Esports Viewer Perspectives on Cheating in Competition

This study examines how esports viewers perceive different forms of cheating in competitive gaming, a topic that has received little scholarly attention despite the high financial and reputational stakes of professional play. The authors analyzed 1,321 cleaned qualitative survey responses collected in May and June 2017 by the Esports Integrity Coalition, distributed through member organizations' mailing lists, social media, esports news outlets, and online forums. Responses were examined through thematic content analysis, with the central distinction drawn between "cheating to win," where a player gains a competitive advantage through means such as hacks or doping, and "cheating to lose," where a match is deliberately thrown for financial or advancement gain, typically through match-fixing or bribery.

The findings indicate that viewers hold a low tolerance for cheating to win, a response the authors attribute partly to their own experiences of cheating in ordinary online matches, where the incentives for cheating are less complex. By contrast, viewers were considerably more accommodating toward cheating to lose, particularly when it was framed as a strategic choice or a response to the pressures of an esports career. Participants often showed sympathy for players involved in match-fixing and bribery, though many displayed limited understanding of the wider ecosystem in which such behaviour occurs and of how seemingly isolated incidents can have broader consequences for the industry.

Overall, the study portrays viewer attitudes as a layered set of judgments that rank cheating by severity, reflect varying levels of familiarity with professional esports, and treat cheating as more a matter of rule-breaking than of ethical transgression. The authors conclude that these perspectives are shaped by viewers' own play experiences and by the opacity of professionalized esports structures. They argue that understanding fan attitudes is essential to assessing the long-term cultural and commercial viability of esports as a spectator sport, and they point to a need for educational initiatives that better inform audiences about how the competitive ecosystem operates.