Banned Cheaters Double in One Month
Dealing with cheating in your favorite game can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Many PUBG players know this feeling all too well: players zipping around the map in the blink of an eye, or taking you out with a seemingly impossible shot (of course, the lack of a death recap often makes it difficult to differentiate between a cheater and a very skilled player, but I digress). Cheating is certainly a concern for major multiplayer game developers as well. If it becomes rampant enough, even the most ardent players will leave in droves.
From the start, PUBG developer Bluehole was well aware of the possibility of hacking programs infiltrating their game. Last December, they partnered with anti-cheat specialists BattlEye to help eliminate cheaters, and it seems like the collaboration is beginning to pay huge dividends:
.@TheBattlEye has now banned over 150,000 cheaters from @PUBATTLEGROUNDS, with more than 8,000 banned in the last 24 hours alone! GG WP
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) September 13, 2017
While PUBG was seemingly pleased with the number of bans they handed out as of last month, they likely did not expect the number to double by this past weekend:
We are currently banning at a rate of 6K-13K per day, nearly 20K within the last 24 hours alone. The vast majority is from China.
— BattlEye (@TheBattlEye) October 13, 2017
322,000 cheaters banned is a staggering number, even considering the massive player base (the peak concurrent player number has since eclipsed the 2 million mark). It remains to be seen how much of an effect the bans will have on curbing cheating, however, as hacking programs become even more sophisticated.
PlayerUnknown Responds to Criticism
In addition to cracking down on cheating, Creative Director Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene responded to some vulgar criticism on Twitter with a cheeky recommendation:
Thanks for your feedback! There are 781 million games available on @steam_games so hopefully you’ll find one you like! https://t.co/RvYPLYSv9y
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) October 15, 2017
Greene later responded to another tweet with an actual update on the progress of “improvements”:
We are working hard on optimizing the game, but a lot of the work takes months to complete. Improvements are coming. Please bear with us!
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) October 15, 2017
Despite being wildly popular, PUBG still has its fair share of issues, from bugs to a lack of features to the aforementioned cheaters. Greene and Bluehole seem to be hard at work alleviating those issues, though it looks as though that could take some time.
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