Last night, a story broken by The Daily Dot revealed to the public that multiple matches from the Nvidia Pro/Am professional division weren’t played, but coin-flipped instead. It was an arrangement to which both players in a given coin-flipped match agreed. This refusal to play scheduled matches happened league-wide and involved if not all, than at least a big part of the players invited to the tournament.
Daily Dot reporter Callum Leslie first went after the story following a tweet from Archon player Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert to GosuGamers – later deleted – where he admitted that such coin-flipping happened, and that it was apparently “no secret”. As every one of the invited 16 players in the Professional Division was guaranteed advancement to the playoffs, the matches only counted towards better seeding, which the participants agreed didn’t matter in the end. Here’s where many decided they’d rather not waste time playing a game of Hearthstone but roll a dice to see who wins.
As an industry insider and head administrator of the GosuRankings, I’ve been aware of this issue for a long time. Multiple players had approached me with requests to annul this or that Nvidia match from their records on the basis of being coin-flipped. But there lay the problem – the official Nvidia tournament page did not list those matches as forfeits or as unplayed. It listed them as legit tournament games. In fact, the tournament officials themselves confirmed that all matches have been legitimately played. But if coin-flipping did indeed happen – and be sure, it did – and was somehow reported as a legitimate match, then somebody somewhere did not follow the procedures or rules of the tournament and caused a malicious practice to spiral out of control.
While this is a situation where both the coin-flippers and the admins responsible for policing them are at fault, where the root of the problem lies is arguable. On the one hand, Nvidia and CEVO failed to come up with an incentivizing group stage and designed a flawed format which can and was abused. But on the other side, the entire coin-flipping process was consciously initiated and repeated by the player body. The same people who based on their merits as professionals were given the opportunity and privilege to compete for $25,000 without going through the hellish amateur division first.
Where the root of the problem lies is arguable.
Here, any person caring about the well-being of his or her esport of choice would find this behavior appalling. Deciding you don’t give a damn about a tournament whose rules you’ve supposedly read, understood and accepted is nothing less than unprofessional. When your job description is playing video games in tournaments for a living – and in the case of Hearthstone, let’s be honest for a second, it’s not even that demanding – not playing video games in tournaments on purpose because you don’t feel like it is an act of disrespect towards the organizers who’ve gifted you this chance and towards your team which counts on you to represent it properly.
No matter how you spin it, what those coin-flipping players did was wrong. Granted, all group stage matches didn’t have an actual effect on who will make the playoffs and were stretched over an abnormally long three-month period, but that’s not enough of a reason to abandon matches on a whim, especially given the size of the tournament prize-wise. And make no mistake: Players did that not to keep their deck techs secret, as they were allowed to change decks each week, and it was not because of scheduling issues, because players were allowed to communicate and agree on dates that fit them both. There is no other underlying reason for these coin-flips other than what was established earlier in this article.
These acts are also in violation of the official Nvidia Pro/Am rules, which state that “any unsportsmanlike action like disrespecting an official is not tolerated” and that “if a player acts in collusion with another player to affect any results of the tournament, he or she may be disqualified from the tournament”. Even if coin-flipping is far from the severity of match-fixing, it’s still collusion and I find it hard to believe that players who engaged in it would’ve gotten off cheap had they been caught.
Even if one is to disregard the questionable morality of this coin-flipping practice, another issue remains, and that is that those involved in that practice engaged in deception by reporting games which weren’t played as legitimate. This is evident by looking up the Nvidia tournament hub, which is able to differentiate between forfeited (labeled FF-W) and played matches (those with a score). And while the group stage records cannot be accessed anymore, the matches labeled as forfeits were significantly less than the number of coinflipped matches. None of Xixo’s matches, for example, were labeled as forfeits, even though his tweets indicate that he was one of the players involved in said practice.
Counting on competitors to act in a sportsmanlike and manner when it is way easier to not do it is not a foundation you want to build upon.
But once again, why did the coin-flipping occur? In the end, these players could just report their matches as forfeits and be done with it, without engaging in this behavior. On paper, yes but then their place in the tournament would likely be put at risk. Even though the official Nvidia rules mention nothing about the consequence of repeated no-shows, similar cases in the past, the tournament in question included, have led to players being dropped and subsequently replaced.
No, I’m not forgetting about Nvidia’s and CEVO’s fault. I wouldn’t go as far as some redditors who state that forcing players to play matches without relevance is “pretty rude,” you cannot design a format which offers close to zero incentive for competing. Counting on competitors to act in a sportsmanlike manner when it is way easier to not do it and go through the cracks instead is not a foundation you want to build upon. It’s the same reason why you don’t put a kid and an ice-cream in the same room and expect to see restraint. It won’t happen.
Nvidia/CEVO admins also failed in their job to police the tournament and ensure matches are legitimately being played. In a statement to Daily Dot, CEVO president Charlie Pitt said that they “find it highly unlikely that ‘coin flip’ match results were reported during the official Hearthstone Pro/Am Tournament as all matches were closely monitored by the administrative staff,” but that’s clearly false and Mr. Pitt had no idea what was happening during his own event. If all matches, and not just the streamed ones, were closely monitored by having an admin spectating the games (everything else short of that is not a close monitoring), coin flip matches would simply not occur.
This isn’t the first instance of Nvidia/CEVO admin negligence either. The Amateur division of the tournament was also plagued by problems, with players falsely claiming forfeit victories or being unable to schedule their matches, which is something for the administrative staff to regulate. The rules for the amateur playoffs and the swiss cut-off were also not made clear until later into the tournament and left the entire amateur division in the dark about the qualification process.
Nvidia/CEVO admins failed in their job to police the tournament and ensure the matches are legitimately played.
At the end of this editorial, I come to several realizations which are frankly scary. First of all, those players who coin-flipped likely still think they did nothing wrong and were making the best out of a situation. I would be happy if this piece has made them realize they were at fault, but I don’t dare hope for much.
Secondly, those players will likely not get punished at all. Hearthstone doesn’t have an esports regulatory body as Blizzard is not involved in the competitive aspect, so there won’t be as much as a slap on the wrist or a stern warning. The captains, managers and team-mates of those coin-flipping players were also aware that this was happening. Through their inaction they condoned this behavior and I don’t believe there will be any aftermath now.
Thirdly, a large part of the community will fail to see the bigger picture. This incident – like most such incidents in Hearthstone – is not just about players hurting the integrity of the game or admins failing to grab the reins. This puts another black spot on Hearthstone's competitive community, as more and more pernicious habits are being made public, habits which have been going on behind the scenes for likely forever. I cannot help but remember the stream-ghosting incident involving Raphael “Hosty” Tsantili, when I got comments from multiple sources, including industry insiders, stating that “everybody’s doing it”.
I don't mean to say that the entire scene is rotten to the point it's absolutely compromised. That's clearly not the case.
I don't mean to say that the entire scene is rotten to the point it's absolutely compromised. That's clearly not the case, and competitive Hearthstone is in a more or less healthy state and quite enjoyable to watch. But unless measures are taken, this will keep repeating. Players will continue to abuse the defects of the scene, because in the end winning is all that matters and sportsmanship doesn’t come with a paycheck. At the same time, tournament organizers will continue to re-discover hot water or let themselves be taken hostage by the vagaries of the players because they lack the balls or dedication or scope to do proper enforcing.
In the end, we're all in this together. The combined effort of players and community members somehow made a casual card game designed for mobile phones into a popular and beloved competitive game. Hearthstone celebrates fun, and friendship and fireside camaraderie over a pint of ale.
Why ruin it?
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