuse us and for the things he did admit to doing, he just minimised them like they were natural and we did not understand.
Is anybody really looking at those fraudulous activities and disagrees that a punishment was required? Or was it the type of punishment that is considered to be inappropriate? I sincerely hope that we all agree that those frauds are appalling, at least; that would place us all on a good first step and the rest is definitely negotiable.
MissingNo.'s relaying of Time's response aside, I guess there just isn't that much to say. It happened: it's sad, but measures were already taken, so what's left to do? Play executioner on Yami and Time? Argue the sentence? Without the specifics, that's a touchy subject, not to mention that it doesn't exactly foster a friendly forum climate.
Find solutions so it doesn't happen again? That's hard on the best of days given how spread out we are across the globe.
On this particular issue, though, for all I/we know, as outlined in this thread, the problem looks to be two parents who just didn't take the tournaments seriously, and went along with what Yami asked unconcernedly, so what do we do? We can't just ban all parents from participating when the fundamental point of the WBO is to have inclusive tournaments. So, what's left? Preventing the host's relative from playing? Maybe, but then again, it doesn't seem uncommon to call on relatives to fill out the minimum players requirement, and host duties often rotate between a few members of every community, so that would basically reduce every community's pool of players dramatically.
And that's pretty much it.
(Oct. 05, 2016 4:02 AM)Nocto Wrote: [ -> ]On this particular issue, though, for all I/we know, as outlined in this thread, the problem looks to be two parents who just didn't take the tournaments seriously, and went along with what Yami asked unconcernedly, so what do we do? We can't just ban all parents from participating when the fundamental point of the WBO is to have inclusive tournaments. So, what's left? Preventing the host's relative from playing? Maybe, but then again, it doesn't seem uncommon to call on relatives to fill out the minimum players requirement, and host duties often rotate between a few members of every community, so that would basically reduce every community's pool of players dramatically.
No, we understand the limitations of what we can enforce, and like I wrote in the original post it's not up to us to verify who's a player with legitimate interest (or at least puts in legitimate effort). However, we trust our organizers to do so and to make sure that our tournaments are run properly.
We're not really looking to fix this with harsh new rules or policies, although we'll provide policy clarifications that we've gleaned from this in the future. However, we would like to know how people feel about this, if they feel that we acted appropriately and, if they don't think so, why not. This is our best effort at doing this fairly and for the community's benefit.
Well, we do wish we could share all the details, but as you mentioned and as I think is outlined in the first post, we indeed do not wish to slay Yami and Time on the public place.
The problem did lie in the fact that they were parents' accounts and they were disinterested, but I think there are more global points that we specified in the last half of the first post. Those are things we can work towards to try to improve and prevent future situations without having to go to such ridiculous lengths as banning relatives' accounts. Hell, we even discussed whether we should just require group photographs from all events in order to confirm that the participants were really present, which is also the biggest issue here. However, that involves breaching some people's privacy even if we promise that the photograph would only be shown to the Committee and not actually posted publicly on the web.
So yes, there are multiple symptoms, let's say, but we clearly cannot try to mend those symptoms specifically because it makes no sense for some of them. Instead, we can try to think of adjacent measures that will have an effect on reducing the risks of those symptoms, right? That is what we want to hear people about the most, but of course we picked up that there was a lot of disagreement about the decisions taken or whatever, so we also want to make sure that people understand why they were taken and there really needs to be a dialogue in order to heal, if this hurt or offended anybody.
By the way, mostly everybody who attended tournaments in Maryland in recent years seems to confirm what is listed in the first post, from what we saw.
Now that cases about tournaments have seem to become more frequent and defendants have said they do not have the opportunity to defend themselves, I'd just like to see some transparency about this.
I believe that, just like the Proposals sub-forum, there should be a forum where the committee and defendant(s) discuss the matter(s) at hand. There should be a time limit to respond unless there is a reason stated in the thread that they can not respond. After that time, something like 21-28 days, then the thread is closed and the committee can do what they see fit (or we can create some other procedure). Once the issue is done and the penalty is delivered, the thread is closed and made public for everyone to see. Then a thread like this can be opened for comments and questions.
It may be a bit much, but I personally believe that it is in the best interest of both the Committee and the regular members to show that no one is abusing power and tat everyone is getting a fair and speedy trial.
This is right imo, blaster joker got into trouble for throwing a single match and this is just a more extreme version of that so obviously it makes sense that the punishment would be more severe, unfortunate that Yami and Time did this, I really thought they were cool after meeting them at AN.
