Check out my second channel with useful SC2 guides - ru-vid.com/show-UCv9BLWuGTkTksDmhWcjWxZg The MATCHFIXING SCANDAL - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DWbaUr8kZaU.htmlsi=GJgbg5LUeexf-_Yl Brood Lord Infestor balance period - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KbtDFgEO7pM.htmlsi=uBv8Nt7tg7rgmcGA Timecodes: 00:00 Who's Life 00:55 First steps in StarCraft 2 02:00 Life's road in GSL 09:11 Life's path to becoming the World Champion 13:09 Back to back Global Finals 18:02 The Downfall
Yeah wtf. I thought it'd be at least some sort of hacks, not he purposely lost a couple matches to make a quick buck. It's not even that bad, his accomplishments are still completely valid. Video is pure garbage hype.
@@TeacherDoug7its all because of money. Throwing on purpose with exact scores would ensure lots of money to his criminal buddies and himself. He was also very young and easily influenced by the wrong people. Furthermore likely high on his own success and keen on taking risks in real life.
Game 7 of the global finals vs sOs is still in my opinion of the best Protoss holds I've ever seen in a tournament of this magnitude. Such an epic game.
I followed Life's professional career very closely. This was a devastating piece of news when it hit. All those times when I jokingly said "he's throwing!" weren't as funny in retrospect. Thinking back, he's had more suspect games than the ones he's been found guilty of. I remember him losing against Sjow in one of the first tournaments of HoTs by running group after group of lings over the same widow mines placed in the same spot. I chalked it up to new game, bad day for Life but who knows now. This is so shitty. Life leaves an bad taste in my mouth, especially after preventing Mvp from getting his G5L trophy and then going down the path he did. Great video though. Made me feel very nostalgic of the great days. I miss so many of the players seen in this video.
Just pretend all that didn't happen. Bj Penn is my favorite fighter. You know how many fights he lost in a row now? 😂 Remember the good times. When he wanted to win, he was a terror.
@@greuju I don’t like BJ Penn. too many out of the ring controversies. Like he was bar fighting guys who were not on that level at all. My favorite fighter is Jon Jones 😝
There are probably others doing it too, he just got caught, cause he was young and not naturally incline to do that type of thing. Of course they catch the best player doing it, and who knows how elaborate it actually was to get him kicked from professional play. I can tell by his name life, he wasn't that type of person. He was robbed and defamed.
Wow. Thanks for the video. I remember cheering for Life years ago. He was really fun to watch. Then he seemed to vanished. I never heard the story until now.
Sos is actually the best. He’s the only one who managed to be creative and entertaining with original builds and gameplay while everybody else played meta. Massive respect for the guy! And Biggest thank you with it.
Life today would probably be the ONLY player that can go toe-to-toe with Serral. A pity...what killed me was that he didn't even need to do it as he was already one of the most skilled SC2 players ever then. His lifetime prize money earned would've EASILY exceeded the ONE TIME cheat money he received. Unbelievable. Unreal.
Life was a kid that was taken advantage of by stupid people. He made a dumb decision. He deserved some sort of punishment but a total ban and no mention of his name was so severe for a fuckin kid...
@@tobiasL1991 dude for real. The punishment Life received made it look like he killed someone. The matches he purposely lost were unimportant games so it's not like he ruined the results of the entire tournament. The situation was blown way out of proportion.
@@TheHololo1234 He can still play Starcraft, just not at tournaments. It's the same in chess. Get caught cheating ONCE, you're banned for life. Keeping cheaters destroys the credibility of the sport and drives away viewers.
@@tobiasL1991 Not to sound elitist, but compared to esports fans, the average fan of traditional sports is basically retarded. One of the athletes can commit a crime right on national television, and nobody cares. Take Odell Beckham's late hit against Josh Norman. Beckham should have gone to prison for that hit, but most football fans are like "gee I think he took it a bit too far". (He got a one-game suspension for almost killing someone.) Crap like that is why I stopped watching football years ago. Personally, I only watch sports that can keep a lid on bullshit. I'm tired of watching fixed matches, roided athletes, egregious penalties, and people who are just bad role models continuing to be given a platform to influence young people. If you can't be a decent human being, then I don't want to watch you play. If the league keeps bringing back people I think are scumbags, then I stop watching the league. It seems like most of the Korean Starcraft fanbase share my view, which is what keeps those leagues honest. Personally, I am happy to see at least one sports fanbase actually care about these things.
