Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel is seeing players deliberately lose en-masse, thanks to its new event

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has a new event that players are exploiting - by deliberately losing games as fast as they can.

In pretty much any card game, players normally battle to be the best, but Master Duel's new event is offering rewards based on match count rather than win count. As noted by PCGamesN, that means that players are killing themselves as swiftly as possible – and reaping the spoils. While the XYZ Festival offers more ‘medals’ to players that actually win their games, time-conscious deck builders have created a deck filled with cards that deal damage to the user, allowing them to quickly rack up those sweet, sweet loser medals.

Unsurprisingly, the ‘suicide’ strategy has proved pretty controversial. Take a glance at Master Duel’s Steam forums and subreddit and the discussion is dominated by players arguing whether these ‘self-burn’ decks are hurting or helping the game. One player has even created a deck to directly counter attempts to end games quickly, deliberately keeping their opponents alive. The deck thrives on a card called Kuribon, a low-power monster that, when it would be destroyed in battle, is returned to its owner's hand. When that happens, rather than the player losing health, their opponent gains it instead. The player, EpitomeWisdom, documented their efforts in the video below, amusingly soundtracked by The Fray's classic 'How to Save a Life'.

While this was probably not what publisher Konami envisioned for the event, the mass cheesing strategy has seen new players flocking to the game, resulting in the highest user count since launch. Whether you fancy playing properly or simply collecting some tasty-looking medals, the XYZ Festival runs until the 24th February.

It's time to duel, so here's our Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel explainer.