Let’s talk about point B5 of the Code of Conduct - the one on spectator cheating.

B5. Unfair Advantages

1. Custom widgets used on public servers must be made publicly available, we have a section on the discord specifically for it - widget-downloads
2. Purposefully passing on consequential information to a game in progress via things like spectator mode (we understand mistakes happen occasionally) is obviously a form of cheating
3. Exploiting bugs, hacking or spec cheating (second account to view the game as a spectator) can result in swifter and more stringent responses than the above items

Recently, with the rise in popularity of BAR, we’ve been seeing more cases of this, and it forced a change in moderation policy:

In cases of spectator cheating, we skip the standard escalation ladder and go straight to a three weeks suspend. A second strike or any attempt at moderation evasion results in a permanent ban.

If we’re able to uniquely tie the provider of unfairly obtained information to the consumer of information, we suspend both. If not, we just suspend the person acting on unfairly obtained information.

Let’s dive into why that is.

Why be more strict on cheaters than on literal racists?

In a word, pragmatism.

While we don’t think cheating is more morally wrong than racism, it’s pretty fast to verify a report for racist chat. Very much not so for spectator cheating - usually, it takes a lot of volunteer work from the Overwatch team to verify a single report, with multiple passes over each, often very long, replay (because let’s face it, most of the reports we get are from Strait Isthmus and could you all please try map rotation lobbies because watching these replays gets boring, send help and Tau12 games).

And even with all that work, we still get a bunch wrong! Thankfully, we have a very well functioning appeals system, about which you can read in the previous moderation guide, so those get cleared up pretty nicely. We’re also taking notes on each such case, improving the process and I’d like to think we’re getting better at it.

Still, because it takes so much work, we want to deter people from trying as much as we can because we’re volunteers with limited time, and this affects our ability to do work for the good of the BAR community. Thus, strict deterrence is the way we’re going with it.

What about stream cheating?

While you could victim-blame and argue streamers “are asking for it”, the Code of Conduct is vague there for a reason - unfair advantages are not okay, no matter their source. Most games in BAR are games with multiple players, and none of the non-streaming players asked to play a game where someone gets unfair advantages.

Thus, while it may be difficult to prove, we’ll make every effort to do so, and we’ll action confirmed stream cheaters just as harshly as regular spec cheaters.

How can you help?

If you see spectator or stream cheating, please report it on the server website if possible. To go with it, head to open-ticket on the BAR discord and provide as much information as you can:

• timestamps
• screenshots
• possible spectator nicknames
• links to streams, with timestamps
• any suspicious behavior
• anything that you think might be helpful as proof

Before reporting, an initial watch of the replay to confirm e.g. the player didn’t in fact scout the anti-nuke is always appreciated. These reports happen more often than you think, and while they’re easy to dismiss, it still takes the time of at least one Overwatcher. Help us help you!

Epilogue - the funniest case ever

This one player, here in light blue, got notified by a spectator friend about red’s spy bot getting close to blue’s antinuke after yellow pinged it. LightBlue then made several gunships to kill the spybot before it could EMP the anti nuke. Red never E-stalled throughout and was pretty careful to not touch anything, managing to never decloak. Because of gunships’ wonky set-target behavior, this gunship targeting ploy didn’t work. The player then moved their commander to the spybot and d-gunned it before red team’s nuke came online.

Asked about “hey, but why did you move the gunships and the commander to that particular spot?”, they replied,

Why not?

The appeal was denied. ^^’