If you haven’t realized already, a new PUBG anti-cheat was added by PUBG Corp. over the weekend. The new anti-cheat measures have been designed to stop players from using external programs that modify PUBG’s files in some way.
Despite the new anti-cheat rollout, it has been quite clear that the cheating problem hasn’t really slowed down at all.
Let’s take a look at the new anti-cheat measures, the effect it has had on cheaters, and how cheaters are still able to get in and ruin everybody’s fun despite the new measures.
How Does The New PUBG Anti-Cheat Work?
What’s interesting is that the new PUBG anti-cheat measure is actually a combination of changes to the game software and real life changes made within the dev team.
It has now been confirmed that PUBG Corp. has hired a brand new team that will be dedicated to catching cheats in Battlegrounds. This new team will have a number of tools to review stats and gameplay from any players that have been reported. The team will also have the tools to ban those that are clearly cheating.
With this new team comes a new responsibility for the player base. It has now been made easier to report a player, but players will need to click the report button when they’re killed to be able to flag up accounts so that the new anti-cheat team can ban them.
Many cheaters will still get banned when the existing BattleEye anti-cheat picks up on any unjust behavior.
Alongside the new anti-cheat team and the BattleEye anti-cheat, changes have been made to PUBG to make it easier for the game to determine when something has hooked onto the game’s code.
If any PUBG code is changed in any way, PUBG will now flag the owner of the game that has been modified. For now, it seems that an players that modify their game will be put in a queue to be manually banned or approved by a member of the anti-cheat team.
Finally, PUBG has now blocked Steam family sharing. This will stop a large number of cheaters, according to PUBG Corp.
There were a few exploits that cheaters were using to bypass Steam family sharing to be able to cheat and get away with it.
The PUBG Corp. team mentioned that they “Will continue taking firm measures against the developers, distributors and users of cheats. We promise you that we will do our best every day in our battle for a fair game environment.”
Here’s a summary of what the PUBG team have introduced with this latest patch:
- There’s now a dedicated team working on banning cheaters
- In-game report tools are more refined and players are encouraged to use them
- PUBG will now spot when a player uses a program to edit the PUBG code in some way
- BattleEye is still working behind the scenes to ban cheaters
- PUBG family sharing has been blocked to stop some exploits
- PUBG Corp. will continue to introduce new measures both in-game and in real life to stop cheaters
Do The New PUBG Anti-Cheat Measures Work?
With the new PUBG anti-cheat measures added to the game, I was curious to see whether the mass cheating in Battlegrounds had been cut down or not.
From my anecdotal experience, there still seem to be cheaters in PUBG. The hacks and scripts that cheaters are getting hold of still work as well as they did before, it just seems that PUBG Corp. now has more resources to ban players that use such hacks.
Unfortunately, all of the new measures that PUBG Corp. has introduced are reactive measures that only stop those that are already cheating.
Many players are frustrated with the new anti-cheat update and have voiced their opinion that the new methods that PUBG Corp. is using to stop hackers is too little, too late.
As frustrating as it may be, combating hackers will always be an ongoing process. We’re fortunate that the huge success of PUBG Corp. has given the company the resources it needs to combat cheaters as best they can, but it’ll always be an ongoing process.
Hopefully, as 2018 progresses, PUBG Corp. will be able to put more pressure on the cheaters and more importantly, the cheat creators.
Now that it’s been shown that PUBG can be hacked, many cheat creators are working hard to release cheats that they can sell to players.
PUBG Corp. could go down the legal route and send out cease and desist letters to those that are modifying PUBG’s code to make profit. In the past, developers have had a lot of success with these methods.
Both League Of Legends and Overwatch have had cheating problems in the past, but Riot and Blizzard went straight down the legal route to have cheats shut down as quickly as possible.
What Kind Of Hacks Are Possible In PUBG?
With so much controversy surrounding the cheating problem in PUBG, you may be wondering about what hacks actually exist for PUBG.
Like many shooter games, there are a number of cheats that are often created and published online. The most common hack allows players to see other players through walls. Known as an ESP or wallhack, this kind of cheat gives players a huge advantage in battle royale games. Wallhack cheats can also let players see loot spawns and see what items players are using.
More severe hacks allow players to run quickly across the map, remove recoil and spread, automatically shoot when a player mouses over another player’s head, or shoot players in the head and instantly kill them when they aren’t even aiming at them.
These kinds of hacks have been seen in games in the past, but I’ve never seen such a rampant cheating problem. The only time I’ve seen cheating this bad was when The War Z was popular. The cheating problem became so bad that in the end the developers just sold the rights to develop the game to the cheaters.
Let’s hope that PUBG Corp. is better equipped to stop the cheaters from overrunning Battlegrounds completely.