Cheating has never been a bigger problem in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds than it is right now, based on recent disclosures from one of PUBG Corp.’s fairness enforcement partners. So it goes without saying that delays for the next round of anti-cheat tools is pretty much the last thing any PUBG player wanted to hear about this week.
Earlier this week the team behind BattlEye, a popular anti-cheat service, confirmed banning more than one million players during January 2018. The announcement confirmed something many fans already knew: there’s been a massive upsurge in bad actors over the last six months. Last summer, the eponymous PlayerUnknown proudly confirmed the removal of 25,000-plus cheaters over a three-month period. Last month’s 40x increase doesn’t even seem to have the same impact -- accusations of cheating remain constant on social media, despite bans and a death cam meant to alleviate false reporting -- now that Battlegrounds has become the most popular game on Steam.
Many players hoped this week would mark a turning point in the fight for fair play. According to PUBG Corp.’s Head of Service Management & Anti-Cheat Dohyung Lee, a new patch featuring additional anti-cheat software (built specifically for Battlegrounds) would arrive by the end of the week. Unfortunately, unexpected issues during compatibility testing have forced PUBG Corp. to delay the patch’s arrival. To make matters worse, the update (which will require additional work after deployment) no longer has a release timeline. The studio says more information will be available “soon,” but at this point there’s no telling whether that’s a matter of days or weeks.
The likely unpopularity of this news may be compounded by the decision to ban ReShade, a popular third-party tool many players used to alter the color balance of PUBG. While its purpose is largely benevolent, PUBG Corp. says ReShade both behaves like a cheat program and can be used as one, forcing them to ban it. And the studio says that ban is permanent.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available on PC and Xbox One.
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