During the first three weeks, Fnatic and Meet Your Makers were leading in the vote whilst the others swapped places several times.
Strange things began to happen with less than two weeks to go in the vote. The French team emuLate! managed to jump from a rather bad situation to the very top, leading the community wonder just how good their advertising campaign was.
Fans of many teams used the following method of showing their support:
But considering that you had to vote for two or three teams and not one, 6,305 votes were found missing and emuLate's leap looked very suspect.
Things began moving very rapidly from there, as on April 19, the poll for e-Star Seoul 2008 had another mass vote spam for nearly every team. Things got out of control.
On April 18, SK Gaming and Roccat gained 5,222 and 8,310 votes, respectively. The vote proportion rule (you had to vote for 2 or 3 teams) could not be used to determine whether those votes were fake votes or simply mass votes. But it was still suspicious.
Then, on April 20, within under two hours, emuLate's account rose by 16,895. To put this into perspective, this means that there were 2.68 votes cast for emuLate each second!
The French team's surplus also outnumbered the surplus of all the other teams by 12,634, which means that at least this many votes were fake (most likely, many more than that).
But it is not just emuLate with suspicious votes, ones that were mass-added in a short period of time. emuLate, are first in the list, with an approximate number of 37,000 votes, Roccat are following with 9,900 votes and SK is third with 6,850 votes. The other teams are not that far behind and the smallest number of suspicious votes is with for MYM who only have ~1,300 spam votes.
This does not mean that all of those votes were fake votes, but it definitely prompts to ask questions.
emuLate clearly leads the poll with a total of 24,770 votes that were proven to be fake votes. We arrived at this number with the assumption that everyone voted for two, not three teams. Assuming that 80% of voters picked three teams in the poll, this number almost doubles.
This does not mean that emuLate were the only team that got the help of an invisible hand. SK Gaming has 245 votes that were fakes. Other teams had suspicious leaps as well, but with the screenshots we have, we were not able to prove beyond doubt that ill play was involved.
Regardless of how this ends and what e-Stars does or does not do about it, everyone could agree - this poll was a bad idea.
Statistics:
April 17 22:30:47 CET
emuLate! - 18,511 votes (+2,432)
Fnatic - 15,367 votes (+3,399)
MYM - 16,103 votes (+2,758)
mousesports - 7,664 votes (+1,521)
mTw - 7,939 votes (+1,599)
SK - 9,352 votes (+2,072)
Alternate - 7,555 votes (+1,094)
Roccat - 8,883 votes (+1,436)
April 19 15:07:35 CET
Roccat - 17,193 votes (+8,310)
all other teams - 101,889 (+19,398)
emuLate! - 23,760 votes (+5,249)
Fnatic - 15,822 votes (+455)
MYM - 16,995 votes (+892)
mousesports - 10,745 votes (+3,081)
mTw - 9,832 votes (+1,893)
SK - 14,574 votes (+5,222)
Alternate - 10,161 votes (+2,606)
Growth margin:
Roccat: 17,193 - 8,883 = 8310
other teams: 101,889 - 82,491 = 19,398
Growth for other teams vs. growth for Roccat: 8310 - 19398 = -11088
Assuming that Roccat's voters all voted for two teams only: 8,310*2 = 16,620
19,398 - 16,620 = +2,778 votes left.
Assuming that Roccat's voters all voted for three teams: 8,310*3 = 24,930
24,930 - 19,398 = 5,532 votes missing
April 19 16:52 CET
emuLate! - 40,655 votes (+16,895)
all other teams: 99,583 (+4,261)
Fnatic - 17,831 votes (+2,009)
MYM - 17,088 votes (+93)
mousesports - 10,786 votes (+41)
mTw - 9,883 votes (+51)
SK - 14,616 votes (+42)
Alternate - 10195 votes (+34)
Roccat - 19184 votes (+1,991)
Growth margin:
emuLate!: 40,655 - 23,760 = 16,895
other teams: 99,583 - 95,322 = 4,261
Growth for other teams vs. growth for emuLate: 16,895 - 4,261 = 12,634 votes missing
April 20 12:11:26 CET
emuLate! - 50,878 votes (+10,233)
all other teams - 103,985 (+4,402)
fnatic - 18,269 votes (+438)
MYM - 18,394 votes (+1,306)
mousesports - 11,249 votes (+463)
mTw - 10,623 votes (+740)
SK - 15,032 votes (+416)
Alternate - 10,900 votes (+705)
Roccat - 19,518 votes (+334)
Growth margin:
emuLate!: 50,878 - 40,655 = 10,233
other teams: 103,985 - 99,583 = 4,402
Growth for other teams vs. growth for emuLate: 10,233 - 4,402 = 5,831 votes missing
April 21 - End of voting
SK - 17,264 votes (+2,232)
all other teams - 144,536 (+4705)
emuLate! - 51,262 votes (+384)
Fnatic - 18,732 votes (+463)
MYM - 19,741 votes (+1347)
mousesports - 11,905 votes (+656)
mTw - 11,422 votes (+799)
Alternate - 11,430 votes (+530)
Roccat - 20,044 votes (+526)
Growth margin on April 20 18:16 CET:
SK: 17,205 - 15,032 = 2,173
other teams: 141,759 - 139,831 = 1,928
Growth for other teams vs. growth for SK Gaming: 2,173 - 1,928 = 245 votes missing
Missing votes:
emuLate! - 24,770
SK - 245
suspicious spam votes (added in rapid succession):
emuLate!: 13,000
Fnatic: 1,800
MYM: 1,300
mousesports: 2,600
mTw: 1,700
SK: 6,605
Alternate: 2,500
Roccat: 9,900
Total: 39,405
(btw I know a bit french so I can read it, but am I talking german here? especially our english-speaking friends will have problems to read sth. thats not english)
btw I agree with chob.
it's funny that someone who has english as mothertongue flames people who have not this "honour".
especially an AMERICAN, as we all know, their language is very high developed... ah k nc.
And btw, the more you write French, the more you prove you can't understand the culture of an international site ^^
Dont think you're t3h god either just becouse your native tongue is French and you have some decent English skills, but most of you haven't shown any knowledge or respect for other countries or cultures either. So by what you are saying, you're no better then the Americans are you?
I'm not defending anyone that looks down on someone with minor skills in English, but you should still understand that you should keep the French in French forums. Don't take it with you in here.
Sacre blue...!
(not like they wouldn't be anyways)
btw, nice articles
this vote is just meaningless and funny =DD
Arreter actually means "stop" but an r is missing x)
Fully explains my comment, hard to defend oneself on an international forum without a minimum English knowledge that French people definetlely lack...
Why dont mym or fnatic write such thing ? cuz they'r IN..You try several times to bring eml down,and this time using some figures to make it real & not biased.
So its clarified or not ? I dont fuckin care cuz 3 best teams atm aka eML,MYM & Fnatic will go to Seoul.And Im pleased to see that.Stop the bullshit ok ?
(im ready to get thumbs down like all negative posters above)
The point is that esports press in general suffers from having small balls or none at all. That's why they don't post such stuff.
Moreover your opinion about Sk-Gaming is unfounded , you have no arguments.
I'm sure, because it would happen, that emuLate players will feel shame of the french people reading all this useless posts.
et comme on dit chez nous "MELE TOI DE TES OIGNONS" !
This is a really tragic result for the event o.O
But if they had security and so on there would be a registration necessary I think and few ppl would vote :(
x)
The poll was rigged, ok we all knew it. Some people have cheated in favor of eml, still nothing new here..
Sk has just 245 missing vote ? with a [b] please... THAT IS a great news