Warhammer 40K: Cheating and Consequences, a Community Controversy
You all know the story. A top player was caught cheating during an event. Now what?
Some dramatic news after a recent grand tournament. A top player was caught cheating during the event. They were actually caught while playing their game on stream, and apparently, this happened on more than one occasion during the tournament. Now, mistakes happen all the time, sometimes you forget things, and reading is sometimes difficult but there are times when it is hard to argue that someone did not cheat. Like I mentioned, in this case, someone was caught obviously cheating and punishment was dealt on the local level.
My question is really if more should be done? The player in question was disqualified from the event, had their points for the event removed, and banned from other regional events for a month, in addition to starting with 1 yellow card at the next non RTT. As many of you may know, this grand tournament is part of a larger circuit where points are earned depending on how you placed and contributed to your score for an overall standing. At the time that this article is being written, there has still been no word on what additional, if any, sanctions should be handed down, but I expect something soon. So if you were in charge, what would you do? Here are a few options that I have thought of to add to the player’s sanctions.
Ban the Player
This is probably the most extreme form of punishment for a player. Many people may feel that this type of punishment might be a bit too much. For some, the type of cheating, or the amount of cheating, may cause people to feel that banning someone, especially if it is for more than 6 months or a year, is too harsh for the crime. It may the easiest thing to do as you don’t have to worry about them showing up to events and causing trouble as they will not even show up.
This tough love could also have the effect of scaring players into toeing the line with their gameplay and help keep problem players in check. This may also create an atmosphere where players may not want to play in these type of events because they might be afraid of making a mistake and the next thing they know they are banned from events. In reality, I think that for an organizer to pull this trigger they would need a lot more evidence and I wouldn’t ban unless the player had a history of cheating or just playing in a shady manner.
Remove Points Earned up to This Point
This seems like a good solution to me. You don’t ban the player but remove any points he has earned up to, and including, the event he was caught cheating at. I mean if you are willing to cheat when the camera is on you, what are you like when there are no cameras. This basically makes him start from zero. This seems like a good idea, and making a player have to climb the ladder again is usually enough to affect any and hopefully cause them to change their ways.
One of the issues is when this sanction is levied. It almost pays to get caught early. You have the rest of the year in order to get your points back, if you are any good, and with events in some areas coming back you could easily do that. On the flip side, if you get busted late in the season it would be difficult for you to get back to the spot you were at before, especially in the top spot. Still might be effective as someone may not even want to bother trying to earn points again after going through all that effort to get where you are at, then losing it.
Disqualification and 1 Strike
This one is a bit more involved and may be more work than people may want to do. The player is disqualified from the event and points removed. You can even go so far as to also remove his points from previous tournaments. In addition, you make it so that the player will basically start with 2 yellow cards at every event until the end of the season. So if there is one infraction at any tournament, they are disqualified for that tournament.
I think negating the benefit of getting penalized early in a season as they now have to play above board otherwise they will get disqualified after one offense. The big issue with this type of sanction is that it would be hard to track. If the player travels, like most of the top players do, then tournament organizers may not know about the sanctions or the issues with the player. It would take really good communication between people and players in order to keep something like this properly enforced.
~That’s all for this week. i hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and what punishment you would enforce, in the comments section below.
