Cheating has been a problem for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds ever since it hit the height of its popularity two years ago, but a renewed sense of concern from the community has forced the developers to make a public response. In short – cheating is a problem that PUBG Corp recognises, too, and they’re still banning bad actors by the truckload.
“In terms of volume of reports that I’m seeing personally, and others on the Community Team, we haven’t seen this many for a very long time,” community manager PUBG Hawkinz says on Reddit. “We understand there is a big uptake in the number of cheaters you’re playing against and we know how severe the impact is on your matches right now.”
Back toward the end of 2018, PUBG Corp reported ban waves affecting around 90,000 cheaters in the space of a week, and it seems that pace is keeping up. “We often ban over 100k accounts per week,” Hawkinz says. For the week ending December 14, there were exactly 116,531 PUBG cheaters banned.
Hardware ID bans are also in place, despite some player speculation to the contrary. “Unfortunately, we can’t apply HWID bans in many cases,” Hawkinz says, and you’ll likely see the reasons why in an upcoming developer letter. Don’t expect to learn every detail of how the anti-cheat efforts are going, though, since too many specifics might give cheaters further ideas on how to exploit the system.
Cheating will never not be a problem for multiplayer games, and it’s clear that PUBG Corp is making efforts to stem the tide – but the cheating issue has remained a special thorn in the battle royale’s side for ages, and that’s not likely to change soon.