Ethical judgments of esports spectators regarding cheating in competition

Abstract

Esports contests at the highest levels frequently involve millions of dollars in prize money and spectatorship numbers in six or seven figures. Given these opportunities for financial success and public visibility, players have found ways to cheat in esports competitions. We draw on over one thousand qualitative survey responses from esports viewers to examine how spectators perceive cheating, both “cheating to win” (attempting to secure an illegitimate victory) or “cheating to lose” (profit or advancement is secured by throwing a match). We show that spectators hold complex views ranking different forms of cheating, displaying varying levels of understanding of the esports ecosystem, and conceptualising cheating as often more a matter of rule breaking than ethical transgression. We conclude that esports viewers’ perspectives are heavily informed by their own play, and the opacity of certain elements of professionalised esports, with implications for the long-term sustainability of esports as a cultural form.

Keywords

audiences cheating esports ethics live streaming rules Twitch

Introduction

With competitive digital gaming or “esports” now offering hundreds of millions of dollars in potential prizes (EsportsEarnings, 2019) to some of the world’s most skilled video game players (Taylor, 2012), it is perhaps no wonder that attempts to cheat have followed close behind (cf. Seo and Jung, 2016:650). In 2014, for example, Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) team iBUYPOWER were investigated for accepting bribes to fix matches in a major tournament hosted by ESL, one of the world’s largest esports tournament hosts (Skipper, 2015). In another case, team Fnatic had acquired knowledge of a seemingly inaccessible area of the game world which, when accessed, gave their players a tremendous advantage and using this asymmetric knowledge secured them a highly contentious and later overturned victory (Rosen, 2017). Such examples represent events with negative consequences for the players or teams in questions, but what of the millions of spectators whose interest maintains so much of esports’ present success? Although cheating as a concept has been thoroughly conceptually interrogated by game studies (Consalvo, 2009; Carter and Björk, 2016; etc.), the impacts of cheating on esports have seemingly yet to be explored beyond just five publications as of this manuscript’s writing (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019; Holden et al., 2017; Irwin and Naweed, 2018; Thiborg and Carlsson, 2010; Yun, 2019).

In this article we therefore examine the perceptions among esports viewers of the different sorts of cheating possible in esports and competitive gaming more broadly, and seek to understand how esports viewers frame cheating with reference to their own play experiences, their perceptions of esports, and their understandings of what transgressive behaviour in an esports context might entail. Esports is arguably the “highest stakes” arena in which digital game cheating can take place, with effects not just on the integrity of play and experiences of participants but potentially on careers, incomes and game lifespans. It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that at least a certain level of game integrity will be essential for esports’ future, regulation, and potential growth; it also poses questions of player health, given the potential motivations or pressures towards substance use in order to gain an edge (e.g. Baldwin, 2019; Holden et al., 2017), and carries with it potential impacts on the profitability of esports-related aspects of the wider games industry. Understanding what esports viewers think about cheating is therefore essential for understanding the long-term viability - or perhaps lack thereof - of esports as a spectator sport (cf. Hamari and Sjöblom, 2017; Lee and Schoenstedt, 2011; etc.). Equally, with esports competitions shifting out of arenas and back into homes or other more private spaces for the foreseeable future during the Covid-19 pandemic, cheating might become easier, and more visible, and a more central element of esports spectatorship.

We begin by considering esports literature before focusing on cheating as a concept and a practice, concluding this section with a review of the few scholarly articles to date focused on cheating specifically in the esports context. We then relate our methodology, involving the analysis of qualitative responses in a survey of over one thousand esports fans regarding their perspectives on cheating. We then move into our discussion. This first examines what esports viewers have to say about “cheating to win”, showing that they have a low tolerance for cheating to win practices, which we argue can be explained at least in part through their own experiences with online cheating (in esports games and elsewhere). Our consideration of “cheating to lose”, meanwhile, demonstrates that viewers are more accommodating and even sympathetic to such behaviours, especially when framed as a strategic choice. We highlight comparative comments about appropriate relative punishments and identify a perhaps surprising naïveté on the part of some viewers about the wider esports ecosystem(s). In doing so we also show how spectators are often sympathetic to cheaters and understand something of what an esports career entails, but rarely understand the wider potential impacts of seemingly “isolated” cheating events. In total, these findings show that esports viewers demonstrate a complex range of responses to esports cheating, primarily informed by their own experiences of competitive gaming as well as perceptions of the esports sector. In a previous publication (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019) we examined viewer responses to match-fixing specifically, but here we extend the analysis to all forms of cheating within competitive gaming. We conclude by summarising our findings, emphasising the importance of viewer perceptions of integrity to esports, and highlighting future research directions.

Esports

Although digital games have been played competitively since their very earliest days (Pearce, 2011) it is only in the past decade or so that “esports” - short for “electronic sports” - has fully emerged as the primary (and ever-more professionalised) form of digital game competition (Taylor, 2012). At the “local” level, this might involve structured competition among players of a particular game within a town or state, or within online leaderboards (Jin and Chee, 2009); at the “global” level, this means the strongest players in the world battling it out for supremacy. At this highest level, which remains the focus of esports scholarship (and the focus of this paper), potentially millions of dollars might be won by individuals or teams who are able to succeed in these competitions (Li, 2017). Such players exist at and across complex “boundaries of labor, performance, and play” (Chee and Karhulahti, 2020:220) which are highly demanding and which easily blur simpler definitions such as “work” or “nonwork”, or public and private time. At time of writing, a number of digital games from different genres are played at an “esports level”, such as fighting games Super Smash Bros Melee (2001) and Street Fighter V (2016), first-person shooter games CS:GO (2012) and Overwatch (2016), “multiplayer online battle arena” (MOBA) games League of Legends (2009) and DotA 2 (2013), and many others. On the back of such diversity esports boasts a strong presence in South Korea (Jin, 2010) and increasingly in Europe (Law, 2016; Scholz, 2019), North America (Fogel, 2016; cf. Takahashi, 2020) and elsewhere in East Asia (Lu, 2016; Yu, 2018), with different geographical-cultural communities (cf. Parshakov and Zavertiaeva, 2015) preferring to play and compete in different sorts of games.

