Stalwart Gaming Alleges Mismanagement and Cheating in the Paytm First Games Clash Royale Tournament

Cover and thumbnail via @Paytm First Games

In a release sent to AFK Gaming, Stalwart Esports has alleged that matches in the Paytm First Games (PFG) Clash Royale League have been rigged to favor certain players and that loopholes were used to let Stalwart Gaming's concerns go unheard. Additionally, there has been an accusation of mismanagement as well.

[Also read: Paytm First Games Enters Mobile Esports In India. Announces Clash Royale Tournament In Partnership With Supercell]

According to Stalwart Esports, one of their players, Qusai Attarwala reached the top 8 (quarter finals) stage. However, in the first game of the quarter finals, he claims to have experienced glitches and eventually his game crashed. As a result, he was disqualified from the tournament. However, Qusai maintains that this crash happened due to an error on the host's side, which led to a load on his cache memory. Qusai claims that he should have been granted a rematch, instead he was given an apology from the company.

Qusai aka STE Darklord finished in 8th place; Meanwhile there are allegations of account sharing against the tournament's winner Sandrin | Image via Paytm First Games

In an earlier round, Qusai had gone up against a player who had used a banned card and violated the rules of the game. In this situation, the violator had not been disqualified, but rather offered a rematch. While the official rulebook of the tournament does contain an explicit mention of disqualification in the case of a disconnection, there is no mention of the punitive action to be taken against a player who uses a banned card. 

Additionally there were also concerns that players had used smurfs and shared accounts, including the winner of the tournament "Sandrin". 8bit’s Clash Royale player Saif, who finished in 5th place, went as far to say “Paytm [First Games] admins didn’t check accounts. The winner, Sandrin aka Kirtikumar had a history of account sharing, who took the help of a foreign player to claim the victory.” However at this point, AFK Gaming cannot determine the authenticity of such claims. 

They had a prize pool of INR 4 lakh and was PFG's first foray as a tournament organizer in mobile esports. It was also well received by the Indian Clash Royale community as it received over 11,000 participants and 70,000 viewers. 

AFK Gaming reached out to Paytm First Games officials who responded by saying "All the rules of the tournament were clearly declared since registrations, has been conducted by thorough professionals in full transparency and was telecast live for everyone to view. We thank the participants for their enthusiasm and are committed bringing bigger and better events in the future."  

Writer's note: Under normal circumstances, the disqualification would be fair since it is explicitly mentioned in the rule book. However, in this case if the error was on the host's side as Qusai maintains, an exception could have been made. Additionally, PFG has also not commented on how and what checks and balances they had to prevent account sharing and smurfing which does raise some concerns.