Winning, something that can bring joy to almost anyone; winning is something that has been concentrated since the dawn of the food chain, we as a species like to win. In sports and video games winning is the main purpose of the activity. Some would even exploit the system and break the rules just to have that feeling of accomplishment and victory, so much so that they will take the consequences. In both sports worlds, E-sports and physical sport, cheating is looked down upon; on the other hand any type of cheating is usually looked down too.

In physical sports such as baseball and football the main form of cheating would have to be illegal body help in the form of performance enhancement. One example of this would be injected steroids, they are fast acting and reduce nerve sensors allowing for less pain and swelling, which allows for better performance. Obviously this is very illegal not only are the steroids being used off prescription, but they are being used before or during a sporting event which makes it even more illegal. Cheating in physical sport is as basic as it gets when it comes to performance enhancement and not actual under-the-table score tampering, or something along those lines.

In E-sports cheating is so hard to catch. When it comes to cheating in E-sports illegal drugs are still a thing, but that’s why all E-sports event are now require drug tests for all players. In this form of sport the type of drug that is frequented by athletes would be anti-depressants and “chill pills” as their sometimes called. These drugs boost a athletes reaction time, visual, and auditory senses, which is why many teams in the E-sports community are now being banned for this form of cheating; even though the performance enhancement aspect is gone thanks to drug testing, there are still players on E-sports team that are using illegal software to boost skill.

There have been a huge number of new teams joining the E-sports scene; some have good intentions; involving actually playing the game how it was meant to be played and becoming good at it, just like physical sport. The appeal of E-sports to outsiders who want to participate is very attractive; it’s like being professional football or baseball player, but you don’t actually have to be good because you can cheat. This is how many of new players rise to the top, because of their so-called skill that is actually a bot doing all the work for them. There is really nothing game developers can do to discourage cheaters besides making their game unplayable if they get caught. Systems can pick up when players cheat in their game, but cheater have been so crafty as to disguise the cheat as something else during use so that the system cannot detect their cheat.

Some people just want to win so bad that they will do anything for the feeling of victory. In both sporting worlds the one big argument against cheating is, “Why cheat, because it doesn’t make the sport or game any more fun than it is.” In video games cheating has really no outcome besides that you are going to ruin someone else’s fun so that you can do things with no effort, yes doing things with no effort is sometimes a thing that many like to do, but how much until it starts to become boring?