Irrespective of location, most esports competitions are viewed on live streaming platform Twitch.tv or simply Twitch (Johnson and Woodcock, 2017), often bringing in millions of viewers to the most dramatic contests – as Taylor (2012:86) notes, “intensely serious competition, and the people who perform it, is captivating”. Originally focused specifically on esports but having now diversified into a vast range of gaming (and to a lesser extent non-gaming) content (Taylor, 2018), the importance of the live broadcast of esports to a substantial global audience to its overall success cannot be overstated. At the same time, the growth of esports in arenas (Jenny et al., 2018) has made esports appear ever more professional and sports-like, as well as building the “hype” and interest around contests; it appears that both phenomena have supported the fanbase, and the legitimacy, of the other.

Although originally small in size and scope, the financial opportunities of esports have now reached impressive levels. Despite a strong grassroots element to esports and competitive gaming (Law, 2016; Taylor, 2017), this large market of online esports viewers and the profitability of esports games mean that esports are becoming increasingly capitalistic spaces of play (Agha, 2015; Johnson and Woodcock, 2021; Yu, 2018), with money increasingly interwoven into gaming competition. The prize money for the largest tournaments can push into the millions of dollars, while there are hundreds of players across various esports games able to secure a full-time income from the combination of tournament play, streaming, team memberships, and sponsorships. Almost all esports players are below the age of 30, and with this group disproportionately harmed by the two most recent economic crises and continuing challenging employment conditions, professional gaming of any kind is an extremely appealing career path (Johnson et al., 2019). Yet the newness and continued pace of change in esports arguably makes it harder to lay down and enforce precise and exacting rules in the way more traditional sports ordinarily do. Esports is in a state of constant flux - never more than now given the current global conditions of 2020 through 2022 - and games, players, companies, sponsors and modes of competition shift at a far more rapid rate than traditional sports. Given all of these converging factors, the incentives to bend or break the rules in one’s favour can be strong, with arguably relatively few safeguards compared to older sporting forms; yet what might unscrupulous behaviours actually entail? It is to cheating we therefore now turn in order to assess what cheating in esports looks like, and thus what it is the esports viewers surveyed expressed opinions on.

Cheating

Defining the nature of “cheating” in a game is a challenge: although certain behaviours may feel like cheating or seem to be outside the implicit or explicit rules of a game, the precise definition of cheating is multifaceted. Central to the game studies canon of cheating is Consalvo’s 2009 Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, in which she argues players primarily understand cheating as a source of “unfair advantage” (2009:87) for one player or team over another. Beyond this, however, consensus seems to break down. Interestingly, Consalvo (Ibid:88–92) notes a spectrum of cheating assessment. At one end, “purist” players believe that anything other than completing a game, by oneself, with the intended available tools, is cheating; at the other end, players believe there is no such thing as cheating in a single-player game, and that a person, not a system, is the only actor that can be cheated; and in the middle, players emphasise the primacy of a game’s code while allowing for guides, assistance, and the like. Others have defined cheating differently. For example, Suits (1978:59) understood cheaters as being those within a game or space of play who “recognize goals but not rules” - this is a perspective which will echo throughout quotes from our respondents - while Mortensen argues that cheating can actually represent a “a re-creation of the game” (2008:208) and a restructuring of one game potentially into another. There are certainly other definitions, but these three give us ample theoretical tools to assess the data presented here.

Cheating in structured and competitive contexts, however, has been primarily analysed in the context of traditional sports. Given the various elements of esports that do represent or reflect traditional sports, this is an appropriate place to start considering cheating in formalised spaces of play competition. Cheating in traditional physical sports of course takes many forms, including doping, match-fixing, and collusion (cf. Loland, 2005), and this is reflected in responses to the risk of such practices. For example, the Sorbonne-ICSS Guiding Principles on Sports Integrity propose that “sport must be based on open, fair and equal competition and requires unethical practices and behaviour to be assessed, prevented and, if need be, forcefully and effectively countered” (University Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne and International Centre for Sport Security, 2014). Such a definition stresses that some onus lies upon sporting bodies and other individuals to detect, prevent, and potentially punish offenders. Scholars, meanwhile, have sought to unpick in greater detail the nature, complexities, and impacts of sports cheating. For example, Preston and Szymanski (2003) acknowledge the strong incentives towards cheating for those involved in competitive sports, and cover several methods by which cheating in sport can take place - sabotage, doping, and match fixing, and how to evade these particular methods. Hill (2010), meanwhile, examined common approaches corrupters take to fix matches in football, and why some football leagues collapse due to corruption while others can weather such scandal, identifying strong illegal gambling networks, high levels of relative exploitation of players, and perceived corrupt officials as key themes in how cheating can lead to the downfall of sporting leagues.

It is however important to keep in mind that the “sporting” framework – although popular in some academic literature on esports especially from more business or marketing perspectives – is not the only way of thinking about esports, nor about those who take part in its competitions. In esports “playing computer games is considered to be a serious, competitive, and performative activity” (Seo, 2016:266), and in this third element Chee and Karhulahti (2020:219) suggest that esports players could be thought of as akin to “actors and those who make ‘appearances’”, and hence are perhaps more akin to “performers” rather than merely “players” (Ibid:221). This argument stresses that players’ actions are not just competitive but are entangled with the distribution of their images, the promotion of competitive games and companies, sponsors and marketing, and ethical conduct in the esports sector. Certain idea of aspiration or career achievement or masculinity are played out in the appearances (in both meanings) of many esports players. Such an idea is also found in Freeman and Wohn (2017:1603) who argue that esports players can valuably be understood as “performers or actors/actresses within the gaming world”. In this second comment and its use of the phrase gaming world we also perceive that these individuals are celebrities, highly-visible, highly-praised, sometimes contentious or controversial – and hence perform in ways beyond the extremely high in-game skills they display. Naturally famous players of traditional sports also exhibit these traits, but whereas there is an extensive literature surrounding the sponsorship or promotion of traditional athletes, this is almost completely absent (so far) when it comes to esports competitors. Cheating is therefore of impact not just for a given competition but also for the images of esports players, their potential earnings, the relationships between players and games companies, and potentially the very concept of the “esports player” itself and the behaviours to which they should adhere.

