The Story Of Inadvertent Cheating At Canada Cup's Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite Tournament

This past weekend at Canada Cup 2017, Canada’s largest fighting game tournament, one player threw a wrench into the works that ended up getting two players banned, an entire bracket having to be redone, and a player who had done nothing wrong having his win reversed to a loss.

The yearly tournament now takes place in Toronto, growing from a small Calgary-based Street Fighter tournament to a vital stop on the Capcom Pro Tour. Professional players like Daigo Umehara, Justin Wong, and Ryan "Fchamp" Ramirez, major contenders in every major fighting game tournament, show up ready to play, win prize money, and set up their future tournament placement with their victories in Toronto.

As far as the Canadian fighting game community is concerned, Canada Cup is the premier event on their frozen soil. As such, a lot of attention was focused on this year’s Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite tournament, with the winner being able to take home a prop Infinity Stone as part of Capcom's "Battle For the Stones" tournament, in which that stone could activate a power in a future tournament that benefited the wielder.

One player that goes by the handle Quackbot, who asked us not to share his real name, was excited to enter and show off his prowess. Having placed third in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 at its final showing at Evo 2017 (where he went by the handle "PC Marvel God"), Quackbot was a favorite to take the tournament on paper. He was more than ready to take home the Infinity Stone and use it to win the entire Capcom Pro Tour.

After losing in the first pool, those hopes were dashed for Quackbot early on. He decided to stick around and just play casual matches with friends before going home and returning to his job as a plumber. This is where things started to go wrong for him and rippled to affect the entire tournament.

“I ended up just hanging out,” Quackbot said. “I was later offered a spot to play again by a friend, so I took it without thinking of the repercussions.”

In Pool 8, a professional player who goes by the handle of Holy Order Troll was set to go through her Marvel bracket. According to Troll, who we were unable to reach for comment, she suddenly noticed that her arcade stick wasn’t working. It is unclear why Troll did not choose to borrow another stick or withdraw from the tournament, but based on her statements, she opted for a third option.

Troll offered her spot to Quackbot, who entered under the Holy Order Troll tag, and began playing again despite having lost in an earlier pool. Both players said they were not aware anything was wrong with this, and Quackbot was more than happy to get back in the tournament.

“Many people were aware of what was going on while I was playing in the second pool and didn’t say anything wrong about it, so I continued playing,” he said. No player we talked to has confirmed that they were aware Quackbot had been eliminated previously.

For the most part, it worked well for quite a while. Quackbot was doing great at his second attempt and working his way up the ladder. Whether or not other players knew Quackbot had lost in another pool, no one said anything to the tournament organizers in the few matches he participated.

That is, until one ended up being streamed online.

In the chaos of a tournament, it is exceedingly easy to fail to notice something like a player coming in under a different name, but fans watching the streams are more likely to catch abnormalities. The Twitch chat during Quackbot’s match immediately observed something was wrong.

“Wait, is that PCMarvelGod?” said one message.

“I’m 100% sure he got eliminated already,” pointed out another.

As people perused Holy Order Troll’s social media accounts and scrubbed through earlier streams and bracket placement documents, it became clear that Quackbot was playing under someone else’s name. Tweets and DMs came to the tournament organizers in large waves and, before long after, the jig was up.

The main organizer, a well-known Calgary real estate agent named Lapchi Duong, was apoplectic. Quackbot was immediately pulled from the bracket, but his participation at the root of the tree poisoned all the branches that grew after. Whoever won that bracket would be tainted with a poisoned win and the legitimacy of Canada Cup as a whole would be called into question. Duong, who declined our request to comment, met with Capcom representatives to figure out what to do.

After a hurried discussion, their decision hit the players there like a ton of bricks: they were going to have to redo the entire eighth pool.

This was particularly galling for Eliver “KillerKai” Ling. Ling had the poor fortune of being in Quackbot’s pool, and even beat Quackbot in the third of four matches he had played. He was on a hot streak and was guaranteed a spot in the top 16 after defeating Joe P, locking in his share of the prize pool. As Ling was preparing to face Justin Wong, one of the most well-known players in the world, an organizer came up to him and delivered the bad news.

“At this point, I start pleading my case,” Ling explained in a statement. “The [tournament organizers] and Capcom rep tell me that it wouldn’t be fair to the people Quackbot beat and they didn’t want to make it look like they were showing me preferential treatment. A couple of alternate scenarios were proposed, most of them met with either laziness or double-standards by the staff… I was given an ultimatum to either replay the bracket or walk out.”

Ling did end up replaying his matches, getting to the cusp of the top 16 once more. He fought against Joe P once again, with the two taking their match to a close finish. In the end, Joe P managed to overcome Ling, reversing the results from their previous match.

“In the course of an hour, I had all the hard work I put in taken from me,” Ling said.

The incident has left a lot of people shaken, with numerous rumors emerging from social media and subreddits. Several witnesses claim Quackbot defended himself by saying he has done this before with no issue, a statement which Quackbot denied when we asked about it. Holy Order Troll, who initially defended this decision on Twitter, has since deactivated her account and disappeared from social media due to harassment. Ling is just depressed by the result and wants to take a vacation.

Capcom, which had an interest in the tournament running smoothly due to its importance in the Capcom Pro Tour, had representatives on hand to ensure nothing went wrong. Capcom has a vested interested in their fighting games maintaining momentum in eSports, especially when they are as nascent as Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. Tournaments keep their games alive and in the public eye for years after release, which requires their watchful eye over both big and small issues that may pop up.

“The disqualification incident at Canada Cup 2017 was unfortunate, but the Tournament Organizers conferred and did their best to make a judgment call for all affected players under the circumstances of an unprecedented situation for the event,” Capcom told us when asked for comment. “We respect the decisions which were made in consideration of the established codes of conduct for players, which are in line with our own – there is no tolerance for cheating of any kind. Capcom will be sure to carefully evaluate the learnings from this tournament for our own events moving forward and will strive to ensure the best competitive environment for our players.”

Canada Cup announced yesterday that both Holy Order Troll and Quackbot are banned from life for the tournament for their roles in the cheating, inadvertent or otherwise. Considering the importance of the Toronto tournament, being barred from participation is a black mark that may effectively end their careers as professional fighting game players. Canada Cup has now codified this situation in their rules and is hoping to avoid any hurried decision-making that can affect players like this again.

Ling says that he bears no animus toward Quackbot or Joe P. While the situation was unfortunate, Ling is forgiving of everything that happened and wants to simply move on from it.

"I’ve always had a good relationship with him and I know he didn’t mean for anything like this to happen," Ling explained to me when I asked about Quackbot's insistence that the two have patched things up. "I told him I have no ill will towards him and he’ll already have enough to deal with when he faces the consequences."

What consequences Quackbot will face beyond his lifetime ban at the Canada Cup remains to be seen. While conciliatory and accepting of the ban, he still does not believe he has been treated fairly by the community.

“It was a dumb mistake and I wouldn’t do something like this again,” he explained. “After seeing how many fake rumors people were spreading about me, I am considering retiring as a whole. Not because I don’t want to show my face, just because I got a solid understanding of how poorly the [fighting game community] can take a mistake out of hand.”