Richard Lewis (journalist)

Richard Lewis is a British esports journalist and livestream commentator from Wales. Having written technology articles for The Daily Dot,[2] Breitbart News,[3] and Cadred, he is best known as an award-winning esports journalist and as a former desk host of ELEAGUE.[4]

Richard Lewis
BornJanuary 11th, 1982[1]
NationalityBritish
OccupationEsports journalist, livestream commentator
Known forThe Richard Lewis Show, former desk host of ELEAGUE, "By The Numbers: CS:GO" podcast co-host

Career

Journalism

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

One of note is 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, 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, while other websites would let the player gamble using these items in various casino inspired games. 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 releases a report pointing at YouTube personalities Tmartn and ProSyndicate alleging that they both had promoted a gambling website called CSGOLotto without disclosing their ownership of the operation. This constituted a violation of the Federal Trade Commission guidelines. In 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.

On the 16th of July 2016 he would release a YouTube video report about the website CSGOShuffle.

The report would be based on the testimony of a hacker. The hacker would admit to having tried to hack the CSGOShuffle gambling website in order to steal money from the operation. In that attempt the hacker came across conversations between CSGOShuffle coder and owner and James Varga, a 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.

Richard Lewis would also investigate and report on unethical practices in esports such as tournament organisers or teams not paying salaries 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 would announce shortly after that 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 today's 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.

In 2016 Lewis was awarded the Esports Journalist of the Year award by Esports Industry Awards.[5] In 2019, Lewis won the award a second time. In his 2019 acceptance speech, Lewis criticized gaming outlets such as Kotaku and Polygon for gatekeeping the games industry.[6]

In September 2020, Lewis became the first Editor-at-Large of Dexerto.com.[7]

Broadcasting

In May 2015, Lewis released the first episode of "By The Numbers: CSGO", a weekly Counter-Strike: Global Offensive podcast which he co-hosted with fellow Counter-Strike analyst, Duncan "Thorin" Shields. The podcast was sponsored by the fantasy esports service Alphadraft.[8] After forty episodes, the show's final episode aired in April 2016.[9] In August of 2017, Richard Lewis published the first episode of "Return Of By The Numbers," a reboot of the original By The Numbers podcast. Shields returned as co-host. The show was funded via Patron donations and later by the sports betting company, Rivalry.gg. As of December 2019, there have been over 90 episodes of the show broadcast live on Twitch and later uploaded to YouTube.

In late 2015, it was reported that broadcasting conglomerate Turner would be launching a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professional league, called ELEAGUE, which would be aired weekly on the American television channel TBS.[10] Lewis was invited to be a host for the league.[11] In April 2018, Lewis announced that after two years with ELEAGUE he would be leaving as the full-time host to pursue other opportunities.[12]

In July 2018, ESP Gaming announced that Richard Lewis would serve as Director of Talent and oversee the on-air personalities for a new multi-genre esports tournament series called the "World Showdown of Esports (WSOE)."[13]

Lewis discusses current events in a podcast called The Richard Lewis Show, co-hosted by Sam Davies. Over three hundred episodes have been produced since May 2016.[14]

Controversy

In November 2015 at DreamHack Winter 2015, police were called following a physical altercation between Lewis and Alliance Dota 2 player Jonathan 'Loda' Berg. On Twitter, Berg claimed he was strangled by Lewis, and Lewis responded saying he acted defensively when confronted by Berg who should not have been allowed backstage. Lewis told PC Gamer he apologized to Berg and that the police found it reasonable he felt threatened by Berg's actions. Police confirmed an assault was reported but no charges were filed.[15][3] DreamHack responded saying that Berg "aggressively approached" Lewis, and while the two were yelling at each other, Lewis was the first to initiate physical contact by strangling Berg's neck. DreamHack intended to ask both Berg and Lewis to leave, but after apologizing to each other they were allowed to stay, however, DreamHack announced they would no longer work with Richard Lewis. "We cannot condone violent behavior at our events."[16]

