A World of Warcraft game master has been accused of helping a Twitch streamer's Mythic group cheat a high-level dungeon by using their GM powers to insta-kill an enemy, and Blizzard says it's actively investigating the situation as evidence piles up.
This began with a July 21 Reddit post from user Acrobatic_Pianist688, who claimed to have seen a "Blizzard GM death touching mobs in M+23 for their favorite streamer." Of course, we don't actually know if anyone's "favorite" streamer was involved, but Acrobatic_Pianist did link to a Warcraft Log record showing an abrupt end to a Mythic+23 fight in the Nexus-Point Xenas dungeon, caused by an "instakill" and "Area Death (TEST)" effect from user Daijosai, believed to be the GM in question.
Game masters are Blizzard employees with World of Warcraft privileges and permissions that enable them to resolve in-game disputes and support requests.
The incident caught fire online, and chatter only intensified after this Warcraft log was highlighted in a stream from WoW content creator yumytv during a conversation with Yiesus, a small Twitch streamer and one of the apparent teammates in this dungeon run, who's described by yumy as "witness testimony."
The moment was clipped and shared, the Twitch chat filled with accusations of "cheater," after Yiesus openly said, "I go to my GM friend, I'm like, bro, please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 mil bro, can you please just one-shot? One time for the one time. I meant no harm from it. If Blizzard wants to revoke that key or revoke my title, whatever they see fit, I don't care. Personally, I think it was harmless. I didn't expect him to do it. In hindsight he shouldn't have done it. He was just doing me a solid."
One of the other streamers in this dungeon run, YaraByte, shared the same clip on her Twitter.
This mess quickly reached the official Blizzard forums, with players calling for the GM to be punished and the clear to be revoked, prompting a response from Blizzard. Late Tuesday night, community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan replied, both in the forum thread and to the original Reddit post.
"Thank you to those who flagged this," Jordan says. "We are reviewing and will take action as appropriate. A fair and competitive playing field is essential to our games, and we won’t tolerate cheating."
