Axie Infinity Upholds Arena Competitive Integrity

The team reminds its community that any form of cheating, including “win-trading” is not tolerated in the game.

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PvP Competitive Integrity

The team behind the popular PlayToEarn blockchain game, Axie Infinity, takes a position to make sure that competitive integrity is kept when playing in the Axie Arena.

After ending 2021 with an explosive land gameplay teaser, the Axie Infinity team announced through their official twitter account on January 2nd that they received reports of “win-trading” happening in their PvP mode. Axie Infinity decided to take action to remind the community that any form of “match fixing” has no room in the game.

“Thanks to numerous reports from the community and published video examples, we have learned about a growing problem with “win-trading” inside the community. Action has been taken against the parties involved,” Axie Infinity tweeted.

Taxton, a popular Axie Infinity streamer who was placed in the top 100 of season 19 at the time, was caught on a Facebook live stream being handed at least three free wins from other players in order to increase in rank. The report mentioned that Taxton would use his role as a content creator to ask his opponent to throw the match, and uses “aggressive language” when the other side refuses to do so.

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What is Win Trading

Win Trading is when two players who queue at almost the same time are matched in the Axie Arena, and one player intentionally loses the match at the request of the other so that the winning player gets fed free MMR. It is similar to game-fixing found in other sports with MMR gains as the reward. 

Though there is no way for sure that the two players will get matched even when queuing at the same time, it is more probable to happen at the top of the leaderboards, where a significant number of AXS rewards are at stake. Since there is less of a pool of players for the game to decide a fair match when MMR is high, it is more likely that trainers get to battle one another for multiple matches.

Moving Forward

The Axies that Taxton used in this issue were slapped with a 365-day ban. Taxton also forfeited any potential AXS reward that he will get at the end of the season. Two players belonging in the upper brackets of the leaderboards that were complicit in the win trading will also forfeit any AXS rewards that they would have gotten. The Axie terms and conditions will also be updated to make it clear that the team does not condone this behavior in the Arena.

“We would like this situation to serve as the final warning to all Axie players that have engaged in, or are considering engaging in, any form of collusion or match-fixing in the arena or tournament,” Axie Infinity warned through their substack article. “Moving forward, we will likely issue stronger penalties for those caught compromising the competitive integrity of Axie Infinity, including bans of Axies. There will be an update to the Terms of Service that clearly expresses zero tolerance for collusion and match-fixing.”

Make no mistake, the team acknowledges that Taxton is a master gamer capable of entering the top echelons of the leaderboards on his own. In a Facebook post written in Tagalog, he shared that he played another account, in which he censored his username, and grinded for two days to land back in the top 100 with less than thirty minutes before the season ends. ‍

Source: BSC News