In another blow to the credibility of e-sports, Valve Corporation has banned a number of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) players for allegedly fixing matches to earn money from gambling.

A CS:GO match was held in August between iBUYPOWER and NetcodeGuides.com. The iBUYPOWER team was the favorite to win by a large margin, being one  of the top teams in the game, but they were handily defeated by the NetcodeGuides.com team at 16 to 4.

Followers of the tournament were already crying foul due to seemingly incompetent and nonsensical plays made by the iBUYPOWER players, and several members of the team were seen laughing as they were losing, something out of place in the usual cutthroat atmosphere of competitive gaming.

It might sound strange to imagine video game tournaments being fixed like a 1919 baseball World Series, but according to a series of leaked texts released earlier this month, that is exactly what happened at the CS:GO tournament.

The information found in the texts, which were allegedly posted by an ex-girlfriend of one of the players, shows that the iBUYPOWER team earned $10,000 from gambling on the match after betting against themselves.

Valve posted a response to the controversy on the official CS:GO blog.

“We can confirm,” Valve wrote, “By investigating the historical activity of relevant accounts, that a substantial number of high valued items won from that match by Duc ‘cud’ Pham were transferred ( via Derek ‘dboorn’ Boorn ) to iBUYPOWER players and NetCodeGuides founder, Casey Foster.

“All together, the information we have collected and received makes us uncomfortable continuing any involvement with these individuals.”

Valve banned the offending players from the game permanently and requested that “CS:GO event partners” not allow any of them to play at future events.

These most recent bans come almost exactly two months after other high-profile CS:GO players were VAC banned for cheating during a professional tournament where the grand prize was $250,000.

While the popularity of e-sports has grown over the last two years thanks to streaming services like Twitch.tv, the industry will need to find better methods of preventing these kinds of behaviors if it wants to be taken seriously.