The thing is. Its in Korea. So yeah western wise this is fucking overboard. But esports have been real sports in Korea since 98? Whenever brood war took off. This is serious to them, your identity is tied to your online accounts. You can't just make new accounts in Korea. You have one assigned to your government ID
Damn, I remember all of this. He was so fucking sick and I was really sad when I found out that he was rigging matches. Seeing these matches also make me remember how OP infested Terran was. lol
i'd rather be banned for life in a video game (in this case just the tournaments, to be precise) than be in jail for 5 years lol. and being in jail bans you for life in certain departments too btw. if you commit a crime as a police officer, you'll never be a police officer again. nobody want's to have you in their company really. that's why black americans who never committed a crime get in the criminal loop, because some racist officer decided to put them in prison for no reason. when they get out, no one hires them, they can't earn money, so in order to survive, they start stealing. anyway i feel very sorry for life. he was just a kid and some capitalist assholes just exploited him. i don't consider him a villain. he is just one of many victims in this cruel, stupid society
Life was simpler back then in times with Life. There was still access to WoL and HoTS ladder and I was just climbing WoL as that's what I was used to since release. Life made tournaments worth watching. Everyone clapped and cheered for "Life's lings" with what felt like a stadium full of people. The absolute peak of the game with Blizzard's support and a community that shared near top spot in streaming on twitch. Starcraft 2 has been my first real PC game and my favorite game of all time. Every starcraft broadcast I would watch live just for Life. After his finals best of 7 with sOs I nearly cried after his loss because I was so invested and idolized this man as a hero to zerg. Then it all came out. I cried for a different reason then. To have one of your only role models turn into this... inhumane puppet for money drove me away for a long time. I still tuned in to some streamers, played the game a little, but slowly it all faded away until I stopped playing for years. I've recently begun to start playing and enjoying myself again! I can't really get into watching the pro scene again but I must admit I was reignited by Oliveira yet I just feel like the top Zerg players like Reynor or Serral don't have that life that Life brought. Perhaps it was because the time was younger so optimization wasn't the best and the overall skill level is much higher. God was it fun to live back in those times. Sometimes I wished Life would come back but realistically what he did is unforgivable and shattered the trust of the playerbase and love of the game to a point it still struggles to return to
The greatest Zerg to ever be. Only Dark has ever come close to reaching the heights of Life. Life is the one who made the headlines, but he was not the only one. A sad time for SC2 for sure.
@@EsportsStoryteller I could understand that. Serral is on the Mount Rushmore of Zerg greats. The fact Zerg was clearly not the weakest race during Serrals time, and that Serral reigned when 45 minute plus resident sleeper games were the norm, hurt his candidacy. None the less, many great Zergs have risen to the top, and each of them have pushed the race to dizzying heights. Perhaps a video idea, but what about the greatest of all 3 races? For me: Zerg: Life, Dark + (Serral, Jaedong, NesTea, Rogue, Idra, Stephano). I could be talked into any of the last batch for final spot Terran: Maru, ByuN, INnoVation. Maru and ByuN for sure. Protoss: MC, PartinG. 3rd one? I can be talked into a couple for this slot. MC was always entertaining. PartinG was just so solid from what I remember.
LIFE WAS THE GREATEST…. so sad he threw it all away.. sad no one speaks of how his coaches who were much older than him guided him down the wrong path. he was a minor when all this was happening.
i believe this is an underrated comment. But i guess that happens , when you become an unexpected talent and champion and people bind not only their feelings , but their expectations to you .
@@fabianheinrich2812It should be underrated. His coaches weren't involved, not the ones from KTR, Afreeca, or Startle. He took the dive to get paid 100k usd by Enough (who was not his coach).
Major suggestion for you: whenever you use any kind of jargon (in this case 'bonjwa'), or refer to something that not all viewers might know - you should put up a little subtitle on screen briefly to fill in the viewer (so they can pause and read if they want, without slowing down the vid for people like me who already know!)
Life was well on his way to making an amazing fortune. The regions weren't locked at the time so he could have swept international money like a hoover. Instead, he did this. What a loser.
Maybe the answer is just easy money and the false belief that he couldn't be caught. Why trying hard to win matches when u can get money for losing? And if he wasn't caught, he could get the money from matchfixing and international tournaments too...
I remember a good friend of mine used to play SC2 religiously. He introduced me to SC2 and showed me Life and his accomplishments. I used to go round to his place and watch him play (he was a zurg player) and we would watch Life games and he would show me the level of his talent. was quite sad to hear when he got caught for match fixing :( so sad to see such talent go to waste
Those games... I was recently watching some old HotS legendary matches. Man, I think that current TOP 20 players would just tear the best players from that era just like that. I am sorry. Yes, they have significance from historical perspective and as innovators. The only player that continuously improved and reinvented is Maru. Maybe Life would be the same. But likes of Serral, Reynor, Dark, Cure, herO would destroy peak HotS players any day IMHO. Also old SC2 was worse than we dare to admit nowadays. We complain about balance? Like, just look on those force fields and infested terrans. Horrible.