Copy that!
the taking Picture thing has never really been a problem in my community. I personaly would be all for having that in place. I personally don't want to see Time or Yami(Stars) go. I think of both of them as friends. They are good people. Bad decision but it can be fixed in the long run. And this situation can be resolved and better regulations can be put in place.
I agree wholeheartedly with Tai on the issue as a whole. I don't believe that Yami or Time should've been banned without something of a system in place to ensure they can both have their say. This is assuming what Time wrote is to be taken as 100% true (which is the problem here, noone really knows) but we all know this isn't the first time something like this has happened.
I really do think a more formal system for alleged rule breakers would be great for everyone.
Edit: I'm not saying that I think innocent or guilty or that I think the ban was fair or unfair. I have my opinions on those issues I'll keep to myself but my main argument is just, when it comes to things like these it does make people feel a little unsettled when they suddenly hear of it from out of the blue. Yes it's been going on behind the scenes for a while, but the other members of the site don't know or see that and I can't help but feel that's gonna make anyone feel like it was a sudden split decision even when we all know it wasn't one. I genuinely think a little transparency with these cases could go a long way.
Thats really sad to hear what happened. But I really don't think what WBO did was wrong (No offence to anyone
)
But I really think there should be someway/somethig we can do if we have less then 7 people. I mean sometimes 8 or more people say they will come but sometime 2-3 dont come which lead to event getting postpone just because we didnt had 1-2 guys (like I had to postpone that Final Showdown event quite a few time. Though it didnt happened again).
I think Brad is writing a more complete reply at the moment, but I just want to say that both of them really had the opportunity to defend themselves, it spread on many days and even weeks I believe. The idea ThaKingTai suggested is really interesting for the future, but it is not like we botched and did all this in two days without giving them a chance to explain the situation.
By the way, yes the perpetrator's version is good to have, but I do investigations for a living myself, and when you have so much proof from different sources before even reaching out to them, whatever the person would say does not change the weight of everything else, because of course they would always defend themselves and try to make you see that they are not responsible for what they did, or that it was not that bad. This is a trend in everyone, I see that in people every month when I interrogate them.
(Oct. 05, 2016 4:08 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: [ -> ] (Oct. 05, 2016 4:02 AM)Nocto Wrote: [ -> ]. . .
No, we understand the limitations of what we can enforce, and like I wrote in the original post it's not up to us to verify who's a player with legitimate interest (or at least puts in legitimate effort). However, we trust our organizers to do so and to make sure that our tournaments are run properly.
We're not really looking to fix this with harsh new rules or policies, although we'll provide policy clarifications that we've gleaned from this in the future. However, we would like to know how people feel about this, if they feel that we acted appropriately and, if they don't think so, why not. This is our best effort at doing this fairly and for the community's benefit.
(Oct. 05, 2016 4:12 AM)Kai-V Wrote: [ -> ]Well, we do wish we could share all the details, but as you mentioned and as I think is outlined in the first post, we indeed do not wish to slay Yami and Time on the public place.
The problem did lie in the fact that they were parents' accounts and they were disinterested, but I think there are more global points that we specified in the last half of the first post. Those are things we can work towards to try to improve and prevent future situations without having to go to such ridiculous lengths as banning relatives' accounts. Hell, we even discussed whether we should just require group photographs from all events in order to confirm that the participants were really present, which is also the biggest issue here. However, that involves breaching some people's privacy even if we promise that the photograph would only be shown to the Committee and not actually posted publicly on the web.
So yes, there are multiple symptoms, let's say, but we clearly cannot try to mend those symptoms specifically because it makes no sense for some of them. Instead, we can try to think of adjacent measures that will have an effect on reducing the risks of those symptoms, right? That is what we want to hear people about the most, but of course we picked up that there was a lot of disagreement about the decisions taken or whatever, so we also want to make sure that people understand why they were taken and there really needs to be a dialogue in order to heal, if this hurt or offended anybody.
By the way, mostly everybody who attended tournaments in Maryland in recent years seems to confirm what is listed in the first post, from what we saw.
edit: wrong second quote.
There seems to be a misunderstanding, I was not arguing those solutions, but rather the lack of reactions. And, in effect, the reactions do look to be aimed at the process rather than the ruling.
Whether the way decisions were handled by the committee may not be agreed with by the rest of the community the fact still remains both Time and Yami knew they were breaking the rules and still did it therefore they should at least accept the punsihment with some dignity and be grateful that the committee didnt make the punishment more severe
We definitely think transparency is a good thing. However, we also have to handle incidents responsibly, and that includes being discrete, being respectful of the privacy of players who report incidents to us, and not turning things into a trial by mob or a popularity contest.