Nevertheless, where esports stands apart is in the nature and variety of potential cheating methods (cf. Consalvo, 2009:110–113). Software cheats and hacks can provide a variety of benefits (Thiborg and Carlsson, 2010), such as the inclusion of an aim-bot into the game - a piece of software which targets opponents faster and more accurately than most humans can (Yeung et al., 2006). Online attacks can entail a number of procedures ranging from attempting to flood the internet connection of one player with requests, clog up an online match with observers or chat comments, or in extreme and probably apocryphal cases, potentially even attacking the physical real-world infrastructure needed for an internet connection (Parkin, 2015). Doping can entail a range of drugs that enhance attention or reflexes for competitive players (Kamen, 2015), whilst disabling or abusing opponents can range from “trash-talking” to more severe attacks based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and so forth (Blackburn and Kwak, 2014). Match-fixing takes a very similar form to physical sports, wherein a competitor deliberately throws a match, perhaps for purposes of profiting off a wager; the corruption of officials and mediators is just as possible in esports as in physical sports; and the structural manipulation of tournaments, although challenging, remains possible in certain events when, for example, some players are seeded ahead of others, or well-known players are allowed to skip certain matches. In all of these cases, esports players are able to corrupt the intended form of play in order to either cheat to win (e.g., boosting their chance to progress through a tournament structure) or cheat to lose (e.g., departing a tournament early or manipulating a tournament bracket in the knowledge that one might profit elsewhere).

Although few scholars have to date addressed esports cheating in any depth, five papers stand out. Thiborg and Carlsson (2010) considered practices and interpretations of cheating in the context of Counter-Strike, a particularly popular game series and one known for cheating scandals. They particularly examine some of the wider currents of culture that esports (cheating) connect to, and potential legal and moral perspectives on the practice. Secondly, Holden et al. examine the challenges esports faces from “doping, gambling-related match-fixing and non-gambling related corruption” (2017:236). The paper focuses on legal issues and potential contests, within which the authors also note in passing that deceiving esports viewers may one day soon be a prosecutable offence. Third, the authors’ previous paper examined the implications of esports match-fixing in both cultural and regulatory contexts (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019). This paper focused on considerations of game integrity, and the extent to which esports viewers are aware of relevant gambling-related game integrity concerns. Fourthly, Irwin and Naweed (2018) focus on controversial behaviours in CS:GO, the game whose viewers constituted the majority of our sample. They look at the violation of both explicit and implicit rules of competitive gaming, unsportsmanlike behaviour, and how the “boundaries of (un)acceptability” are defined and redefined alongside in-game developments; their paper echoes Consalvo’s (2009) analysis of the fluidity and changeability of cheating boundaries and is further confirmed by the analysis we offer below. Lastly, Yun (2019) takes a legal perspective to consider “monetary exploitation, cheating, and gambling” in the esports context. They provide a comprehensive overview of relevant history, various sorts of esports cheating, as well as related issues surrounding the growing inclusion of gamblified mechanics in digital games (Author 1 and Other Author, 2020; Other Authors and Author 2, 2015; Zanescu et al., 2020; etc.). Cheating in esports has therefore been addressed from various angles, but a sustained focus on viewers remains elusive; this is the intended contribution of this paper.

Methodology

This paper uses qualitative responses that were part of a large online survey designed to examine the attitudes of esports players and spectators, particularly regarding perspectives of esports fans on cheating and appropriate punishments for cheating behaviours. The Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) distributed the survey via SurveyMonkey in May and June of 2017. ESIC was founded in 2016 with the goal of being what some have termed an “esports regulator” (Christodoulou, 2020) that would combat cheating and corruption in esports; it works with a number of major esports providers and sponsors and was recently reported to be working directly alongside American (Smith, 2021) and Australian law enforcement (Walker, 2021), but has also been criticised for its potentially ambiguous stance on esports betting and wagering (Michael, 2021). The distribution of the survey in question included ESIC’s member organizations’ mailing lists (such as Dreamhack, a major esports tournament and competition organization), postings on social media, articles in news or commentary outlets that specifically tailor to the esports market, and also esports communities on forums such as Reddit. ESIC’s stated goal with the survey was to explore what the esports community considers to be appropriate punishment for different types of cheating and to and look towards creating consistency across the esports industry based on a potential consensus of the esports community. Survey participants provided their opinions on various levels of punishment for four different forms of cheating which were worded in ESIC’s survey as follows:

1. Cheating to win using hacks/cheats/software

2. Cheating to win by doping

3. Cheating to lose - match-fixing (deliberately underperforming to manipulate the result to commit betting fraud)

4. Bribing or attempting to bribe/persuade an opponent to lose a match to enable the bribing team/player to be sure of qualifying for a higher bracket/tournament.

For each of the four forms of cheating, and within the context of different qualifying factors (whether a competition was “amateur” or “professional” in nature, online vs. LAN format, and player age), the survey offered single response options for recommended punishment. These options included no punishment at all; a monetary fine related to a percentage of potential prize money in relevant event; suspension from all esports competition for a defined period (1 month or less, 3 months or less, 6 months or less, 1 year or less, 2 years or less, 4 years or less); and lifetime ban. At the end of the survey, participants were offered the opportunity to leave open-ended responses on the subject of cheating in esports and potential consequences which could build on their responses to previous questions, or add comments not prompted by the rest of the survey. Specifically, the prompt read “Any other Comments?” and provided respondents with a text box.

