Comment by bee_rider

I think it’s streaming in particular. With actual competitive games, like, tournaments and whatnot, the players are well known and they are competing in actual tournaments, right? The play is broadcast and all the players have their professional game-player reputation at stake, so there’s a strong incentive to not cheat (it is a very cushy and high-skill job with almost no transferable skills, so like, better not get booted). It is just that streamers might bump into cheating and that’s annoying for their viewers I guess.

When people play in these “competitive” matchmaking queues, it is more like a pickup game. If somebody shows up to a pickup baseball game with a corked bat, they are just kind of a loser and it isn’t a big deal, right? There’s no actual reward for hitting “platinum rank” or whatever in most games, other than skins or something. Nothing real is on the line.

IMO: we really should just have let these people cheat their way out of the normal matchmaking population. Smurfing is a much bigger problem. I don’t actually care if the guy dominating the match with some 60:0 kill-death-ratio is cheating or a semi-pro beating up on casuals, haha.