Should players caught cheating in competitions be banned / remove themselves from the community?

[DooM Bear]

Was just watching this Karl Jobst video on faked DooM runs:

 

 

During a competition hosted on our beloved Doomworld and $100 up for grabs courtesy of our amazing @Linguica a player codenamed “Player M” was found out to have cheated. After they were discovered, they chose to leave the Doomworld community (stated at 9:54 in the video).

 

My question (as per the title) is, do you think players found to be cheating should be banned or should remove themselves from the community? Or do you feel that publicly owning up to it is punishment enough and they should be able to remain in the community if they like?

 

Just to clarify, I think cheating in a competition like that is an extremely shitty thing to do and feel habitually cheaters should definitely be banned, if not from just entering competitions, from the community but what do you all think about “one offs”?

 

Lastly, DO NOT CHEAT IN COMPETITIONS!!! Regardless of the results here, it is a really, really, really scummy thing to do and do not take the results here as a “one time free pass” if the majority feel people always deserve a second chance.

 

Note: let’s try not to talk about the “Player M” situation. Let’s leave the past in the past and all I have to say about the competition here is congratulations to the winner :-D

Edited October 8, 2020 by DooM Bear

[Biodegradable]

I mean, if they admit to their wrong-doing, accept their disqualification, earnestly apologise for cheating and promise to never do it again, I don't think they should be exiled from the community. I feel like people are so quick to demonise others these days and cast them out rather than forgive and I think allowing people to learn from their mistakes and grow as a person is way better. If however, they're constantly doing it and either making up feckless excuses whenever they're caught or are a belligerent asshole about it and their presence and contributions bring nothing but irritation and ruin the fun for everyone, then yes, absolutely point them toward the door and tell 'em to fuck off.

Edited October 8, 2020 by Biodegradable

[Maggle]

You should certainly be banned from any future competitions, no matter how much you apologize. Sorry, but you just simply can't be trusted to play fair, anymore.

 

Exiled from the community? I dunno. Cheating is no reason to not be able to chill/talk about Doom/play it casually with people. You would have to do way worse for that to be an appropriate response.

[TenenteZashu]

If one wants to be a fair person when caught cheating they should remove themselves if they don't get banned in the first place, obviously

[AndrewB]

In the old days, yes, a person should be banned. In the modern era, this doesn't need to be the case. Even if a person has been caught cheating several times, there's a simple way for them to regain credibility. Simply livestream all of their speedrun attempts. If they happen to nab a world record, they can link to their Twitch channel showing their hundreds of attempts and a normal distribution of luck, with a steady increase in skill. If they're pulling any shenanigans, or if their livestreams don't hold up to scrutiny, the community will easily be able to spot the inconsistencies.

[Nevander]

Banned from competition? Yes.

Banned from community? No.

[AinuTheTaken]

It's not likely they'll just go away, but it's what they should do.

[Murdoch]

Given that actually enforcing any kind of ban is effectively impossible, I am going to go with no. 

[Redneckerz]

Cheaters when caught, as pointed out in the video, usually do not make an effort to defend themselves with evidence.

Rather, they choose the offence, and then disappear, so the accusation never gets resolved.

Because of this, said accusation actually gains credibility by virtue of not responding.

So here is how i see it:

• Everyone accused should be able to defend themselves of said accusation, preferably with evidence of the contrary.
• When the accused ring to the offence without any sources to support their claims and/or either disappear after the fact, it reads like a confirmation of what the accuser accuses him/her of.
• When the accused takes the second option, then i feel they should be expelled from both competition and community. Because clearly, they know they have been caught, and yet do nothing to turn that accusation around but by flinging crap at the accusers (Often people who are known and reliable Doom members with no scathing track record).

However, any accusation made should not be made lightly. In the case of Zeromaster, the counter-claim that his accusation was done out of jealousy is not really believable given Zeromaster has accomplished significant feats himself. Jealousy that someone else would beat him would be unlikely, unless you take things too seriously.

Everyone's good folk in those caterns.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Redneckerz : Some critical changes.

[seed]

Depends on context but regardless, I say "no", unless the cheating happened in a quite serious competition where it poses a serious problem to its future, but not for say, cheating in the IronEagle/IronMan leagues.

 

Besides, I think in this day and age we'd all be better off at least trying to be more forgiving than be judgemental assholes, I think there's enough witch hunting out there already and we really don't need to add more fuel to the fire.

[dew]

If you cheat and get caught in multiplayer, you're going to get banned and any possible path to redemption will be long and arduous, because many will never forgive you. And you cannot really argue for more lenience, your cheating is destroying not just the competition, but the community as well, because the competition is the community.

 

As for cheating in speedrunning, the stakes are lower, but the trust issue is similar. Some people may never trust you again and if you're still allowed to send demos to the archive, they'll be inspected with increased scrutiny. However the speedrun community is quite forgiving when the cheater comes forward and identifies demos that have been cheated. Getting caught a second time definitely gets you ostracized, because it kind of tells you think the community is a bunch of idiots for you to toy with.

 

However what happens a lot is that the person simply storms out of the community on their own, whether they admit fault or not. The former is usually out of shame, the latter flowers into spectacular drama bombs and memorable copypasta. I mean, from the top of my head I recall just two banned speedrun cheaters... Hock for repeat use of automated sr50 and that guy who started blanking his post after getting called out, which equals to forum vandalism and thus ban. Those cases are 10 years apart, heh.

 

Player M is neither of these categories, there's a lot more baggage tied to their multiple doomworld bans.

[Gokuma]

After being caught once they should be allowed to remain but with the title, "I'm a big douchey cheater and my pants are on fire."

[DooM Bear]

7 hours ago, Gokuma said:

After being caught once they should be allowed to remain but with the title, "I'm a big douchey cheater and my pants are on fire."

 

Hahahaha I really like that idea! You could set them as that and if they stick around, after 3 months or building back some good reputation it could become “former cheater - I won’t do it again” or something like that before reverting back to normal rankings after active 3 months / gaining even more positive reputation :-P

 

22 hours ago, dew said:

If you cheat and get caught in multiplayer, you're going to get banned and any possible path to redemption will be long and arduous, because many will never forgive you. And you cannot really argue for more lenience, your cheating is destroying not just the competition, but the community as well, because the competition is the community.

 

As for cheating in speedrunning, the stakes are lower, but the trust issue is similar. Some people may never trust you again and if you're still allowed to send demos to the archive, they'll be inspected with increased scrutiny. However the speedrun community is quite forgiving when the cheater comes forward and identifies demos that have been cheated. Getting caught a second time definitely gets you ostracized, because it kind of tells you think the community is a bunch of idiots for you to toy with.

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said :-) Although personally I think people cheating in speedrunning is just as bad!!!

 

For instance, while maybe not directly stealing a cash prize, if I was to make some really good faked doom runs I could possibly get an all expenses paid trip to an event like GDQ or what not thus disadvantaging legitimate players like ZeroMaster or Looper. Not to mention the additional twitch subs and revenue from appearing at an event like that. This happened to a cluster trucks player one year at GDQ and I felt really, really bad for the legitimate player that should have been there in the cheaters place. Those guys work their butts off to get to the top of the leaderboards and truely deserve any benefits they receive for their work :-)