The survey’s provision of categories and definitions is both a benefit and potential limitation of the data; we have a standard from which we can contextualise participant responses, while also recognizing that some responses may be primed toward certain content codes based on these limited definitions (e.g., cheating to lose is only described in the survey within the scope of match-fixing). As we note later in the paper this could be a potential reason why some respondents did not seem to have a full grasp of this element of esports cheating, although it might also point to wider misunderstanding separate from the survey itself. Following conclusion of the survey ESIC granted the authors access to this deidentified dataset; the use of this dataset was classified as excluded from IRB review by the [University] ethics board. While the authors are unable to publish the full data set due to ownership rights ESIC has indicated that it will make the data available to interested researchers and institutions upon reasonable request.

Of the 7544 total survey respondents, 1370 left qualitative responses. A small number of these were deemed unusable due to containing phrases like “n/a” or were comprised solely of swear words, and we thus cleaned the data of these responses, resulting in 1321 unique and usable responses. The respondents to this survey – as noted in our previous publication from this data set (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019) – were overwhelmingly drawn from the community around the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). This is a first-person shooter (FPS) game with a significant history of esports and competition and a substantial continued following into the present day. Approximately 90% of responses came from this CS:GO community – this was not intended, but it appears that the survey was simply more strongly “picked up” by this community’s online forums and discussion boards than others. Given the tremendous range of esports communities this is another important element for appropriately framing this study, although we also note that esports communities do all have shared roots in gaming and many gamers spectate multiple esports games, so this data set can still provide a valuable perspective on competition and cheating behaviours. Nevertheless, future replication studies or continued investigation in this area might look to other esports communities – such as those with a long-term grassroots element like the Super Smash Brothers series (Law and Jarrett, 2019) or those with a focus outside of European or English-speaking nations such as StarCraft in the South Korean context (Jin, 2010) – for valuable points of comparison.

To make sense of such a large volume of qualitative data we carried out a thematic content analysis. This is a method designed to help in identifying common themes and meanings (Berg & Lune, 2011) within a body of data. This technique is particularly noted for helping find themes and issues in new kinds of data that have not previously been collected or analysed (Green and Thorogood, 2004), and with little written on the topic we deemed this to be an appropriate approach. We began by creating an initial coding scheme based on themes that emerged during our literature review and categories outlined in ESIC’s survey, from which we began a focused coding process. This allows for a selected number of the expanding, or more analytically interesting, initial codes to knit together larger chunks of data (Lofland et al., 2006: 201). The process then uses these expanding materials as the basis for asking more focused and analytic questions of the data, which supports the analysis when some of our codes began “to assume the status of overarching ideas or propositions that will occupy a prominent place in the analysis” (Ibid: 201). As the stronger codes helped to knit together this large amount of data, we identified the core concepts that formed our primary analytic themes (as detailed below).

To address reliability, we established a discrepancy protocol based on the framework of the literature review and the final coding scheme. As a co-authored work this study allowed for the integration of two perspectives on coding and analysis, helping avoid the biases and interpretations of a single researcher’s viewpoint. There were four cases to which this discrepancy protocol was applied. For each, the two coders reviewed the disagreements and different interpretations of the data until consensus was reached about its fit within the main analytic themes. Our coding process led to the emergence of six analytic categories. The first five of these were attitude (comments and perspectives on cheating), punishment (what should be done to or with those who cheat), qualifying circumstances (conditions under which a general perception of cheating might be positively or negatively adjusted, such as young age of players or a first-time infraction), gambling (references to potential relationships between gambling and cheating such as bribery), and calls for standards (requests for rules and regulations to be established to manage and punish cheating). Each of these represented a significant portion of the data acquired and allowed us to unify sometimes diverse and scattered comments – which is to say related comments sometimes showed up in different framings – into a clearer image of what esports viewers think about when they think about “cheating”. Our previous publication generated from analysis of this dataset focused on gambling and match-fixing, and thus its content utilized these five themes (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019). All codes can be seen in Appendix 1.

The sixth analytic category drew from the aim and form of the ESIC questionnaire itself, which asked specifically about punishments for different types of “cheating to win” or “cheating to lose”. This category – which we termed cheating classification (how participants categorised and defined different kinds of cheating) – serves as the central theme of this paper (although other themes are also drawn on). Although there is inevitably overlap with other categories here, especially attitude, in this category we focused instead on definitional questions and matters of understanding and categorisation presented in the qualitative data. Whereas the attitude code focused on what participants’ emotional or other responses were to different kinds of cheating, the cheating classification theme was focused on what participants said cheating actually entailed and how they defined it and framed it. Consequently, the analysis we present here is centred on cheating classification, but also draws heavily from attitude, punishment and qualifying circumstances (the other two themes, gambling and calls for standards, were the focus of our previous publication from this data). This focus here allows us instead to interrogate what participants understand when they consider the diverse phenomena of esports cheating, and to examine their perceptions of cheating as a whole and how ideas about cheating are interwoven with many issues such as understandings and perceptions of competitions, ideas about the esports sector, respondents’ own gaming experiences, and even the demographics and life situations of players.

Discussion

Cheating To Win

We begin our analysis with respondents’ different perspectives on different forms of cheating. In discussing cheating to win, or activities undertaken in order to achieve higher ranking in a competition, respondents were generally united in believing that severe punishments were required. One stated that “cheating in anyway [sic] should always have a severe punishment”, with “no tolerance” for those who engage in it, whilst another in discussing esports doping suggested that punishments “should follow ban rules for other sports”, which they understood as being “2 years and comeback with regular testing”. Others were stronger: one respondent stated that “cheating should have 0 tolerance to it when trying to win a tournament” whether or not there is prize money on the line; another wrote that cheating, which they understood specifically as involving using “third party software/hardware to improve performance to an unfair advantage”, should be an “instant, non-revokable [sic] ban”; a third said that “cheating with hacks” should result in a lifetime ban; a fourth said that “hacking is the absolutely worst” kind of cheating and “should be a lifetime ban everytime no matter the level of prizepool”.

