"Sim Racing Esports Has A Cheating Problem" Says Sport Insider
"It is currently not a good time for sim racing Esports," the YouTuber Jimmy Broadbent tells his viewers in a recent video. He proclaims that sim-racing has a "cheating problem" after a number of high-level racers have come out as cheating via mods and hacks. He discusses them in a recent video.
"Over the last few weeks we've had a ton of allegations against high-level Esports players for cheating, mistakenly revealing things on stream that they shouldn't have, and to be honest, it feels like it's getting to the point now where it's becoming a little bit of a laughing stock," the streamer says.
So let me take you through the big stories we've had so far, starting with one of the big ones, which is the allegations against Thomas Ronhaar, Haas F1 Esport driver, for using grip sheets during a F1 League race.
Ronhaar was deemed to be using "grip cheats" during an F1 league race. While being chased by Jarno Opmeer, it became fairly obvious that his car had more performance, frustrating the chasing driver.
"It's important to note that this has not been confirmed and is still just an allegation. People have asked Thomas Ronhaar for proof that he isn't hacking. But to be honest, I don't know how you do that," Broadbent noted.
Alvaro Carreton was the next driver to come under Broadbent's scrutiny. The Williams Esports driver accidentally showed a folder full of F1 grip hacks on a live stream. He later rejected the idea that he was cheating, and instead insisted that he was testing the mods for Codemasters, the company behind F1 '22. This wasn't confirmed by the company.
"I would love to believe it is definitely just a misunderstanding, but given the current landscape, it just, it feels very sketchy to me," Broadbent says.
The third driver to feature in Jimmy's video was Dáire McCormack. He called out driver Kirill Sadyrov for cheating on Asetto Corsa. He posted to Twitter a comparison, giving proof that Sadyrov could be cheating. He later admitted to the Sim Racing Guide GT Junkies that he was:
"I never thought I’d make a tweet like this for ACC but here we are," he posted. "If you ever wondered what a Cheater looks like in ACC here is Exhibit A: Kirill Sadyrov.
"The top video is me and the bottom video is Kirill. He has admitted to cheating to us with a defence of '99.9% of ACC pros do the same'. Anyway I’ll let the lap and lack of track usage do the talking now.
"Don't cheat for crying out loud. Just get good," Jimmy tells his viewers.