Warzone pro Tommey accuses world record-holder of cheating during tournament

Theo Salaun
tommey pacesetter warzone cheater 2

In the midst of a Call of Duty: Warzone tournament, 100 Thieves’ Tommey accused a World Record-holder and tourney foe, Pacesetter, of cheating — investigating the evidence live on stream. 

With over $80,000 in earnings and a contract with 100T, Tommey is more familiar than most with Warzone and, understandably, concerned about competitive integrity. After being eliminated from a Mainland Gaming tournament, he decided to watch the rest of the games (as he usually does) and honed in on Pacesetter (who has been subject to numerous hacking rumors).

Growing increasingly suspicious about the new streamer’s gameplay, Tommey eventually went into his chat asking for a monitor cam. That quickly snowballed into Pacesetter leaving his stream for over an hour, being disqualified for refusing to cooperate with tourney admins and deleting both Twitch and YouTube VODs. 

Pacesetter has competed in tournaments, wagers and broken a World Record, but that recent success could not derail Tommey’s investigation. By the end of the evening, the 100T streamer had exhaustively examined Pacesetter’s gameplay (including from deleted VODs) live on Twitch for thousands of viewers — resulting in the entire CoD community hailing the Warzone pro as their very own anti-cheat.

Although originally reluctant to dub Pacesetter a cheater after receiving clips from people on social media, Tommey paid more attention following his loss in the tournament. Noting subtle signs of cheating (suspicious centering, perfect awareness of enemy positioning), he then decided there was enough reason to demand a monitor cam from the upsurging streamer.

When Tommey requests the cam in chat, with a specific note not to touch the keyboard, it appears as though Pacesetter reads it and quickly begins typing. This becomes a nail in the coffin, as inconsistencies in his rationale lead tournament admins to request an anti-cheat process.

Suggesting that he was using the keyboard to play music (which never began playing and would have required attention to the monitor he doesn’t seem to be facing), admins requested access to Pacesetter’s PC logs to find out if he had quit a hacking program.

rated screenshot pacesetter
A message from Rated, Pacesetter’s semi-final opponent, in Tommey’s chat.

In response, the upcoming streamer apparently left for over an hour, causing admins to grow suspicious that he was cleaning out the logs, leading to a disqualification in the semi-finals. 

Ultimately, it is impossible to confirm with full certainty that Pacesetter was cheating — as he uses XSplit, a streaming software known for the ability to hide hacks on Twitch. Nonetheless, Tommey’s in-depth investigation into the gameplay and subsequent responses to accusations proved damning enough for the CoD community.

While everyone from huge Warzone figures to casual fans exalted Tommey for his work as their very own anti-cheat, the Verdansk Sherlock Holmes explained that, despite hating cheaters, this should not encourage anyone to cross lines: “Don’t go over and give this man mad hate or anything. But people that cheat deserve to be told they’re wrong.”

About The Author

Théo is a former writer at Dexerto based in New York and built on competition. Formerly an editor for Bleacher Report and philosophy student at McGill, he fell in love with Overwatch and Call of Duty — leading him to focus on esports for Dex.