Hi all,
One of the most profound differences in the tournament community discourse in 2021 vs 2022 has been issues of cheating. 2021 was a rather bleak year marred with a number of high-profile scandals. I won’t dredge them up again but it seemed every event had some issue. As Fig. 1 shows this precipitous decline is something that is not unprecedented, but is noteworthy.
Before we get too ahead of ourselves in celebration we must ask ourselves whether this is really the case. Thus the following article will delve into some of the reasons this trend might be spurious, and then expand on some possible explanations.
Explanations for the decline:
- People are cheating less
- Well-known people are cheating less
- Cheaters have gotten better
- More people are competing and the number of cheaters hasn’t risen accordingly yielding a lower Cheater/Games Played score.
- The author hasn’t been paying attention to the latest “Hot Goss”
- People are too busy complaining about codex balance
- Why cheat when you can just play Nids/Crons/Votann (joke worked better last week)
- Now that you think about it most of the 9th ed codexes have units with abilities “that one guy” at your FLGS tried to convince you they had in past editions
- We as a community have nobly realized that besmirching the integrity of the game is not worth whatever filthy lucre is earned
- The London GT wasn’t streamed this year
- Hammerheads aren’t meta anymore thus fewer people are moving them with water-bottles
Assuming that the first reason listed is correct it does yield some implications. the first of which is a precipitous decline in the number of sanctimonious, easily-written articles that can be produced (see .1 giF)
This bodes ill for the 40k gossip and FLG writers communities as such articles practically write themselves. Plus these lukewarm articles yield as much benefit to the author as something written with twice the amount of effort. Leaving aside my own struggles, there are some other implications worth discussing. The first of which is that, even if the number of scandals has decreased, it might just mean that people have become more successful in how they cheat. Blatantly lying to your opponent, removing the incorrect number of models, etc. all on stream may have fallen out of vogue and the judges have yet to catch up. Players should not let their guard down, especially if they find themselves playing against a well-known professional player (has more motive to cheat) or someone they don’t know (less likely have their misdeeds exposed). Indeed we can can never rest in our dedication to fair play and must always be keenly aware of any attempts at illicit behavior ( anyone of us might be a cheater! Even you! Have you ever asked yourself if you have been secretly cheating? What would you say? Isn’t that exactly what a cheater would say?).
As long as people play this game there will be cheaters. It is thus the duty of us all to call out such behaviors in vague Reddit posts, be badgered into giving out the name of the offender, have that post be removed by Reddit, watch the comments descent into a vicious war about “Naming and Shaming”, have later readers try and piece together who is being discussed and understand: a: why they have never heard of this person given they are apparently such a big deal, B: Wait or is it someone else? Multiple people at this event could be the ones being mentioned? Shoot should I ask? That might be tacky. I will just wait for Grim After Dark, they will probably mention it.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