We therefore immediately see that the esports fan community appears aware of cheating as an issue, aware of some of the main practices used, and broadly in agreement that it is a serious concern. These are all forms of cheating to win which necessitate players actively corrupting the game, and such behaviour seems to elicit strong responses. Given that many of these fans are likely to be players of esports games (at least at a recreational level), and cheating is rife in online games of most kinds (Consalvo, 2009; Duh and Chen, 2009; Yan and Randell, 2005; etc.), it is likely that they will have directly encountered cheating to win. By contrast, cheating to lose only functions in the presence of a betting market or major tournament structure, noticeably lacking in most players’ experiences.

This proximity and potential for first-hand experience likely does much to explain such responses. Although cheating in competitive online games is less rampant than it was a decade or two ago, many online games are nevertheless spaces in which players are likely to encounter other players cheating. These experiences often leave a strong effect on players, inciting resentment or anger (Teng et al., 2012) yet also seemingly boosting presence in and commitment to the game (De Simone et al., 2012) - perhaps out of determination to defeat a cheater, to win back what has been lost, or other such motivations. This is an important observation because “players have various ideas and information about games before they begin playing” (Consalvo, 2009:83) – or in this case, before they begin spectating. In this specific context, most esports viewers are likely players of the games they watch, and almost all esports viewers are likely to have experience playing competitive multiplayer games - and encountering and being frustrated or defeated by cheaters - themselves. Although more research would be needed to assess players’ responses to what we might call “everyday” cheating rather than “esports” cheating, we propose that there is a clear connection here.

Following on from the above, we consequently note the unusually damning responses when questioned about cheating to win. These did not simply argue for tough responses, but were markedly more “extreme” than those suggested for other forms of cheating. For example, one respondent claimed that “there is nothing worst [sic] then [sic] cheating with software” along with another’s belief that LAN (local-area network, denoting here in-person rather than online competitions) cheating is “the absolute worst thing any player can do”. Such competitions are ideally “conducted according to a rigorous system of rules in order to reduce cheating and manipulation and obtain equal conditions, standardization and predictability in the game” (Thiborg and Carlsson, 2010:7) and so we might suggest cheating here is more demanding than in other contexts (hence perhaps implying a greater “crime”) as well as being generally more consequential in terms of profit, fame, and so forth (as almost all the biggest esports competitions take place on LAN).

Other respondents said there should be “no mercy for hackers”, and that the use of “ANY external assistant SHOULD NOT be tolerated”, using capitals for emphasis. Although it has been extensively documented that discourse on the internet tends to be stronger and more easily escalated than that offline (Suler, 2004; Lapidot-Lefler and Barak, 2012; etc.), this nevertheless shows a striking depth of feeling. The comments of many respondents were also noteworthy for the level of anger and vitriol that came across in their comments, as well as the severity of proposed punishments. For example, when describing players who cheat or hack, one respondent believed such actions merited an instant permanent ban due to the absolute importance of keeping “those fuckers out” of esports; another felt that “any fuckery on lan [local area network] deserves an instant and swift ban that is permanent”; and a third alarmingly suggested that cheating in digital games should be understood “as rape”. Esports fans of course tend themselves to be video game players (Edge, 2013); we believe many such (extreme) responses to be conditioned by players’ own direct experiences of cheating to win, and their anger over such experiences is here converted into wider perspectives on its impact on the gaming industry as a whole. This is an emotional response which appears to have little to do with tournament integrity, but rather concerns itself with player experience and potentially the sustainability of esports itself. We can therefore see that esports spectators have strong emotional responses to cheating to win, and the fact cheating players must actively undermine a game’s integrity appears central to the severity of these critiques.

Cheating To Lose

In terms of cheating to lose, however, a profoundly different picture emerged. It appears that spectators are comparatively unconcerned by cheating to lose - although none go so far as to actively accept or endorse it - and, in turn, spectator understanding of cheating to lose is limited compared with cheating to win. These are two fundamental differences when contrasted with the cheating to win findings. For example, one respondent addressing cheating to lose suggested that “deliberately throwing a match” should only result in being dropped from the ongoing tournament instead of a broader punishment, and another similarly stated that “losing intentionally” does not merit an especially severe infraction. These suggestions for appropriate punishment are limited to the tournament or to a short block of time, rather than framing the cheating as something unforgivable that should have profound and far-reaching consequences. It is thus clear that cheating to lose is seen as far less consequential than cheating to win, and subsequently deserving of far milder punishments. Some respondents stated that the level of money in play was relevant: one stated that “it really depends on how many money [sic] is on the line with prize money and how important the match is”, whilst another opined that “throwing is not that much of a big deal if no money is on the line, if for example just classification in group phases”. Here, therefore, cheating to lose is understood correctly as a practice contingent on the existence of a prize and betting market, but is consequently only considered important when the size and scope of that betting market is beyond a certain level.

There was also a clear issue in the data when it came to simply understanding the nature of cheating to lose, which is inevitably more complex and contingent than cheating to win, for it enrols actors both inside and outside of the immediately visible elements of esports competitions. A number of respondents suggested that proving cheating to lose was too difficult to be worth the effort, and since teams “don't bet on themselves there’s not enough evidence for anything.” Similarly, some respondents seemingly did not understand the concept, such as the statement that “you can’t ban someone because they are loosing [sic] and not winning anything”. These comments suggest that some esports viewers might be simply unaware of how cheating to lose functions despite the wording (perhaps insufficiently clear?) given in the survey, and also are not clear on what potential evidence can be available for pushing forward such an accusation, and potentially, a conviction. This will have important repercussions for esports gambling moving forward, with a significant portion of fans unaware of many of the fundamental characteristics of, and actors within, esports, gambling and cheating practices. This disconnect points the way to the importance of educational and awareness campaigns given the growing interweaving of the two.

