Cheating stories are as eye-catching as challenging to prove, let’s go over the most relevant cases in Hearthstone’s history.
Get your popcorn ready because today we will be going over different cheating scandals in Hearthstone's history. Some players will do anything within their reach to succeed, and sometimes that includes seeking illegal advantages.
With Hearthstone being a competitive game with a 10-year history, we've seen many cheating scandals. The RDU vs Amaz incident in DreamHack 2014 was only the first of many. So, let's go over some of the most notorious cases.
#5 Hosty self-exposing himself cheating at a Hearthstone tournament
The order of these Hearthstone cheating scandals doesn't reflect their importance. However, this one would rank high in the "self-exposing" category. During the 2015 Pinnacle 2 Hearthstone tournament, Hosty was caught cheating by Twitch chat!
Viewers realized something odd in Hosty's background. A framed picture reflected Hosty's monitors, and guess what, the image was incredibly similar to what happened on stream. The 10-minute delay the broadcast had didn't prevent him from getting valuable information since he was playing none other than Ropecoach, I mean, Lifecoach.
Every detective on Hearthstone's subreddit got together to expose this cheating scandal. Soon, Team Archon expelled Hosty, ending his Hearthstone career after this cheating incident.
#4 Cheating during Hearthstone Global Games
Hearthstone Global Games was a team competition in which each country nominated 4 representatives to compete at the highest level. In the 2018 edition, Chinese Taipei was disqualified from the event for "stream sniping", a common but hard-to-prove way of cheating in Hearthstone.
During the late stages of the game, Shaxy mentioned that the opponent didn't have a Mind Control Tech in hand because he had discarded it earlier. When Reall confronted him about how he knew this, Roger responded: "He saw it".
While this information wasn't available for the team, what Shaxy had seen was the delayed broadcast, in which the opponent, in fact, had discarded the MC Tech from a Tracking discovery. Another Hearthstone cheating scandal with self-inflicted consequences.
Things got weird when Roger qualified for the 2019 Hearthstone World Championship with this and other cheating accusations in his file. Due to this, Blizzard finally admitted part of the guilt of not acting at the appropriate time when Roger and Reall were caught win-trading in April 2018.
#3 The Apxvoid incident
Apxvoid, one the best Mage players of all time, to everyone's surprise, was disqualified from a competitive Hearthstone event after a cheating scandal in a LAN event. Everything happened during the Winter Playoffs of 2019.
Minutes before his match, in a controlled venue, Apxvoid wrote in a chat window how he should approach the upcoming game, according to his Tweet longer. While he didn't send the message, the intention was for the person next to him to read it and give him "a nod or something" to ease his anxiety.
After the cheating scandals in 2018, the Hearthstone Esports team went hard on Apxvoid for a minor infraction and disqualified him from the event.
#2 Jayhuang banned from Hearthstone
Leaving OG Hearthstone cheating scandals behind, we find one of the "villains" of our era. Jayhuang usually played in top 50 legend and faced many streamers. With little respect for rules and a sense of impunity, he bragged about stream-sniping them. It got to a point in which he did this on stream and was even criticizing his opponent's plays given the cards they had in hand.
Given the community's outrage for Jay's repeated cheating and stream sniping implications, Hearthstone Esports banned him from competitive play. After some deeper investigation, the Hearthstone team found that this was not the only cheating incident he was involved in.
“After issuing our last suspension on your account, we have investigated the chat logs on your account and found evidence for a significant number of player conduct infractions, including stream sniping, win trading, and inducing other players to win trade."
#1 Cheating in Hearthstone Battlegrounds
When there is money on the line, players might feel the urge to exploit any means available to get there. 2022 saw the rise of the Hearthstone Battlegrounds competitive system, and with it, BG cheating scandals.
One of the biggest Hearthstone streamers, Silvername, was banned after he was found cheating to qualify for a $50K Battlegrounds event. After many accusations of win trading and co-oping, Hearthstone esports issued a year-long ban to Silvername.
On top of that, ADVO, another top ladder player, was banned from competitive play for 6 months for participating in similar activities. Silvername tried to make a stand on social media, but the sanction stuck.
These were only some of the many cheating scandals in Hearthstone history. Before I go, I want to say that making a mistake doesn't mean you should be forever punished. However, without any consequences, competitive integrity gets lost. None of the before-mentioned players should be harassed or attacked.
Do you have any other favorite cheating moments? Let me know on Twitter! That's all for now, stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone news and updates. See you next time, in the Tavern.