Canada named a cheating hotbed for ESports
Congratulations, Canada! When it comes to League of Legends, you came out on top. The top of the list of cheating countries, that is. Actually, that’s not quite fair. According to Cheating Countries—a study of cheating in ESports—gamers in Brazil, Greece, and Bulgaria are the most likely to cheat in LoL. The True North Strong and Free, however, has the distinction of being the country with the highest use of cheat codes.
The Internet gambling portal Ruby Fortune collected data on about a dozen popular online multiplayer games. These include such titles as LoL, Minecraft , World of Tanks, Overwatch, and Rocket League.
THE TOP 10
As it turns out, Canadians shouldn’t feel too bad. Canada sits at 43rd in the overall ranking of countries most likely to cheat.
According to Ruby Fortune, these 10 countries have the highest density of cheaters:
1. Brazil
2. Georgia
3. Iraq
4. Pakistan
5. Portugal
6. Greece
7. Bulgaria
8. Algeria
9. Romania
10. Azerbaijan
Gamers are most likely to cheat while playing Minecraft , according to the study, followed by League of Legends, Fortnite, Roblox, and Apex Legends.
As it has with everything else in the world of ESports, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people cheat. Ruby Fortune reports that the likelihood of gamers cheating rose exponentially during lockdown. Search-engine queries for videogame bots rose by 104 percent between February and June of this year. Searches for hacks went up by 40 percent, while cheatcode searches rose 22.3 percent.
Wondering how Ruby Fortune arrived at these conclusions? It’s a relevant question, given that one of the defining characteristics of a cheater is inherent dishonesty. So you can’t just survey gamers and expect the full, undiluted truth. As it turns out, they googled it. “Cheating Countries analyses search trend and search volume data to reveal where in the world is most likely to cheat while playing online multiplayer video games,” says the Ruby Fortune website. “The report looks at the frequency of search engine queries for the most-played video games and measures them against searches for related cheat codes, hacks and bots, to show which country has the highest density of cheaters, and which cheat categories are the most popular in each location.
“Countries featured are the 100 biggest based on population size and are adjusted according to data availability. Games featured are the most played online multiplayer titles over the last year, and are also adjusted based on data availability. Data is gathered from ahrefs and Google Trends and looks at the most recent figures available.”