Pro gamers caught cheating? Surely not!
If you claim you’ve never cheated in a video game, then you’re a filthy liar. Everyone has used cheat codes, exploits and done some screen watching to get ahead.
However, when we do it, the only thing on the line is completing the game honesty or in some cases, friendship. Look, John Daniels; it has been almost 20 years, I’m sorry I looked at your screen during our GoldenEye session.
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Anyway, what I’m getting at is not much is really a risk, so it’s sort of okay to do it. However, if you’re a professional player and you’re competing in a tournament for thousands of dollars, then it is a little different.
You’d think that pro players wouldn’t need to cheat or wouldn’t be stupid enough to do so. Incredibly though, some big name pro players in big-name tournaments have been caught!
And here are five of them:
1. Screen watching – TSM vs Azubu Frost
How on earth do you screen watch at a major LAN event you may wonder? Well, apparently you can’t look at your opponents’ screen. However, you can take a peek at one of the many big screens around the arena.
Which is precisely what Azubu Frost players were caught doing at the Season 2 World Championship playoffs in 2012. Following a pause in playing to fix audio issues with Azubu Frost’s headsets, TSM’s Chaox reported Woong had been looking up at the big screen to locate TSM players.
However, it was claimed that TSM Dyrus was also caught taking a glimpse at the big screen.
Woong was fined $30,000, but AZF still went through to the next round.
2. CS: GO aim botting
If you have played any FPS on PC and you are not a total potato, you have probably been accused of cheating. Sometimes it feels quite nice to know that you have excellent aim – though sometimes players are cheating.
This is what happened when KQLY and SF of Titan and Epsilon were both retrospectively banned. Oddly, this didn’t happen at a LAN event, but rather in pubs just before DreamHack 2014. While neither actually used aimbot cheats at a major tournament, they were both fired and banned from any Valve tournament.
3. CS: GO Adderall
Doping in athletics, football, heck even boxing – but esports? Yep, it turns out that it was quite a big problem and steps being taken to clean up the sport.
However, while many get caught using, for Cloud9 back in 2015, one of their players just flippantly admitted to using the drug at Katowice 2015. The attention-enhancing drug was used by Kory “semphis” Friesen who admitted to using the performance-enhancing drug during the event.
Incredibly, he also made accusations that a lot of players used performance-enhancing drugs to gain an advantage over players. Semphis was soon booted by Cloud9 but has now made a come back with the likes of TSM and Splyce.
4. League of Legends Match-fixing
Match-fixing in athletics, football, and heck even boxing but esports, really? Yeah, that opening sentence from the last entry is perfect for this one too.
Cheon “Promise” Min Ki and his team Ahq e-Sports Club Korea had a terrible 2013 and 2014. However, there was a reason for the shocking performances, and it was all down to Ki throwing games.
“I purposely did things to throw the game,” Ki admitted in a forum post.
Sadly, this one has a bit of a dark turn as the shame of match-fixing and the potential prison sentence he faced got too much for Ki, and he reportedly attempted to commit suicide.
5. Flex Live ban
Imagine taking part in an ESEA game which was being live streamed on Twitch and thinking cheating was a good idea.
Well, that is exactly what ESP’s part-timer Flex thought until he got booted and banned from the game live on stream. The lobby was left laughing and the casters were left feeling a little confused at what just happened.
Pro gamers caught cheating, just why? Why?!