In any environment, cheaters are bound to exist. Though most look to hide it in every way possible and steer clear of the spotlight, some went so far as to risk cheating or hacking in games live.
Not all cheaters are created equal. Some use external software to amplify their odds in the game, others may stream snipe to get the upper hand on their opponent, and others still may hide stuff in their mice or hardware, but it all comes up to the same: cheating is cheating, no matter where, what with, or how. The following examples are from all across the spectrum and from streamers, big or small, and not all of them were punished adequately.
We’ve compiled 10 of the most ridiculous and mind-boggling examples of streamers cheating live on a streaming platform.
10 streamers exposed for hacking live on stream
MissQGemini
This case happened way back in June 2017 when MissQGemini was caught cheating live on stream during a match on Inferno in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Before the match began, she pulled out the entire cheat software on stream and turned on wallhacks, and when she realized what happened, she tried to blame a friend and called the red boxes around players “a glitch.”
Germaine has also become the source of a popular CS meme, “Clara,” uttered whenever a player is considered a cheater or when a particularly good play happens. She even said people calling her a cheater were misogynistic and were only doing so because she was a woman playing Counter-Strike. Yeah, the defense didn’t hold up, and she was eventually VAC-banned and has had little to no presence in the scene since.
CPTBaldy
In Aug. 2021, Twitch streamer and Warzone player CPTBaldy wanted to disprove his cheating claims. After slowly growing on the platform and becoming a recognized name in Warzone with a high K/D ratio and tons of remarkable clips, CPTBaldy was prone to accusations that he was cheating.
During a stream where his audience asked him to open up his Task Manager to prove he’s not running third-party software, CPTBaldy accidentally seems to have pressed the wrong button—and opened up his cheat menu. Soon after, during the same stream, he was banned from Warzone and eventually deleted his Twitch account.
Mr Golds
Another Warzone streamer, Mr Golds was a growing figure in the CoD community and amassed over 50,000 followers on Twitch. He was known for being a more-than-solid player, but he lives on in people’s memories as nothing else than a cheater. In Aug. 2020, Mr Golds was bragging about how he was a fantastic player, asking, “Have you ever seen anyone playing like me?” while at the same time having his cheating software open in full view of the stream.
He was issued temporary bans on Twitch and Warzone and even made an apology video, but no one bought it. Mr Golds then turned to cryptocurrencies before getting permanently removed from Twitch. It appears Task Managers really are the bane of Warzone cheaters.
Autenil
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a developer got caught cheating in their own game? Well, it did actually happen to H1Z1 technical lead Autenil. He was playing a match of the game when he encountered a team of enemies and proceeded to gun them down. The only problem was they couldn’t see him, a feeling they expressed in the voice chat, which made Autenil realize he had forgotten to turn off the invisibility dev tool due to it not being apparent from his point of view.
After this, he apologized to the players and his community, and everyone understood that it was merely an accident and an afterthought. Still, it’s good food for thought if and how many devs have cheated in their games over the years.
Superfast Jellyfish
Super Mario 64 is still a big game; many decades after release, the title gets a lot of attention due to its adamant speedrunning community, some of which had decided to try beating the game blindfolded and as fast as possible. Superfast Jellyfish was one such player, but he decided to go the easy route and cheat his way to the top by using a see-through blindfold.
After being exposed by YouTuber CharlieBrown64 in a half-hour-long video with over 13 million views, Superfast Jellyfish responded claiming his cheating was deliberate and on purpose. This caused a ton of reactions from Mario 64 speedrunners, none of whom believed Jellyfish’s claims, and the accused has since largely abandoned his streaming career.
DDevinity
One of the more recent examples of cheating live at the time of writing is the case of Twitch streamer DDevinity, who was caught with wallhacks during a MW3 tournament. The streamer, who has earned over $70,000 in CoD tournaments, was exposed as a cheater by the popular CoD Twitter account ModernWarzone, with some of the biggest names in CoD ultimately weighing in on the situation.
In response, DDevinity chose to wave cash around and not apologize nor own up to their behavior, and the fact that they earned vast sums of money by cheating was a major grievance for pros commenting on the situation. As of this article, they aren’t banned from either Twitch or CoD, and it’s unknown if these major bodies will take action against them.
Emilio
Counter-Strike has seen many cheaters come and go over the years, and not even professional tournaments were spared. On the one hand, we have forsaken, but since he can’t be considered a streamer, we have to turn our heads to Joel “emilio” Mako, who was VAC banned in a live match during Fragbite Masters 3 way back in 2014.
In a match versus HellRaisers, emilio was suddenly banned by Valve’s Anti-Cheat in CS:GO, and due to not providing proof he was falsely flagged by the system, he was subsequently banned from all CS:GO events. More recently, he was kicked during the CS2 RMR Major qualifiers for infringing on his previous ban from Valve tournaments, and he even had the gall to ask, “Why?”
Solista
Solista was a Radiant-level VALORANT player who got banned during a live-streamed match by the game’s anti-cheat system Vanguard. Solista reacted with shock and awe that the game flagged him and later came up with an excuse that his use of the spacebar got him banned.
Solista claimed that he alternated between his mouse and spacebar for shooting purposes and that this could have been the reason behind Vanguard’s flag. If that makes sense to you, great, but he hasn’t been active since, despite a few attempts at returning to the game and streaming in 2021 and 2022—most of which were met with rampant criticism of his prior behavior.
Dream
One of the biggest cheating scandals in recent memory is Dream’s Minecraft speedruns, some streamed live. He was exposed by several notable speedrunning YouTubers, most notably Karl Jobst, for manipulating Minecraft into giving him favorable drop rates, among other things—claims that Dream denied fervently for months.
Dream even hired a Harvard professor to do the maths for him in a massive Google Doc to prove he wasn’t cheating and only got lucky during his runs. None of this held up to scrutiny, and Dream eventually caved in and admitted that he indeed did cheat his Minecraft speedruns in an apology that was also met with criticism from fans and speedrunners alike.
XQc
During the 2020 GlitchCon, Twitch’s virtual convention, popular streamers teamed up to face each other in a Fall Guys tournament. In a vehement attempt at victory, xQc and his teammates decided it would be wise to stream-snipe their opponents in what would prove to be one of the biggest gaming controversies of the year.
The stream sniping led to xQc being banned from Twitch for over a week, which was, until then, the longest ban he’s ever received. Over the past few years, however, xQc has repeatedly asked Twitch to ban stream snipers, indicating he has learned his lesson and the impact such an action could have. Though not cheating through hacks, it’s still cheating, and severe punishments for transgressors are the only way of preventing it—particularly when it comes from big names in the industry such as xQc.