In the original post, I wrote that everything written here was confirmed by the organizers involved. This is true. While they may believe these incidents are less severe than we do, they nonetheless have certainly occurred. While we didn’t press “charges” or hold a public trial (which no organization like ours would ever be expected to do), we interviewed the organizers involved over the series of many messages and had them confirm the details in question, which matched the reports we’d received.
We have received more reports from other attendees since posting this. We investigated and discussed this issue among the team for months, negotiated among the team what we felt was a fair punishment. There were plenty of disagreements within the team at various points on how to handle this, and we kept working on it till everyone could agree it was a responsible decision and all signed off on it. We did not take this lightly at any point. Every member of the staff participated and I think anyone who read or listened in on the conversations we had would agree that they were fair. Confirming the events with multiple people and posting about them here felt like the responsible way to approach this while causing people the least problems.
We don’t have an incentive to lie or really do anything other than act as fairly as possible. We obviously want the community here to be happy, and we have nothing against Time and Yami, both of whom have always been great to talk to and contributed a lot to the community in Maryland and at large. It hurts us as an organization to lose organizers. It hurts us that obviously some people will think we acted unfairly, despite our best efforts. This is just a really unfortunate situation.
We want to work more closely with organizers, and (I know you’re sick of hearing it but) we have some stuff in the works that I think will help us take some big steps forward. This includes massively improving the line of communication organizers have with us and making you a more tightly-knit part of the organization, and providing way more support and resources to you.
We are also trying to be more consistent with our applications of suspensions and will have new rules to share with the community soon. Consistent with our new policies, we reduced UltimateOrion’s ban from permanent to 3 months. This is one thing we didn’t get right the first time around, and we’re grateful that UltimateOrion will be returning to the community in a couple of days.
I recognize that we don’t have all the answers right now, but we are working on them. Because we don’t want to address them half-heartedly, and instead build the foundation for the years to come following Burst’s launch, we’re taking our time to get it right. But I promise you we will.
We also need our organizers do need to trust us to do the right thing, and work with us to get there; we are the ones who have been collectively responsible for the WBO for almost eight years and will be responsible for it for the indefinite future. That means we have to take responsibility for it and ultimately own up to the outcome of every decision, for years to come. I think we would hold up really well in a comparison to any online community or volunteer gaming organization in terms of transparency or fairness. That includes having this conversation here now.
But we are also just a team of human beings, and like I said, we do sometimes get it wrong. We are always open to correcting it when we do, and we are super grateful to everyone who communicates with us, publicly or privately, on how we can do better.
I agree pretty wholeheartedly with everything Brad has said in his above reply. Everything about this decision was very carefully considered and debated within the Committee over the span of several months. And not every member of the Committee was involved with every step of the process; I for example was not heavily involved in the investigation, but became slightly more involved as we were discussing how to react to it once the facts had been verified by the organizers. So the same people to investigate were not necessarily the only people also judging and assessing punishment.
Everyone involved was given ample opportunity to respond to our inquiries after learning about what had happened and to defend themselves, so I don’t quite understand the notion that they were not given this opportunity. As has been stated multiple times in this thread, we have nothing against Time and Yami; we appreciate everything they’ve brought (and will hopefully continue to bring!) to the community, and don’t want to negatively affect any community through our decision. Like Brad said, we have no incentive to do anything than to act as fairly as possible. And in this situation, we feel as if we have acted in this way given the gravity of what occurred over the span of several years. There had to be some level of repercussions.
And in knowing that there had to be some level of repercussions, we also realized that we needed to become more consistent with our application of suspensions as Brad also mentioned. The new policies we have developed will ensure that how we handle situations (and in retrospect, UltimateOrion’s situation) is consistent starting right now and moving forward. So I’m happy to say to you ClaraM that a more formal system is indeed on the way, and that the punishments applied here (and retroactively to UltimateOrion) are consistent with this new system.
I’m happy to see that several of you have responded with constructive ideas on how we can be better. This is exactly the kind of thing we need. It helps us so much to hear from you guys directly here on the forums. ThaKingTai’s idea about having a sub-forum where issues like this could be discussed privately between the Committee and accused party, then made public, is an interesting one. I do worry about ensuring the people reporting an incident are allowed to maintain their anonymity when necessary (which means that there would inevitably be some private discussion between Committee members only), but having such a system in place would help to show that both the Committee and person being accused engaged in an actual conversation. I realize that in this case, you guys can’t see that it did indeed happen.
