Top ladder players are suspecting cheating in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. What is happening in competitive Battlegrounds?
Hearthstone Battlegrounds stakes are higher than ever with Lobby Legends qualification period ending, and some cheating suspicions arise. The first Lobby Legends event is round the corner, and everyone is tryharding to make it. Are players cheating on Hearthstone Battlegrounds Ladder?
ELO boosting cheating?
This weekend, Jia, Hearthstone caster and top-level competitor regardless of which game mode are we talking about, noticed something strange. According to her tweet, there were some accounts that queued into games but didn’t even buy a minion. She reported this happened to her at high MMR lobbies, around the Top 50 on the ladder.
How does this cheating method work in Hearthstone Battlegrounds? Well, suppose that you enter a lobby in which you can’t get 6th or worse place. That way, you are much more likely to win MMR and aim for that Top 16 finish needed to get to Lobby Legends.
Bofur, a top 10 Hearthstone Battlegrounds player and popular streamer, is also suspecting of this being someone cheating. In the tweet, he mentions that he has seen that behavior several times this season. Using different accounts but with the same modus operandi, he thinks it is an effort to boost MMR.
Stream sniping in Hearthstone Battlegrounds
On top of this MMR Boosting suspicions, there are also some accusations of stream sniping cheating in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Big streamers are exposed to these unlawful practices by cheaters, and the only way they can prevent it goes against their content quality. Some streamers have chosen to accept the risk and not even talk about that when competing.
There have been players suspended from Hearthstone Esports competition for stream sniping cheating, but not yet in Battlegrounds. It is legendary the sniping guild that harassed Kriparrian when he was into Arena.
Cheating outside Hearthstone Battlegrounds
There have been several cheating scandals and exploits throughout Hearthstone’s history. Some are fairly recent, like players modifying game files to skip animations in wild, others happened during official competitions like the sniping problems during Hearthstone Global Games in 2018.
Players have been caught win-trading on the ladder for years now. With Hearthstone Battlegrounds MMR floors and resets, players were cheating using exploits to boost their ELO. There were even reported cases of bot usage on the ladder to grind gold.
What has Hearthstone been doing about cheating?
Well, Hearthstone’s policy of not discussing sanction processes publicly makes it hard to notice what they are doing. On top of that, if they reveal the way they detect bots or win-traders, it will also tell cheaters how to avoid it.
Something we do know is that the Hearthstone Esports team is present on Twitter following most of these cases. Furthermore, we can see that the “Ineligible players list” has been growing month after month. We are yet to see if these cheating suspicions in Hearthstone Battlegrounds are real and get punished too.
Stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone news and updates. See you next time in the Tavern.