Taiwan Disqualified From The Hearthstone Global Games For Stream Sniping
It's not only Kripparrian that gets stream sniped! Taiwan was caught using a tournament broadcast to help them make decisions in their recent matches against Singapore. Due to the disqualification, Singapore will now be advancing to BlizzCon instead of Taiwan.
Quote from BlizzardThe Chinese Taipei Hearthstone Global Games (HGG) team has been disqualified from the Hearthstone Global Games competition.
Following the Chinese Taipei vs. Singapore match, the Chinese Taipei team uploaded a video of their gameplay. Upon review of the video, and after reviewing in-person statements from the players, the Hearthstone Esports team has determined that members of the Chinese Taipei team used the delayed tournament broadcast to aid them in a decision during the game. This behavior is prohibited in our tournament rules under section 7.11a. Specifically, players are prohibited from “[s]tream sniping, or any general attempt by a player to spectate his or her own match or get information from another person spectating the match.”
Based on the timing of this disqualification, the Singapore HGG team will advance in place of the Chinese Taipei team to the playoff stage of the Hearthstone Global Games at BlizzCon.
Weird. Hope he explains. It's one of my favourite countries to visit!
It’s widely known that Singapore is no.1 most corrupted country in the world. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s not wealthy or beautiful country.
Can you cite your source please? If it's "widely known" it should be easy to find, I'm failing to locate any hint of your claim. According to Wikipedia, corruption index in Singapore is low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Singapore, and according to several sources listing countries from most to least corrupt (https://www.ranker.com/list/the-most-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/info-lists), Singapore comes up as 175, way after US (163) and European countries like Germany (169) and UK (170). In comparison, Taiwan (the cheating country) is 150. And for your reference, #1 most corrupted country tends to be a tie between Somalia and Nigeria, neither of which has any relation to Singapore. I myself live in US and have no relation to Singapore, I just don't like when people spread personal prejudices as "facts".
Well, HCT WC 2017 was caught in a cheating team.
Great job, dude. What a shame.
I knew there was a reason I didn't like Tom60229 ever since HCT last year...
Good for Blizzard. I sincerely hope that there's more of a sanction than a single DQ for this.
FeelsBadMan for the other 3 three teams in the group. I doubt this was a one time occurrence...
Cheating is allowed. Getting caught is not. - No game No life rule nº11
I'm wondering if they may need a longer delay (like 30 mins). Sure it would be annoying for the viewers, however that said at least it would stop teams some sniping.
Still it's good to see Blizzard noticed this and did something about it.
I've always wondered why players were allowed to simply compete from their bedrooms. Presumably, having the team play their games at a "sanctioned" e-sports venue is preferable for all kinds of reasons - in larger countries, like Canada or the USA, the players wouldn't have to be physically present at the same venue, etc . . .
There are times when it's clear that all four players are together at someone's house, but not all of them are together on-screen. The simplest sort of cheating could simply involve someone off-screen watching the stream in the kitchen, and shouting out results.
Whilst the Heathstone e-Sports scene is seen as a gimmick in some quarters, at least this shows there's some QA or post tournament operations going on at Irving. Not quite to the level of WoW world first races but I'll give credit to Blizzard.
On the team's part, I'm not sure if it's stupidity or naivete that led to them uploading the video with this in. Very embarrassing for Tom too.
If the team had not posted the video, they would never have been caught. The QA is absolutely minimal.
Hmm. 15 minutes of delay is really short. Maybe a low rank ladder game with one player playing aggro is shorter than that, but competitive matches between pros are usually longer. At just 1min per player per turn that's just 7 turns. And Tracking is not the only card where being able to look back to Turn 1 during Turn 8 matters. Against almost all combo decks, knowing the combo pieces they had in their starting hand is useful when planning your own Turn 8 or 9 play.
I think this was yet another huge screwup by Blizzard. We have no idea how often this has happened already with the cheaters not getting caught.
For the players that did it, yes, but not for the country
I hope it won't be limited to that. IMO, It is enough for a lifetime ban from Blizzard competitions
Mike Long is in the MTG Hall of fame... Poof that good guys finish last in card games. :/
OMEGALUL monkas ZULUL
Yikes. Better put an hour delay on the stream next time, or ban Odd Warriors entirely. I'm glad the cheaters got exposed, but it makes you wonder how many other teams might have been doing the same thing.
There used to be a team tournament that occasionally streamed comms. Pretty sure it was a LAN event, so everyone was sitting next to each other, but I wonder if Blizzard would consider doing that next year (or at BlizzCon). Not only does it provide insight into what the players are thinking, it'd also make catching anyone dumb enough to admit that they're stream sniping a lot easier.
They were not punished for cheating, they were punished for telling that they had cheated. If ahqShaxy texted them instead of being so dumb to tell it out loud and then bragging about it with a video, they would have been in the tournament now. I guess that they are not the only ones, especialy when you see that the last Blizzcon champion is one of them.
I agree with everything except the last of the last sentence. Cheating isn't so rare (unfortunately we live in a world where not everyone has moral principles, even thought we are talking about a game), but you can't say that all the results someone has accomplished where undeserved if the got caught once. Remember that people are always innocent unless you demonstrate the opposite, so there's no reason to discredit past's victories