Though it brings players immeasurable joy, gaming isn't always fun or easy. (That's why a term like "rage quit" exists in the industry.) But when the desire to go all Pokemon and become the very best at a particular game gets the better of players, cheating can occur. The most recent, and perhaps most uncomfortable to witness, incident of cheating centers on Twitch streamer MissQGemini who was caught mid-broadcast bending the rules of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Perhaps worsening the situation, she proceeds to make desperate, ultimately unsuccessful attempts to lie away her snafu.

YouTube user R. Gravis clipped the incident and uploaded the footage to the video-sharing site, where it has amassed over 500,000 views and upwards of 1,500 dislikes. The stream started out normally enough: MissQGemini (also known as Hayley-Isabel on her other social media profiles) is playing a few rounds of CounterStrike: Global Offensive and interacting with other off-screen gamers. She even gets killed by another player and reacts as anyone would: with frustration and sentence sprinkled with swear words.

Things get unusual at around a minute and 50 seconds into the video where MissQGemini appears to accidentally load a cheat profile. Realizing her mistake, she pulls a disconcerted face and brings up her weapons menu. "Do you guys ever get that weird glitch in CS:GO where it shows your rank, it shows everyone's rank?" she asks her teammates, stumbling over her words. "Because my game -- I played the other day with Rock and he got that and now I have it. I don't know why. It's weird."

The stream takes a sharp turn immediately following, as MissQGemini abruptly stops the game and states she needs to immediately message an unidentified girl named Clara to figure out why the cheating software is on her computer. MissQGemini insists she doesn't know what she's looking at, referring to a full cheat profile that's displayed on her screen, and pins blame on Clara, MissQGemini's friend who was reportedly at her house earlier in the day. MissQGemini proceeds to make intense statements about Clara. "I'm going to kill this girl," she states.

MissQGemini ends the stream and explains that she's going to uninstall CounterStrike: Global Offensive from her PC, as she doesn't want to be hit with a Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) ban for getting caught using a cheat profile. The clip closes on MissQGemini stating that she's likely going to be banned from the game, and again mentioning Clara as the culprit.

The fallout of the caught-on-tape cheating has been a bit of a whirlwind. MissQGemini apparently closed her original Twitch account after it was banned and moved to a profile called "TheDjinnnn." But not before transferring skins to her new account, behavior that was also captured by a Twitch user.

missqgemini cheating counterstrike twitch

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time cheating has run wild in CS: GO. The past has seen multiple instances in which players cut corners to gain experience, get their hands on new items, surpass their competition, or simply appear more knowledgeable about and skill in the game than they actually are. Cheating has become such a prevalent issue in the gaming community that Valve issued a statement last year laying down the hammer, stating that any professional CS: GO player found guilty of fixing matches would be permanently banned.

There's no telling what motivated MissQGemini to lie about cheating. But when considering how competitive certain titles make players and how difficult it can be to gain notoriety as a talented Twitch streamer, MissQGemini's actions can be viewed through a more objective lens to gain an understanding as to why she cheated in the first place. While cheating shouldn't ever be tolerated, sadly it's just the name of the game for some players.

CounterStrike: Global Offensive is available now for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

Source: YouTube, Twitch