On Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast confirmed that it had begun banning players for abusing their in-game pet in order to time out their opponents.
Wizards says that they had suspended around 50 players for five days each as of Tuesday afternoon. Those players were found to have clicked their pet cats over 1,000 times in a match at a rate of over 150 clicks a minute over the course of multiple matches.
This incessant clicking would result in constant graphical animations of their pet and cause their opponent’s games to lag. Sometimes, this lag would be enough to prevent them from making any in-game decisions, resulting in their opponents timing out and losing the game.
The lag caused by the pet animations is one of a string of performance issues that have cropped up on MTG Arena over the last few patches. Wizards acknowledged those issues and issued a patch on July 10 to address them. However, the lag caused by the pet animations were not fixed, though Wizards says that “implementing a solution in our next patch.”
The pet cat was added as part of MTG Arena’s new Mastery Pass, which was introduced with Core Set 2020. It allows players to unlock unique rewards, including the pet, by gaining XP through completing quests and winning matches.
