Research On The Criminal Law Regulation Of E-sports Fake Tournament Behavior

With the continuous development and popularity of the Internet,as well as the country’s attention to e-Sports,e-Sports has developed rapidly in China.In 2016,the National Development and Reform Commission first proposed to encourage the development of e-Sports events,and in 2020,the Olympic Council of Asia officially and publicly announced that e-Sports had been approved as an important competition item in the Hangzhou Asian Games,while in 2021,China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism also issued an announcement,announcing that in the "Fourteenth Five-Year" Cultural Industry Development Under the guidance of the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan",it will vigorously promote the deep integration of e-Sports and games and entertainment.During the epidemic,traditional sports events were affected,but e-Sports,relying on its own advantages of information technology online,has continued to grow,with the scale of users reaching an all-time high and its influence,especially among young people,growing.However,every industry encounters various obstacles in the process of rapid development,and so does the e-Sports industry,with the "fake matches" that have eroded traditional sports events spreading to e-Sports.E-sports shamming is essentially an act of manipulating the game and deceiving the audience,an act in which the perpetrator exerts artificial influence on the process or result of the game through improper means in order to achieve some improper interests.All levels of China’s various e-competitions have been affected to varying degrees,which is very destructive to the development of the entire industry.These fake tournament behavior seriously infringes on the interests of our society and individuals,with serious social harm,and beyond the control of the internal self-regulation of the e-Sports industry.For this reason,criminal law intervention as a complementary and final regulatory tool should be involved in the regulation of fake tournament behavior.Based on the extensive collection of relevant literature,the author uses the methods of literature analysis and case analysis,combined with the theory of criminal law,to conduct a more comprehensive and systematic analysis of the criminal law regulation of e-sports fake tournaments,and finally puts forward the proposal of creating the crime of manipulation of competitive tournaments.In this paper,the criminal law of e-sports fake tournaments is mainly studied from four parts.In the first part,the basic concept and characteristics of e-sports are first introduced,and the definition of e-sports is to play games between people in a virtual environment through information technology network equipment,and has the characteristics of electronic and confrontation.Then a basic concept of e-sports fake game is introduced,and finally the essence of e-sports is analyzed,pointing out that e-sports fake game is a harmful behavior with the nature of "manipulation" and "fraud".For the later part of the article on the e-Sports fake tournament behavior to make the criminal law to make a prelude.Introduce me and its social harm.It is concluded that e-Sports fake tournaments have serious social hazards:(1)hinder the development of e-Sports industry;(2)destroy the normal management order of the tournament and sports fairness,(3)breed other illegal and criminal activities.This provides the basis for the need to subject e-Sports sham tournaments to criminal laws and regulations.In the second part,we then introduce several typical cases in the e-Sports arena,analyze the specific contents of different cases,and classify the e-Sports fake tournament behavior according to different interest motives by summarizing the characteristics of typical cases.In the later part,we make a pavement for the target regulation of different types of fake tournaments.In the third part,we introduce the criminal law provisions that may be involved in e-Sports fake tournaments in China,and also argue the problems that exist in the specific application of these provisions.For example,the current gambling crime in China may not be effectively applied to certain gambling behaviors when regulating the behavior of participating in illegal betting and fake tournaments;and there is a controversy over the identification of referees in China,and there is a disagreement over whether to apply the crime of "accepting bribes" or "non-state organs".There is a disagreement in the application of the "bribery" or "non-state agency crime".In addition,the author argues for the application of the crime of fraud to the regulation of e-sports fake tournaments.In the fourth part,the author’s specific proposals on the criminal law regulation of e-Sports are detailed.The article argues that multiple gambling cases should be added to the existing gambling offenses to effectively combat the perpetrators who play fake tournaments by participating in illegal betting,and suggests that e-Sports practitioners should be listed as special status with aggravating circumstances.At the same time,it is proposed that the identity of e-Sports referees should not be the state employees identified in the "Gong Jianping case",but should be identified as non-state employees from the nature of their specific work duties.Finally,the article proposes the idea of establishing the crime of manipulating competitive games,hoping that this will be a more comprehensive and targeted fight against e-Sports fake games.