[endominus]

What if someone did not have the physical strength to become a champion cyclist/baseball player, but found a medicinal way to overcome their limitations and achieve peak performance in their field? We've already come to a decisive conclusion on this; steroids are banned in most sporting competitions. Just as cheats are in online games. Just because someone does not have the pure physical ability to compete at the highest level does not give them leeway to cheat.

[drdaeman]

> We've already come to a decisive conclusion on this

Have we, really?

In the professional sports there's WADA and similar agencies, that, obviously, have to push this idea really hard (and make everyone believe that everyone else thinks so, because this is how you do it in modern times). But that's because that's what's literally keeping them afloat. But they're already struggling, trying to figure out what to do those gender-to-chemicals mismatches. And as sciences and societies evolve, I suspect it's only going to get more interesting, and I have this hunch that this status quo has cracks in its foundation and will likely shatter in the future.

They also have to make sure that athletes are safe enough and don't just wreck themselves - which makes things a quite bit different. Unless we count risks of issues in some people with predisposition to toxicity, that is associated with cheat use /s (no love for those folks).

But back to the "have we" question - do people actually care about all this stuff in non-professional sports when played recreationally? (Just like video games.) I really doubt so. People just try to balance around it, fixing the matchmaking rather than players.

But - you certainly have a point - I would suggest to exclude professional scene entirely and narrow the scope strictly to recreational gaming. Pro sports and e-sports are more controversial.

[ultimafan]

It's hard for me to think of many equivalents of video game cheats to professional sports in the sense that most "cheats" for professional sports that I can think of don't "play" the sport for you. A normal everyday joe can't just wake up and start taking steroids one day and place anywhere near the top in olympic or power lifting (or even anywhere near the middle class of amateur, clean competitors who have been training for a few years). Nor can he do blood doping and hope to compete against world class cyclists. Or in any way go up against and win bouts with masters of various martial arts. In one way or another those methods of cheating still require incredible amounts of effort, training, etc. to utilize. But a video game cheats like auto aim, wall hacks, radar, or the more blatant ones like infinite health, speed hacks and the like let someone with no skill or preparation just jump in and casually outcompete even the best of the best in a way that allows for little to no opportunities to outplay them. I'd say it's less like using steroids and more like showing up to a deadlift competition with an industrial crane.

To get to the point, I think this is why less people seem to care in non professional sports if some random guy who is on performance enhancers shows up to your amateur soccer match or pick up basketball game. The gap at the amateur level between a clean amateur and cheating amateur is not so large and certainly overcomable if the clean amateur has more training.

[wellthisisgreat]

> do people actually care about all this stuff in non-professional sports when played recreationally? (Just like video games.)

People absolutely care, because a cheater in a lobby will ruin the experience for a dozen or more people and ultimately waste their time, taking it away from their lives.

The cheater is doing it willingly and knowingly and with a full intent to cause harm - take away someone’s time which is really the only thing we have. Cheaters shiho absolutely be punished beyond just video games, not sure how exactly though (I wouldn’t trust state nor mob with that task for sure)

[wellthisisgreat]

Video game cheats are nothing like sports cheats / steroids

A non-roided pro can still sometimes somehow beat a roided pro.

With videogames there is zero chance you can actually beat a cheater. Maybe you can score a lucky point / frag against him/her once in 100 instances, but actually beat him?

Imagine idk Mike Tyson in his prime comes up against an underdog and the underdog can teleport or has a perfect reaction time of a standard auto-aim cheat?