Life won a world championship at age 17 and finished 2nd the next year at 18. The only issue for him as a player was how he would adjust to LOTV. Hard to imagine him not being a top 5 player for at least another 5 years. Remember that in 2017 and 2018 prize money went up significantly. Blizzcon championship was 200K and there was big money in Katovice and the Chinese tournament WESG. WESG paid 200K to the winner who was Maru in 2017. So the money was there and he had no need to cheat for cash.
Life for whatever reason was never an elite team player during the team era up to 2016. Life got traded to KT Rolster and he was just another player on that team. Zest was the captain and leader and Life never became a front line type player. The team game was obviously different you play one map at a time but in the playoffs and in all kill matches he could have been a beast when hot. He was just another roster guy for that team.
You could do such a good Hollywood movie out of this. How the high succes slowly corrupts him. And as far as I know his parents took the tournament money because he wasnt 18 yet.
wait wtf i watched this and expected him to be like a cheater or a supervillain, he was just guilty of throwing some matches? Dude who cares, Life has skill and its not like he was evil. Whether or not he threw for money, or whatever, that's his choice. He should be allowed to throw for gain - And who's to say he was not threatened, or intimidated to do this? Anywhere there is money there is possibility for this. I'd love to know what they found out about this. The most I can see from something like that is like a fine or something. Why was this such a "huge disgrace" like they make it seem to be? Makes no sense to me.
@@tqhung166 no game was ruined because it didn't work on keeping the casual playerbase alive. Like improving custom games and marketing it better while also doing amazing cinemagraphics like League would've saved the game. It would be a worldwide game at or near the level of League or Valorant.
I'm not one to complain often but a 25-minute video just to speculate on how much he made in the two matches he threw. As well as speculation on the reasons why he did it.... I mean thanks I guess? I just expected there to be a little more information about the actual match fixing this was more so a video about his wins.
This one broke my heart. Life was my favorite player. The scandal broke during the first LOTV tournament. There were so many “what if’s”. How good could he have been?
Starcraft has Life, MMA has Jon Jones, Cycling has Lance Armostrong.. Every competitive sport has someone trying to beat the competition by disregarding the rules set for the competition. In my opinion one of the worst things you can do as a competitior. Not only because it destroys your own reputation and achievements, but it also tarnishes the efforts of every other competitors sacrifice and results. I feel like if you don't wanna play the game by the rules, then you shouldn't be allowed to play. And getting caught once should be enough to ban you from any competition ever again. The rules are sacred because they are the only thing that gives the entire thing meaning.
many Zergs, myself included, felt like Zerg actually had a chance to win games without just massing swarm hosts because of Life. i think it was this specific scandal that was the beginning of the end of me genuinely trying to competitively play this game... it really didnt help that people would point toward Life and be like "SEE?!?!? SEE!?!?! ZERG NEEDS MORE NERFS TERRAN AND PROTOSS NEED MORE BUFFS LOOK AT HOW EZ ZERG IS FOR THIS GUY" either, while me and many other Zergs across the entire ladder would be utterly struggling and losing game after game after game.
Life was something special, man. It was amazing watching him in those times. He would have made so much more money over time had he just kept competing legitimately. So sad to see
If only he didn't match fix, it would be very very interesting to see Life continue his successful path and fight Serral for who's the best zerg player.
It's so sad, I was a huge fan of Life. Even as a Terran player myself, I loved watching this guy play zerg. And then he did all this shit and Sc2 honestly never recovered from it. Very saddening because Sc2 is such a beautiful game. So much nostalgia in this video. Thank you for making this video!
last 2 games of Global finals vs SoS were 2 of the clutches games ever! I think that year was the best of Sc2 so far. Sadly life dishonor himself and sc2
This is actually sad. It's far too normal for young athletes from Asian countries to get forced into game fixing from the mafia. So many young athletes have been caught. And everyone knows who's behind.
Life got me into SC2. I used to love cheering for him. Now I still watch the game cuz I love it. But I'll never have that feeling of rooting for my absolute favorite ever again. Which makes me sad : (
As an outsider I am deeply confused by reaction of people. I didn't know what life got in trouble for. Yall made it sound like he was doing something serious like mugging or shooting someone. But he just cheated. Like oh... thats it? Really? But everyone calling him a criminal and RUINED KOREAN E SPORTS! Like thats an over reaction. Just reprimand him, Shake him down about who he was working with to be let back in and have him sit out a competition. Then have him do a e sport commercial about cheating. Idk... People are sensitive. I don't give a fuck what people did, I still want to watch them play. Life still won the championship. He still was number one for a time. He still busted his ass to get to the top. No cheating after can change that. But people like to think it does. Which is stupid.
i would be genuinely curious to see if any media (Korean or foreign) could find him and give him a chance to explain things. I find it really really hard to believe he did this without a good reason (in his head at least).
