Here is a public service announcement for all players in the Magic: The Gathering Arena community: don’t click on the MTG Arena cat at all for this time unless you want to risk the possibility of getting banned by creator Wizards of the Coast for a period of time.

What the MTG Arena Cat Is

Players are reporting that they are getting suspended from the game for a few days just because they are clicking on the MTG Arena cat during matches. The pet cat is an integral part of the new Mastery System, offering players the first chance to own a pet in the game.

Though the pet offers no true gameplay advantage, it is awesome to look at and it does offer some stress relief for players during matches. Like with the towers, gargoyles, and other objects on the field, you can click on the MTG Arena cat and it will do something.

What’s unique to the cat is that it will change colors and offer a cool visual effect when it’s clicked on. As such, it’s no surprise that players are wanting to do this during matches. There can be long periods of inactivity for players as they wait for the opponent to finish their turn.

That’s exactly why these little details exist on the field as they offer you something to mindlessly do while you wait. For some players, clicking on objects like the cat actually help them think about what to do next. Some use it as a stress relief. For others, it might just be a compulsive action that they need to do.

Why Players Are Getting Suspended

But what these players are finding is that Wizards of the Coast is banning those players who excessively click on the MTG Arena cat during matches for several days at a time. While this might seem outrageous, it’s actually due to a bug that is affecting online matches right now.

In the latest hotfix patch notes, we detailed how Wizards of the Coast is improving the rampant performance issues that started cropping up when the release of the latest expansion Magic Core Set 2020 happened at the beginning of this month.

Players were met with tons of problems that affected how well the game ran, which is strange since the open beta of MTG Arena has been fairly solid since its launch in the fall of last year. But it seems that the major changes that came with the Mastery System caused the game to falter.

Though Wizards of the Coast have already put an update to fix some of these issues, there are plenty of them that are still around and causing trouble for players. An example of this is the MTG Arena cat, oddly enough. Using the cat in matches can still cause performance issues.

Whether this is due to the implementation of the cat onto the field or just the fact that it can change colors, the pet can create problems for players. You are able to have it on the field but clicking on the cat over and over has reportedly caused performance issues for some players.

There are players who are experiencing lag and frame rate drops, resulting in them performing less than optimal in matches. Wizards of the Coast is, therefore, banning players who excessively click on the pet cat over and over to stop players from making the game perform worse.

This is because there are some players who are doing this on purpose to annoy and mess up their enemy. If you click on the cat the entire time it’s your opponent’s turn, you can make the game start to stutter and mess up for them.

This can cause them to be unable to think clearly or, worse, be unable to make the moves they meant to do correctly or before the timer runs out for their turn. In cases like these, Wizards of the Coast isn’t wrong to ban these players so they aren’t able to take advantage of a bug in the game.

Better Solutions to This Problem

What is a problem, though, is the fact that there are innocent players who just want to enjoy clicking on the MTG Arena cat who are affected by these suspensions as well. In fact, Reddit user JimBeammer posted a thread on Reddit about getting temporarily suspended from the game unfairly.

The user reportedly didn’t know that clicking on the cat excessively would cause problems for the other player they are facing and noted that they are allergic to cats in real life so they used what gems they had collected to purchase the cat for petting digitally.

Another Reddit user bkdroid chimed in with their experience in the thread, noting that they also messed around with the pet while waiting for the opponent to finish their turn and have now been suspended for five days from the game just for that.

While it is understandable for Wizards of the Coast to ban players who are intentionally causing trouble for others, it’s not understandable to do a blanket suspension in this way. It would be at least somewhat better if there was a notification when you boot up the game not to click on the cat or face a potential suspension.

Better yet, it’d be good for players who do click on the cat to get a warning to stop doing so or be suspended instantly. There is even the method of turning off effects for the opponent so they don’t have to experience them when the other player isn’t clicking.

The lack of a formal announcement from the developer regarding this problem is troubling. Simply coming out and letting players know not to do this would have been better than simply leaving them in the dark only to face a sudden suspension for something they weren’t aware of.

At the very least, here’s hoping that Wizards of the Coast temporarily disables the effects on the MTG Arena cat to save players who aren’t trying to do anything except pass the time and think while they click from getting an unfair ban. Be sure to stay tuned for any updates or official comments from Wizards of the Coast regarding this unfortunate situation.