We also note a large number of respondents who proposed that cheating to lose can be a strategic choice in particular contexts, and therefore not requiring any punishment or monitoring whatsoever. As we have previously noted (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019) it was acknowledged by several respondents that in traditional sports, the idea of losing a round of a particular match on purpose was a well-established strategic element. Even if it is never directly embraced by sporting bodies, it is understood that the nature of seeding or bracket-type sporting competitions can sometimes lead to situations where a certain team will be advantaged by playing worse than they ordinarily would. While sometimes frowned upon, this is rarely explicitly punished, and many sporting bodies now work hard to ensure that such situations should never even occur in the first place. In the context of esports, however, respondents told us that throwing a match “is not a bad match”, just as another claimed that this “is done in every professional sport”, and thus punishing it in esports might be inappropriate.

These opinions present esports betting as being a “closed” space (Ibid) in which outside concerns, actors and agendas are not present; this is not the case, however, and the ability for any kind of bracket or contest manipulation of this sort inevitably opens the door for potential match-fixing corruption. Thiborg and Carlsson (2010:11) note that in competitive gaming “it can be very difficult to differentiate between skill, luck and cheating”. Although in making this observation they meant that it can be hard to judge whether a player has some unacceptable in-game advantage or is simply extremely skilled, the same observation can applied usefully to thinking about bracket manipulation and the responses our participants gave about this practice. Are matters like brackets and seeds a matter of skill (defeating one’s opponents), a matter of luck (who one gets seeded against), or potentially neither and instead a matter to be cheated (if bracket manipulation is, indeed, cheating)?

Such supposed strategic elements of throwing matches were then delved into in greater depth by other respondents. One stated “a team not taking a match seriously they don't need against a team who does need it [should] not be punishable”; another said “deliberately underperforming to alter your seed [...] is both strategy and impossible to prove”; a third respondent that “I think if it benefits a team to lose then it makes sense as it is just a strategy in a bad system they are taking advantage of”. In this regard, several respondents went as far as to put the blame for losing on purpose on tournament organisers. One said that “matchfixing for better league position [in my opinion] is a problem formed by just a bad bracket system”; another said that “losing on purpose to get a better qualifier position is the fault of the organizer’s system”, whilst a third was even more frank, stating that “if someone ‘cheats to lose’ it is to a large degree the fault of the tournament organizer”. This, they explained, was because “there should always be incentive to win”. These suggest that responsibility and therefore blame should be given to the tournament rather than the players manipulating the system, and are thus in stark contrast to cheating to win when it comes to the assignation of agency. It also shows that in weighing up the proposed severity of cheating to win and cheating to lose from the perspective of esports viewers, a clear pattern emerges: the overwhelming majority of respondents who compared the two were united in agreement that cheating to win is seen as - often by far - the more egregious crime.

Rules or Ethics?

Having looked at spectator responses to cheating to win and cheating to lose, there are respondent comments about match-fixing that shed light on another important theme running throughout our respondents’ comments: a preference to defer to rules rather than ethics in understanding cheating as a whole (whether to win or to lose). This is interesting when we remember Suits’ (1978) assertion that a cheater is one who remains clear on the game’s goals but subverts its rules (note he makes no mention of ethics or gamespersonship here). In a previous publication from this data (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019:305) we argued that a “greater understanding of esports leads to more complex commentary about right and wrong within that domain, predicated on a view of the practice that takes account of contingencies, complexities and contexts”. We have already seen that fans are willing to blame “bad” tournament structures for allowing or perhaps even “encouraging” (or “enabling”?) cheating. However, some respondents went one step further into challenging what cheating even is, and therefore which actors merit blame, and what degree of blame is appropriate. They emphasised the importance of understanding cheating as a matter of rules or rule-breaking, not as an ethical transgression, and this stance brings with it significant implications for understanding how esports viewers understand cheating.

Most responses helping us understand this topic were articulated through reference to a particularly famous case of match-fixing. In 2014, a major CS:GO competitive team, iBUYPOWER (IBP), were investigated for potential match-fixing activity during an ESL tournament event, and in 2015 were permanently banned from competition (Skipper, 2015). This scandal was unique in the history of match-fixing in sport, as the bribery and wagers involved in the fix were not placed with cash, but in-game items (skins) that could be exchanged for cash in third-party markets (Durrani, 2016). The permanent ban was overturned in July 2017 (approximately 1–2 months after data was collected for this study), when ESL issued new rules and regulations regarding cheating during professional events, and simultaneously lifted the indefinite match-fixing bans for any punishment that pre-dated 15 February 2015, including IBP (Oelschlägel, 2017). This case was very visible, and highly controversial, and was central in our respondents’ comments. For example, one wrote that IBP should be unbanned because there was not a “clear ruleset by Valve prior to the crime” (our emphasis). Most obviously in this comment, we note that the respondent calls match-fixing a crime, and yet defends it by arguing a lack of clear rules against such behaviour; this displays a clear dissonance, but again focuses on the importance of rules rather than any kind of wider morality or comparisons with other fields. Similarly, another began by saying that the “actions” of IBP were “obviously awful”, but should be taken in context: “they did not have a salary, and prize pools were small”: they were just “trying to get by”. They added that this “doesn’t excuse it, but it is undeniably different now”. In this way, our respondents made “ethical judgments about gameplay that extended beyond the coded rules of the game” Consalvo (2009:87)-they were creating ethical judgements about rule-breaking which rendered that rule-breaking more acceptable than it would otherwise be (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019).

