Richard Lewis (journalist)

Richard A. Lewis (born 1984) is a British e-sports reporter, and livestream commentator who specializes in esports related topics. He previously wrote in the technology section for Breitbart News Network, The Daily Dot, and Cadred.^[1]

In April 2018, he started writing for VPEsports as a columnist.

Outside of these publications, he released several written pieces on his own website.

His reporting history dates back from the first versions of Counter-Strike, when he also worked as a team manager, organising events and working for the Omega Sektor LAN center.

He was also part of the now defunct Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

During this period he first meets with Henry Greer, known as HenryG, who he later commentated Counter Strike matches with after Henry retired from competitive play. HenryG would then become one of the most successful caster in CS:GO.

When not working with the game, he took different jobs including working for the Birmingham city council.

Reporting

Richard Lewis is known for several investigations which sparked controversy in the games and esports worlds.

Most notable are the match-fixing scandal involving the North American team iBuyPower. During an extended investigation it came out of his report that the team had purposefully lost a game. On August 20, 2014, many suspected that the favorites iBuyPower had thrown their game against team NetCodeGuides.com in the CEVO Professional American league. On January 16, 2015, Richard Lewis would release an article providing evidence of the fix. With help from the betting website CSGOLounge staff showing suspicious patterns, and testimony from people involved, and leaked conversations. Following the report, Valve, owners of the Counter Strike franchise issued an indefinite ban to the players from playing in official Valve sponsored tournaments.

This would start a debate on whether the punishment was fair, and until today Valve has not expanded on the sentence, except confirming the ban was "indefinite". Because of this ban, the players would not be hired by teams, knowing they would not be part of the Major tournaments. Despite that, in July 2017, tournament and league organiser ESL announced they would not enforce the ban anymore letting the players compete in their own tournaments.

Another report shed light on corruption in the CS:GO based gambling world in 2016.

Using CS:GO virtual items as currency, many websites appeared letting players bet on games, other websites would let the player gamble these items in different games inspired by traditional casinos. Players would put items in their wallet which translated into currency, gamble, and winners would cash out their earning by obtaining more valuable items. These items are valued by their market price in the Steam Community Market.

Richard Lewis would release a report pointing at YouTube personalities Tmartn and ProSyndicate. It alleges that they both had promoted a gambling website called CSGOLotto without disclosing their ownership of the operation. Which constituted in a violation of the Federal Trade Commission guidelines. On September 2017, the FTC would come out and settle the case against the two youtubers, while providing new guidelines for social media influencers regarding paid promotion and transparency. They would also mention that they had taken interest in 20 other personalities that would have been involved in such practice on different platforms. This would attract particular attention to the concept of sponsored content.

Richard Lewis would again be involved with the gambling world. On the 16th of July 2016 he would release on his YouTube channel a video report about the website CSGOShuffle which is still his most viewed video on his channel.

The report would be based on the testimony of a hacker. The hacker would admit to him having tried to hack the CSGOShuffle gambling website in order to steal money from the operation. In that attempt the hacker would come across conversation between CSGOShuffle coder and owner and James Varga, popular twitch streamer broadcasting his gambling on the website. The leaked logs would show streamer James Varga aka. phantoml0rd talking to website staff about obtaining odds and helping him cheat the house. They would also show Varga exchanging payments to the coder and referring to the casino and staff as "us", implying ownership of the operation. Which he did not disclose.

This would put a lot of personalities and gambling platforms under scrutiny, following the Tmartn and ProSyndicate transparency issue, this new scandal would expose the ability of these platforms to not only mislead the audiences of influencers but also how they could possibly cheat their users to make more profit. This would force Valve to take action against these websites by issuing Cease and Desist letters, preventing them from using Valve intellectual properties such as virtual items designs, names, and using automated Steam accounts to transfer user's items from their accounts to the websites bank and back. Following videos of Richard Lewis would allege Phantoml0rd would run giveaways during his broadcasts in order to gain subscribers and possibly using fake accounts.

Richard Lewis would also investigate and report on unethical practices in esports such as tournament organiser, or teams not paying salary, or holding players under unfair contracts. He would often call for players to consult with him if they felt the need to so he could review contracts, provide advice, and help players or other personalities get paid by their employers.

Most notably, he reported on the hugely popular Swedish organisation Ninjas In Pyjamas when it came out they had not been paying their Counter Strike roster their due salary. Resulting in the CEO at the time resigning. While first denying the allegations of malpractice stating the report drew "incorrect conclusions [...] based on misinformation". The NiP organisation shortly after announced the current chief Per Lilliefelth would step down and be replaced immediately. Stating the accusations against him were partially true.

Earlier in his career his most notable report was about a cheating program. In 2009 Richard Lewis would leak a program to the public. The program, a small executable file called vent.exe was a cheat, disguised as being part of a popular VOiP software called Ventrilo. Similar to tdoays Discord or Teamspeak, it was widely used in the gaming world by teams to communicate during games. The cheat program would be small enough to be carried on a flash drive or even in a mouse or keyboard's onboard memory. It was a basic type of aimbot cheat, that would correct the player's aim may he be slightly off target. In such a subtle manner that it was almost invisible to the eye test, and would almost never fail and expose the cheater. This was one of the first cheat that would be usable in a LAN setting, where the player is exposed to the public eye. As it was disguised as a common program used by participants, it was possible to run the cheat without attracting suspicion, even on the computer provided by the tournament.

Controversy

In November 2015 at DreamHack Winter 2015 he was involved in a physical altercation with Alliance Dota 2 player Jonathan 'Loda' Berg.^[2][3][4] Afterwards Lewis was not hired as a desk host for future DreamHack events,^[5] despite the police leaving after 10 minutes of questioning both sides and concluding there was no corpus delicti.

ELeague

On January 7, 2016, he hosts the first ELeague event called Road To Vegas. Following the European and North American Qualifiers of December 2015.

Richard Lewis would then host several broadcasts for ELeague including 2 CS:GO Seasons, 2 CS:GO Majors in Atlanta and Boston and one Premier Season in 2017. And the Clash for Cash event. Additionally to CS:GO, ELeague hosted several tournaments in other games including Rocket League in a 3-day tournament in December 2017. Street Fighter V for the 2017 Invitational in May. The Injustice 2 championship in November 2017. And the Tekken 7 Team Takedown championship in March 2018.

ELeague was the first esports tournament broadcast on American television.

On the 7th of April 2018 Richard Lewis announced that he would not be working with Turner for the next ELeague events. In his statement he said he would be looking for new opportunities.

In July 2018, Esports content creation company ESP Gaming announces a new esports brand called World Showdown of Esports. A series of tournaments using a fight-card style system new to esports. ESP also announced they would have Richard Lewis as director of On-Air Talent.

Youtube

Richard Lewis hosts his own podcast on his YouTube Channel together with Sam Davies called the "Richard Lewis Show". They talk various topics from politics, games, to comedic news stories. Also featuring interviews with personalities of the esports space, team owners, casters, players. Richard was the co-host of the "By the numbers" podcast along with Duncan "Thorin" Shields. Originally hosted, produced and financed by fantasy league website Alphadraft. The show returned for a second stint without Alphadraft, instead produced by Sam Davies and funded by a Patreon.

References

External links