Cheaters in PUBG: How Krafton Plans to Fight Back

Krafton wages an innovative, behind-the-scenes war against rampant cheating, affecting up to 100,000 PUBG accounts weekly.

With an audacious flair, Krafton, the brains behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, decided to lift the curtain on the rampant cheating scene that’s disrupting their battlegrounds, through a bold blog post from their anti-cheat squadron.

The Astonishing Scale of Cheating in PUBG

The blog post kicks off with a jaw-dropping statistic that would make even the most seasoned gamer’s thumbs tremble: “Our vigilant Anti-Cheat Team at PUBG: Battlegrounds puts the kibosh on a staggering 60,000 to 100,000 dodgy accounts each week, those found guilty of using, peddling, or splurging on prohibited software.”

The logical conundrum then springs up: Why, oh why, are there still so many cheaters clogging the system? Krafton’s response to this million-dollar question is that they’re striving for a more robust strategy. They acknowledge that simply banning accounts endlessly is like sticking a plaster on a bullet wound, what’s needed is a root-cause solution to effectively sniff out and track the culprits.

Unveiling the Types of Cheaters in PUBG

Their spotlight of scrutiny is trained on two types of suspect accounts stirring up trouble in ranked mode. First, there are the “hijacked accounts”, secondly, accounts that mischievously “manipulate the Survival Mastery Level system”. Regarding the former, Krafton revealed that an eye-opening 85% of these account hijackers began their sprees before PUBG switched to a free-to-play model (as of January 2022). They dispel any insinuations that these accounts were overlooked for so long, instead they suggest a pattern of cheaters snatching up innocent players’ accounts to use as conduits for their illegal activities.

The modus operandi is as simple as it is deceitful: Scoundrels purloin an account, flog it to a cheat-happy buyer who then goes on a guilt-free chicken dinner binge, only to be halted when Krafton throws down the ban hammer. Undeterred, the cycle repeats itself with the acquisition of another account.

Survival Mastery Level manipulation is a whole different can of worms. New accounts are barred from ranked matches until they hit level 80, but this seemingly fails to deter crafty tricksters. Enter the shadowy ‘workshops’ where automated, macro-facilitated actions are used to rack up experience points, thereby boosting the account’s level for resale.

Fed up with this incessant tomfoolery, Krafton is rolling up its sleeves to dismantle this supply chain of cheat-enabled accounts. The previous strategy of looking for patterns to identify hacked accounts had its drawbacks, such as new forms of cheating slipping through unnoticed and low detection accuracy making it hard to hand out harsher penalties like a permanent ban.

In response to this, Krafton developed a shiny, new machine learning model that sniffs out hijacked accounts. Although still relatively fresh, it’s already proving its worth by helping to identify the scale and nature of hijacked accounts. Krafton aims to enhance this model further and apply it to a variety of anti-cheat measures.

Krafton concluded the post with a reaffirmation of their commitment to go after the root of the cheaters in PUBG issue, and remind players to keep their accounts secure by using tools like the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator.

The battle royale recently teamed up with Street Fighter 6 for a crossover that has many eyebrows raised at it’s complete randomness.

With the revelation that Krafton is dealing with such an astronomical number of rogue accounts each week, it’s clear why the industry is turning to AI to help dam the flood. This is not an isolated case; other big names in the industry have also been experimenting with intriguing solutions, from Call of Duty’s anti-cheat tech causing hackers to experience in-game ‘hallucinations’ to Ubisoft’s mysterious ‘QB’ tool taking a swing at cheaters.

Related: PUBG: Battlegrounds April Fools’ Special: Big Chicken Returns and Zombies Invade

The industry-wide struggle against the dark side of gaming continues, often yielding surprisingly creative and occasionally humorous solutions.

Source – SteamCommunity