Another respondent said the players were “under the influence” - an interesting construction and cultural reference - because “they were payed [sic] no salary and needed money to at least survive and continue playing CS:GO competitively”. These comments show an understanding of the professional esports ecosystem, framing cheating as an almost acceptable practice in the context of highly challenging labour and employment conditions that all professional gamers face (cf. Johnson et al., 2019). As Miguel Sicart notes (2013:12), “surrendering to a game means accepting the rules”, and both scholarship and journalism on esports agree that the pursuit of this career requires a profound “surrender” to its stress, challenges and demands. Viewers show a generous perception of the “professional, and especially financial, pressure of an esports career” (Abarbanel and Johnson, 2019), and are willing to forgive a lot of rule-breaking if they perceive an ethical justification beyond the “game itself”. A final respondent said that IBP shouldn’t have been “made an example of” because “match fixing was commonplace” at the point they did it. This again reduces the perceived severity of a match-fixing incident by emphasising that in its mundanity, it becomes acceptable, and again draws recourse to rules and norms instead of ethics.

From all of these analyses we can therefore extract two central points. Firstly, that players who are aware of how match-fixing works are generally adamant that it damages or destroys game integrity, showing a strong understanding of this ecosystem; but secondly, that players look primarily to specific esports rules rather than broader concepts of fair play or sporting ethics to understand when match-fixing is unacceptable, and when it is perhaps not. In this latter point we see a return to the concept of throwing as strategy as noted in the previous section, and in some cases as a strategy without some of the wider implications we might ordinarily understand it as having. This tension between understanding cheating as a matter of rules, or as a matter of ethics, gets to the heart of our respondents’ perspectives. We see here two competing ontologies of what cheating is, and each of these carries profoundly different repercussions for both how esports should be managing “cheating”, and for how viewers are consuming this new media form.

Yet this does not answer why respondents prefer a rule-based theory of cheating to an ethics-based theory of cheating. More research is required to fully unpick this distinction, but here we propose two initial possibilities. Firstly, many gamers - especially those who would once have identified as “power gamers”, although this term has fallen out of use - pride themselves on finding ways to exploit and manipulate the rules of games to greatest possible effect (Taylor, 2003). More broadly, even gamers outside of these communities are used to pushing rules to their limits in pursuit of “metagaming” (Boluk and LeMieux, 2017), finding ways around rules, and consequently understanding game rules as often being things that should be exploited or navigated, rather than always “respected” - while nevertheless viewing games as rulesets first and foremost. These cultural ideas might well have impacted viewer understandings of esports cheating, simultaneously foregrounding rules over ethics while also being generous if those rules are transgressed in particular circumstances. Secondly, this focus on rules over ethics might point to a concern with the legitimacy of esports. The profitability and sustainability of non-digital sporting competitions are readily undermined if cheating becomes rampant (or at least visibly so), and with esports still in a period of rapid growth, fans are keen to ensure esports is not undermined by cheating scandals. As one respondent stated, “as a fan watching the game turning into a real sport i dont [sic] want the game’s reputation spoilt by any kind of cheating,” further noting that esports’ “progression will [be] tarnished”. Another respondent added that for esports to “have the image of a real compeitive [sic] sport punishments for Pro players caught cheating at anytime need to be harsh”. Still another noted that cheating “degrade[s] the value of...games and organizations”, and limits the ability of esports “to move forward,” further underlining McLaren’s (2008) argument that fans desire fair competition and authenticity of a sporting result and echoing Seo’s (2016:268) argument that esports consumers desire a “common ethos” built around “fair play” and trust in this fairness, in competitions, and in other players. We believe this legitimacy argument to be one of the most important motivators behind this concern with rules rather than ethics to define cheating: viewers are keen for the legitimation of esports through strict and appropriate rules, while at the same time seeing manipulation of rules as largely being within the ken of gaming competition. Nevertheless, broader cultural notions within gaming of the flexibility of rules, or at least the flexibility of intended play, may also shed significant light on why viewers both understand cheating as primarily a matter of rules, while simultaneously being willing to forgive a lot of rule-breaking.

Conclusions

In this paper we have outlined the perspectives of esports viewers on cheating in esports competitions. Drawing on a sample size of 1321 respondents who left qualitative comments as part of a wider survey on cheating perspectives, we have demonstrated a range of attitudes to different sorts of cheating, strong understanding about many aspects of the esports ecosystem, but also naivete about certain, less obvious parts. We first examined how respondents understood cheating to win, and found that these sorts of practices - hacking, doping, subverting the game itself in other ways to enhance one’s ability to succeed, and so forth - are strongly condemned by esports viewers. These are generally considered to be the most severe crimes esports players can commit, and consequently worthy of the highest levels of punishment. We then examined respondents’ comments on cheating to lose, finding that there was less understanding of what this involved, and a belief that this could be a defensible strategic move in certain contexts. In particular, we note that the average esports viewer - extremely likely to be themselves a regular player of competitive games - will likely have regularly encountered cheating to win in their own play experiences, but almost certainly never cheating to lose. This might explain the anger and strength of many of the comments regarding cheating to win, while also explaining some of the indifference we found regarding cheating to lose, being a form of cheating players are far less familiar with. We then showed a tension between conceptions of cheating being a matter of “rules” and a matter of “ethics”, and how this might reflect gamer interests in “power-gaming” and similar concepts, as well as a desire for esports to become a legitimate and respected practice. All of these shed significant light on the cultural understandings of esports cheating, as well as how esports more broadly is perceived by its fans and adherents.

Esports has grown in recent years into a major global media industry and understanding the perspectives of esports viewers seems vital for assessing the long-term cultural viability of the practice, as well as highlighting a greater need for educational initiatives to inform fans about the esports ecosystem. We therefore echo Consalvo’s (2009:107) observation that cheating can have effects on “other players, virtual worlds, and the economics of the wider games industry”. What is clear is that the modern “sportified” incarnation of esports needs the competitions to appear fair, above board, with high integrity and appropriate punishment for cheating, precisely because these are traits we (generally) associate with professional traditional sports. Fans are passionate about this, and feel strongly that a notion of cheating that focuses on rules is most appropriate for enforcing strict codes of conduct, while also in some cases allowing for what they might understand as innovative, or transgressive - but still acceptable - play. Most esports viewers thus seem to be what Consalvo (2009) would understand as someone in the middle of her spectrum of cheating understanding - they focus on the importance of a game’s code (or formal competitive rules) while still allowing for flexibility. Yet this perspective is not straightforward, as viewers seem to both emphasise the vital role of rules while allowing them to sometimes be subverted (cf. Suits, 1978); “new games” are being created and debated through these processes with rules viewers might or might find acceptable (cf. Mortensen, 2008), yet ethics still rarely get much attention from viewers in their comments on esports cheating. As Chee and Karhulahti (2020:219) note, in competitive gaming “the implications of what professional play, professionalism, monetization, and brands look like are becoming increasingly murky”, and there are always “alternative interpretations of right and wrong, fair or unfair, justice and injustice” in esports as elsewhere (Thiborg and Carlsson, 2010:3).

