PEDs In Esports - Call of Duty Pro Player Huke Admits To Cheating In A $4.6M Tournament

Above is a 30+ minute video of LA Thieves professional Call of Duty Player, Huke, about his usage with Adderall to boost his performance. In this video, he mentions how he used Adderall last CDL Champs when he was a player for Empire. According to both the league and their player agreements, Adderall and any performance enhancing substances are banned from competitive play.

This drove CDL veteran, Aches, to chime in and give his thoughts.

For those that may not be too familiar with the CDL or competitive Call of Duty, Champs is essentially the Super Bowl for these players. It's the last, biggest, and most important tournament of the season. This is where players are given rings and immortalized in CDL's record books. You can lose all three majors leading up to Champs, but if you come out of Champs victorious, that's all that matters (Like my 8-8 2007 Giants).

The prize pool for 2020 Champs was $4.6 Million (yes,million), with $1.5M going to the team that finished in first place.

Huke openly admitting to cheating during this tournament by using a banned substance is very noble, but action should be taken by the CDL. As Aches states, since the origin of competitive CoD, Adderall usage as always been against the rules, but it has never been enforced. Aches is calling for action to take place and the CDL to finally begin testing players to make sure the game is being played at a fair level. This would be a great move by the CDL to monitor their players and ensure no substances are being used against the rules.

I'm a fan of the CDL stepping in and taking some sort of action. Since I began following the competitive Call of Duty scene in 2016, there have always been talks of Adderall usage in the rumor mill and the fact that Huke admitted openly to it during the biggest tournament of 2020 is wild. Huke also mentioned that others were taking it as well and he felt pressured to take it. However, even though he performed well, it really messed up his mental health. The adderal changed his personality and turned him into an angry individual when is normally a very happy and pleasant guy.

On top of all the actual stuff going on with Huke and the Adderall, an alleged member of the Dallas Empire started a rumor that Huke was taking shrooms. LA Thieves bought into it and it may be the reason why Huke was originally benched.

I have massive respect for Huke for opening up about this, but it is also very interesting timing because this comes on the same day that Huke is announced back in the LA Thieves starting lineup for the Stage 4 Major.

I'll be monitoring to see if any changes come from LA Thieves or the CDL regarding how they handle the Huke situation. At the end of the day, we are wishing Huke well and hoping for the best for him.