The game crashed at the Hearthstone World Championship—at least that’s the official story. Some fans who were watching say a player cheated in order to throw the match.
Here’s the disputed match:
During a game between Borsss and Zetalot, something strange happened. Borsss was playing a tempo Mage deck and had a Flamewalker on the board. Flamewalkers do an additional 2 points of damage to a random enemy any time you cast a spell. Zetalot was playing as a Druid and played the Keeper of Grove card and used it to silence the Flamewalker. After Zetalot’s turn ended, Borsss cast two spells and then threw his hands up in the air and removed his headphones. The commentators speculated that Borsss forgot that his Flamewalker had been silenced and was mad that the extra damage didn’t happen.
The commentators started to mention this as a possibility as the game’s organizers were trying to figure out what happened. It’s pretty rare that a championship-level player would throw up his hands and rip off his headphones like a toddler throwing a tantrum. The more likely response is that something happened to the game, and that’s the official answer.
“We’ve spoken with the head admin and can confirm it was the Hearthstone client crashing, therefore the game was remade,” Dreamhack told Polygon. But despite the official word, conspiracy theories still abound because Zetalot went on to lose the match and the entire series.