These findings thus also point towards several potential directions for future research: two particular avenues seem to present themselves. Firstly, we might examine in greater depth viewer understandings of the esports ecosystem: to what extent are viewers aware of the underlying (and rapidly-changing) dynamics of the competitive gaming sector? We have shown here that some viewers have stronger understandings of this than others, but most importantly it is clear that understandings of the industry significantly shape viewers’ consumption of, and responses to, broadcast esports content. This has implications for how professional esports actors are navigating and discussing “cheating”, and for what image of the sector fans are receiving from esports (and journalistic, and even scholarly) media and writing. Secondly, we would also propose further research into demographic differences and differences in competitive gaming play and video consumption among respondents. For example, are older or younger players more likely to condemn cheating to win? We suspect the former are more likely to have direct experience of facing cheaters, yet they should also have greater experience and understanding of the esports ecosystem and the challenges esports players face. Equally, do respondents’ comments differ depending on what competitive games they play or consume? As noted earlier, our respondents are overwhelmingly viewers of CS:GO; although we are confident that such a large sample of qualitative responses should give us information about esports viewers as a whole, it seems likely that further nuances might emerge between one game and another. As such, there are many potential directions for the further investigation of esports viewers and their perspectives on the games they watch.

To conclude, esports cheating is increasingly becoming a central concern for many actors within the esports ecosystem, yet viewers’ perspectives on cheating are not simply condemnatory. No form of cheating is actively endorsed - although some viewers are relatively comfortable with players or teams throwing matches in appropriate strategic contexts - but the severity and appropriate punishments for cheating seem understood as part of a complex web of contexts, personal experiences, cheating methods, rules, ethics, and the potential severity of impacts on other players, tournaments, or esports as a whole. It is overly simplistic to say that esports viewers simply condemn all forms of cheating equally - as might perhaps have been expected - and so we must instead acknowledge that the complexity of the esports ecosystem yields a diverse range of sometimes quite nuanced perspectives. As the potential profitability, fame and job security of esports careers seem likely set to only increase in the coming years, the perspectives and motivations of all involved - including the viewers - on the matter of cheating will become more important, and more integral to esports’ long-time viability.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Mark R Johnson

Brett Abarbanel

Table 1. Coding scheme and analytic themes

Code name	Code description	Analytical Theme(s)
Cheat	Cheating	Cheating classification
Cheatlose	Cheating to lose	Attitude Gambling Cheating classification
Cheatwin	Cheating to win	Attitude Gambling Cheating classification
Cheattype	Specific form of cheating referenced 1. Software cheats/hacks 2. Online attacks 3. Doping 4. Disabling/abusing opponents 5. Match-fixing 6. Officials corruption 7. Spot-fixing 8. Tournament/structural manipulation	Attitude Gambling Cheating classification
Cheattypeother	Other form of cheating referenced	Cheating classification
Agereference	Age	Punishment Qualifying circumstances Gambling
Age	Specific age; Underage v. Adult	Punishment Qualifying circumstances Gambling
Profamateur	Professional v. amateur status	Qualifying circumstances
Profamcompare	Comparison between professional v. amateur status	Attitude Punishment Qualifying circumstances
Rulesregs	Call for rules/regulations	Attitude Punishment Qualifying circumstances Call for standards
Rulesregsresp	Declaration of who should be responsible for rules/regulations 1. Government 2. Esports competition organization 3. Gambling authority 4. Game developer	Attitude Gambling Call for standards
Rulesregsother	Other responsible party mentioned	Call for standards
Gambling	Gambling	Attitude Gambling Call for standards
Bribery	Bribery	Attitude Gambling Call for standards
Numoffenses	Reference to a number of offenses	Call for standards
Banduration	Reference to length of ban	Attitude Qualifying circumstances Call for standards
Bandurationnum	Specific duration of ban	Call for standards
Circumstance	Excuse due to circumstance (e.g., coach made them do it)	Attitude Punishment Qualifying circumstances
Punishment	Reference to punishment	Attitude Punishment Qualifying circumstances
Punishmenttype	Type of punishment 1. Suspension 2. Ban 3. Fine	Punishment Qualifying circumstances
Punishmenttypeother	Other form of punishment referenced	Punishment Qualifying circumstances
Authmention	Authority figure in cheating mentioned	Attitude Qualifying circumstances
Whoauthority	Which authority figure 1. Government 2. Esports competition organization 3. Gambling authority 4. Game developer	Attitude Qualifying circumstances Gambling
Authorityother	Other authority figure referenced	Qualifying circumstances
Impactedparty	Reference to impacted party	Attitude Call for standards Cheating classification
Whoimpacted	Who is the impacted party referenced 1. Player 2. Team 3. Coach 4. Event organizer 5. Fans 6. Officials 7. Game developer 8. Gamblers	Call for standards Cheating classification
Whoimpactedother	Other impacted party referenced	Call for standards Cheating classification
Casecomment	Reference to a specific cheating case (e.g., iBuyPower, IBP, Swag)	Attitude Punishment Cheating classification
Nonsequitur*	Comment is a non sequitur (e.g., “n/a”)	n/a
Spam*	Comment is spam (e.g., only cursing)	n/a

Note. *code was not carried through to results.

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