@@busTedOaS 18 is still a kid. He deserved some punishment like a ban for a year or two or something. But a lifetime ban? Lol he didn't murder someone.
The criminal is the one who allowed betting on Starcraft games and these are the organizers of Starcraft games. And the life best player is the one who personally chose his opponents because he could do it like no one else and won the best in the final!
You have to wonder if Life purposely dropped matches to ForGG in Dreamhack 2014 too, but just couldn’t win the final game. I remember ForGG made some bad mistakes in the series that a Zerg as good as Life should have punished, but he didn’t.
Back in the height of SC2 I used to watch Life play every match. He was the face of SC2 during his reign and without him it just doesn't feel the same. I missed Life. In an alternate universe, Life did not commit any wrongs and is still playing in SC2 tournaments.
Winning GSL gave you $85000, that's it. For those thinking, that's alot... NOPE. 50% goes to your team. Then you pay about 50% taxes, then KESPA fee. You end up keeping about $10,000. That's if you win GSL, putting in 120 hours a week, no life, just practicing 24/7. Back then there was no streaming, like how big it is now. Many pros had second jobs.
I was about to ask after reading the title - "Story of whose life?" only to realize after reading a couple of comments below, that it's this dude's nickname! Lmao
Pro league didn't shut down because of the cheating scandal. it died long before. Blizzard released SC2 3 times, changed available mobs for every race and started nerfing them on each patch. the game became unplayable for many.
Corruption happens to all sports where betting, sponsor and prize money is flowing. Just look at soccer and FIFA, a bigger nest of corruption and outright mafia bullcrap is hard to find and players faking is now so obvious and accepted that it's part of the sport. Life was not the cause of the fall of SC2 but a symptom of the corruption that had been allowed to fester and take root in the competitive scene without proper checks and balances. If it was not Life it would be someone else, they are just the ones that got caught.
Came back after break, good to see StarCraft II community still holds. What can be done to make player base higher? And who is to blame? Blizzard? Or is it just RTS genre that's not currently fancy?
Blizzard no longer supports SC2, the recent GSL for example had it's prize pool slashed to 1/4 as much money as the year before. SC2 is no longer the future of RTS, hopefully Stormgate is.
Funny. I've often wondered in other matches if something was going on. Fairly easy to do when all it takes is one poor attack, defense, rally point etc to swing a match.
Match fixers can be quite dangerous they dont shy to put a gun to the head of soccer players or their family to encourage them to sabotage their teams and loose matches to offset gambling bets. The real problem behind these things is the betting, you can see the commercials on youtube too. you can bet on anything and if its worth it they will rig it!
well, the other guys must have been ages behind Life's skill. He is so good that he can throw 2 games vs pro gamers and still win. GJ! I dont see the problem, the competition should have focused more on getting better. Not Life's fault. And when he bets on himself losing games, he still have to be the best. Gambling bodies are the real bandits here.
I always thought the cheating Life did gave him an advantage which explains his explosive rise to the top of the scene, rather than him actually hamstringing his own career. Now I'm beginning to wonder what must have gone on behind all this. Considering how young he was (and how much he was already earning) and all the people flocking around him as he's raking in money, I wouldn't be surprised if he got pressured into this or even forced by adults in his life who wanted to cash in while he was hot. I'd love to hear his side of the story. It probably isn't as black and white as people often like to make things out to be.
@@mimcduffee86 I'd recommend learning how to read before replying. Taking one part of someone's comment out of context and trying to use that against them isn't going to work on everyone, friendo.
What most people fail to realize is that Life was just a KID. People took advantage of his young age and immaturity to profit off him. Idk about all of you but I made a lot of dumb decisions when I was his age.
wow i had no idea about this , korea has better racketeering policing for video games than the western nations does for real life commodity and stock trading.....
I will say the same thing I always say for this. The punishment was so over bored it was not even funny. He did it wrong and should have been punished but I am also of the mind that severity of what you do should be what punishment is based on. You don't put a kid on death row for nabbing a chocolate bar. The games that was thrown was in 2 different bo5 that he won...the overall bo5 in both cases and had absolutely zero impact on anything what so ever. Should he have been punished 100% but what was done was incredibly overbored and beyond wrong.
I dont know why people always look at Serrals 2018 performance. The 2022 championship is the most one sided championship ever, of all time. He smacked everyone, none of his matchups were even close?
