E-Sports cheating

[Drago]

It seems to me that this chap passed the Koboyashi Maru test with flying colours.

 

[cyberknight]

Aaah... I see.... So that's like when I tell the doctor that my weight is normal for a man of my height, as long as I am 9 feet tall.

imagine a 1000 cc motorbike vs a 1000 cc car , which one is quicker due to the weight it has to accelerate and maintain ?, we will ignore aerodynamics for this analogy

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

How was the punishment harsh? The bloke still cheated. He rigged something up to fraudulently "clock up" the mileage he didn't actually ride himself in order to qualify himself to get a superior bike for the actual race.
I'll draw a similar analogy. You've got a rough & ready Sunday League football team mostly comprised of beer-fuelled builders with two left legs. The manager decides to deploy a "ringer", a much better player from elsewhere who is falsely using one of the builder's identities. That gives them an advantage and they beat another team they wouldn't normally have a hope in hell of winning against. It's still cheating.

 

[the_mikey]

The problem I think is we have gaming culture where it's common and routine for people to employ hacks, secret codes, tricks to make their game play a bit more enjoyable, and Cycling culture where cheating, doping, mechanical hacks are all pretty much forbidden, and Zwift is occupying this grey area between the two, it's both a serious cycling app but then it employs gaming devices and rewards people with virtual enhancements or features, it perhaps needs reject some of the more game like features in favour of better cycling and training options.

 

[Milzy]

How was the punishment harsh? The bloke still cheated. He rigged something up to fraudulently "clock up" the mileage he didn't actually ride himself in order to qualify himself to get a superior bike for the actual race.
I'll draw a similar analogy. You've got a rough & ready Sunday League football team mostly comprised of beer-fuelled builders with two left legs. The manager decides to deploy a "ringer", a much better player from elsewhere who is falsely using one of the builder's identities. That gives them an advantage and they beat another team they wouldn't normally have a hope in hell of winning against. It's still cheating.

See your point & I love your analogies always but I still think it’s harsh.
Why couldn’t they all ride the basic Zwift carbon bike? He was more than capable of unlocking that bike ages ago.

 

[cyberknight]

It seems to me that this chap passed the Koboyashi Maru test with flying colours.

thats illogical

 

[MasterDabber]

I don’t subscribe to the view that esports competitors should use the same digital equipment (I.e bike and wheels). Physical equipment, absolutely. They should all be using the same turbos and computers (provided by the race organiser) but to extend that to digital equipment is unnecessary in my opinion. Do the people expressing a view that they should all have been using the same bike also think that all riders on the World Tour should be using the same bike?!

So very easy to fix, a programmer just needs to create a virtual bike (son of tron) that has zero drag penalty and zero rolling resistance. There's no benefit or advance to the sport of cycling at all.... not like the development of real world cycling... derailleurs, more gears, lighter frames, pneumatic tyres, aerodynamics etc, etc. Just a couple of lines of code.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

thats illogical
View attachment 487873

The cheater gets the Spock eyebrow

 

[Dogtrousers]

It does seem typical UCI to take something that isn't actually against the rules and to retrospectively ban it. Shades of Verbruggen banning anything and everything that Graeme Obree did, and desperately changing rules on the fly with each new development.

 

[dodgy]

I don’t see how it’s cheating just because he didn’t bother to unlock something on Zwift everybody else unlocked years ago. They all had the same.

The tron bike gives an advantage, that's why people strive to get it, he was perfectly capable of getting it himself with the required effort, but easier to give his userid and password to someone on the Internet to get it for him with a script.

 

[dodgy]

In some ways I like what Zwift are trying to do, levelling the playing field with respect to equipment, so anyone with a smart trainer and a cheap bike on it can unlock 'pro' equipment and compete. In 'real' cycling, you've got to dig deep and only rich kids or the sponsored can afford the top end kit which gives the edge.

This is why this particular case is important, it's possible to 'unlock' kit, but you don't pay for it - you earn it.

 

[Milzy]

I only need about 9 trips up the Alpe Du Zwift for mine. Still taking a year to unlock it is pretty poor so I won’t feel like I’ve earned it really.

 

[dodgy]

My last post on this, but a 'champion' should be held to a high(er) standard, the fact he's willing to blur the lines, even giving his id and password to a stranger, tells me that this chap might be tempted to do something even more stupid at some time.

However, I do think the UCI / British Cycling could have handled this better, they apparently clarified the rules after the event. They should have been aware of the surge in popularity of virtual racing and been ready for it. After all, some teams are actually recruiting from Zwift.

 

[Milzy]

How is what he did any different from receiving a bike from your team/bike sponsor?

 

[dodgy]

How is what he did any different from receiving a bike from your team/bike sponsor?

You liked a post from me further up where I said "This is why this particular case is important, it's possible to 'unlock' kit, but you don't pay for it - you earn it. "

eSports has the potential to level the playing field for aspiring athletes, he took the easy way by getting someone else to unlock the bike for him.

Unless you prefer the model where only sponsored riders get the good stuff.