In 2015, Lewis's Reddit account was banned from commenting or posting on the League of Legends subreddit due to "sustained abusive behavior" after several warnings and a temporary ban.[17] Shortly after, Lewis wrote several articles questioning the relationship between the moderators of the subreddit and the game's developer Riot Games, revealing that subreddit moderators were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements with the developer[18] and that several former moderators were later hired by the company.[19] A month later, a moderator for the subreddit announced that his content would be banned from the site after users on the subreddit critical of Lewis were allegedly harassed upon Lewis posting their comments on Twitter. "His YouTube channel, his articles, his Twitch, and his Twitter are no longer welcome in this subreddit. We will also not allow any rehosted content from this individual."[17] In an interview with Kotaku, Lewis defended himself by disputing the initial allegations of abusive behavior, and argued that he had never asked his followers on Twitter to harass Reddit users. "The mods are doing this to try and get me fired [from The Daily Dot]."[20] In his Facebook post announcing his resignation from The Daily Dot several months later, Lewis cited the content ban among his reasons for leaving, saying "...it had a huge impact on my work and working environment. Important stories pertaining to League of Legends that I have written have gone unnoticed..."[21]

References
  1. "Richard Lewis". Liquipedia. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
  2. "Articles by Richard Lewis". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on November 18, 2018. Retrieved Nov 20, 2018.
  3. Good, Owen S. (Dec 1, 2015). "Backstage fight at esports tournament reignites in social media". Polygon.
  4. "ELeague Host Richard Lewis: 'I Want Turner to be the Last Job I Ever Have'". Rolling Stone. June 16, 2017. Archived from the original on June 30, 2018.
  5. @esportsawards (Nov 21, 2016). "You have chosen @RLewisReports as your #eSports Journalist of The Year!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  6. Tamburro, Paul (November 18, 2019). "Richard Lewis uses Esports Awards 2019 speech to call out Polygon, Kotaku, and Waypoint". Game Revolution. Retrieved November 18, 2019.
  7. Kent, Mike (September 11, 2020). "Dexerto names Richard Lewis as first Editor-at-Large of Dexerto.com". Dexerto. Retrieved September 11, 2020.
  8. "[E01] By The Numbers: CSGO with Richard Lewis and Thorin - Alphadraft Podcast Episode 1". Alphadraft. May 20, 2015.
  9. "[E40] By The Numbers: CSGO with Richard Lewis and Thorin - Alphadraft Podcast Episode 40". Alphadraft.
  10. Schwartz, Nick (Sep 23, 2015). "Turner buys into eSports with creation of new 'Counter-Strike' league".
  11. "ELEAGUE Season 1 - Richard Lewis: "Turner respect the sport"". HLTV.org. May 23, 2016.
  12. Van Allen, Eric (Apr 7, 2018). "Richard Lewis Leaves Full-time Hosting Job At Eleague". Kotaku.
  13. Cropley, Steven (July 10, 2018). "Fight Card-Style 'World Showdown of Esports' Tournament Announced". VPEsports. Retrieved Nov 21, 2018.
  14. "The Richard Lewis Show". PodBean. Retrieved Nov 21, 2018.
  15. Thursten, Chris (Nov 30, 2015). "Police called to DreamHack Winter 2015 over alleged assault". PC Gamer.
  16. Thursten, Chris (Dec 1, 2015). "Richard Lewis "initiated physical contact" according to DreamHack". PC Gamer.
  17. "Subreddit Ruling: Richard Lewis". Reddit. Apr 22, 2015. Retrieved Nov 20, 2018.
  18. Lewis, Richard (Mar 28, 2015). "League Reddit mods signed non-disclosure agreements with Riot Games". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on May 17, 2016.
  19. Lewis, Richard (Mar 31, 2015). "A look at the relationship between Riot Games and the League of Legends subreddit". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on May 25, 2016.
  20. LeJacq, Yannick (Apr 23, 2015). "The League Of Legends Subreddit Is Having A Rough Month". Kotaku. Retrieved Nov 20, 2018.
  21. Lewis, Richard (Sep 3, 2015). "Greetings friends". Facebook.
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