14 DAY TRIAL // Radu "Rdu" Dima became DreamHack's Summer Hearthstone Champion last night, but the most lucrative win in the game's short history also spawned quite a lot of controversy due to allegations of cheating.
Rdu is a Romanian Hearthstone player who steadily climbed the ladder and cracked hero portrait after hero portrait in his ascension to the title of champion, defeating some of the world's finest players, names such as Darkwonyx, Ek0p, Reynad and, in the final bout, Amaz.
His victory secured him the biggest cheque ever seen in professional Hearthstone history, gaining him a sizable prize of $10k / €7.3k. His win, however, was marred by some controversy, as Twitch viewers tuning in for the tournament reported a Battle.net message that gave away his opponent's cards.
As any strategic card battling game, Hearthstone also relies heavily on luck, and information about what your opponent can or cannot do is tantamount to victory, allowing players to assess the risks associated with certain plays and permitting them to devise a better game strategy.
During Rdu's second game against Amaz, a lot of speech bubbles started popping up, with the 17-year-old player's friends congratulating him and declaring their support. Unfortunately, one of the messages revealed what his opponent's single remaining card was: a Hunter's Mark.
Rdu called for an admin as soon as the game was finished, visibly distressed by the unsolicited hint, and the tournament organizers called for a 20 minute break, during which both players involved deleted their friends lists in order to prevent any other such questionable behavior.
DreamHack admins reviewed the footage, deciding that the game did not need to be replayed, and the extra information came too late to change the already decided outcome of the game. Rdu went on to win the finals with an impressive 3-0 victory, and his opponent, Amaz, had no hard feelings and expressed his support for the Romanian player in a video recorded in his hotel room, in the aftermath of the DreamHack finals.
"Rdu is definitely not cheating. Sometimes you get into the finals and your friends get crazy and they just make bad mistakes and whatnot. That's kinda what happens. So I don't really like that there are so many negative comments about Rdu and intentional cheating - because it's not cheating," Amaz said.
He pleaded with Blizzard Entertainment, developer of the popular digital-only collectible card game Hearthstone, to devise some observer modes and tournament-specific settings that would make such incidents impossible in the future.