If we’re going to talk about transparency however, then what we’ve done here by even having this conversation and literally telling everyone that we are open to make changes to decisions we’ve made (the case of UltimateOrion is a perfect example of this) must go a long way towards proving that we are trying our best to be open with the community about the decisions we are making (as we try to be in all aspects of the site; the birth of the Experimental Format and its continued evolution as a result of community feedback is an example of this as well). We believe that issues like the ones outlined in this thread deserve to remain discrete for some period of time as facts are gathered, but ultimately we are committed to being open with you about major decisions like this.
One of the most positive things lost in this discussion so far that I am glad we have been prompted to assess now is finding a way to develop a WBO-sanctioned format for less than seven players. The former is going to be huge and I’m certain it’s going to alleviate the problems so many communities have faced over the years, especially when getting started. With Burst’s wider international release looming, allowing for events like this is going to be very important to fostering new great communities across the globe!
Well this is a shame. Especially for the Maryland community.
Quote:You may punish me for any reason, but just keep in mind it only means killing the Maryland community.
What a cowardly thing to say.
I don't understand what you guys mean by saying that they shouldn't have been banned without having their say. Their say to whom? They did have discussions with the members of the Committee, no? It's just that the conversation was not a public one. I would understand the argument that this shouldn't have been made a public discussion if they aren't able to defend themselves within that same public discussion, but that is a completely separate issue from whether or not they should have been banned or not.
Plus, it's not really that bad a punishment. Objectively speaking, if they really have skewed results for years, I don't really think not being able to participate for three months is so bad, especially when you consider that people spend money to enter these tournaments.
I think that using words like prosecutor, judge, jury, defendants and charges is just unnecessary. It just serves to make the punishment seem more dramatic. They aren't going to prison. They are just not allowed to participate in certain children's spinning tops game for three months.
Sooooo... I feel like this was a waste of time. The issue has been addressed, this is an online forum for fans, making a big deal out of this is unnecessary and as I mentioned, the issue has been addressed and that's all this thread is for. No offense, Kai-V, but I do not understand why you(and a lot of others) wanted or expected people to comment on this just to voice their opinions and clutter up threads. I honestly believe this thread should be closed and all issues, if they are important enough, should be settled through pms. I just wanted to get more Hasbro burst info. So hyped for its release in the US!
(Oct. 06, 2016 5:45 AM)bigbangpegs Wrote: [ -> ]Sooooo... I feel like this was a waste of time. The issue has been addressed, this is an online forum for fans, making a big deal out of this is unnecessary and as I mentioned, the issue has been addressed and that's all this thread is for. No offense, Kai-V, but I do not understand why you(and a lot of others) wanted or expected people to comment on this just to voice their opinions and clutter up threads. I honestly believe this thread should be closed and all issues, if they are important enough, should be settled through pms. I just wanted to get more Hasbro burst info. So hyped for its release in the US!
We have a responsibility to report on this to the community openly and to allow discussion, and already there have been some great posts in this thread.
If you just want to read news about Beyblade, stay in those topics. Since you're not interested, I'd ask that you not reply to this topic again.
If Kai-V is encouraging people to reply, it's probably because we don't actually ever get much direct feedback when we make decisions even when people aren't totally happy about it. We just wanna be clear that we're here to answer questions.
As a new player in the Maryland area I'm glad this is happening. It definitely sucks to lose player and organizers, and I can even kind of understand why this happened because of the number of players required for a tournament and whatnot, but it seems to me that banning this kind of behavior is the best move for the community at large. I know that I would be upset to join a tournament only to learn this was happening afterwards, I would feel cheated and I'd be less inclined to come to the next event. So while losing players is a bad thing its better than allowing this kind of behavior to continue and I hope it will lead to a stronger community over time. Hopefully Maryland will still have just as many events in the future as there were in the past.
Time, we received reports that you were involved in more than one tournament, not to mention the fact that you were part of basically all of Yami's confirmed fraudulent events anyway. As far as I know everyone who kept silent on this issue is in on it too, but of course those with the most authority in the community are those who get the most blame. You deeply breached our trust and claiming your innoncence through ignorance is not going to pass. Milgram's experiment shows that regular participants can be reasonably repressed from talking, but you guys, we expected some decency from you and never did you report this issue to anyone nor are you currently even owning up to the bad judgement you had.
You were accidentally already sent the Jiraiya MS you obtained with Credits you should not have gained, which frustrates me as it is, but we will see about your amaterios... EDIT: I just verified all of the tournaments in which you won a Shard of Amaterios and they seem legitimate.
I just want to give a little input on this, I don't see why people are acting the Committee is acting unfairly, Time and Yami broke the rules and they got punished, it's as simple as that. As for Times above post, saying that the WBO will lose one of its 10 best members because you are choosing not to come back after your month long ban honestly really pissed me off, and it's a cowardly thing to say to try and stop you from being banned.