Trying to clamp down on cheating in games is a constant battle for game developers, but in the last week alone, PUBG Corp banned 116,561 accounts.
PUBG Hawkinz, one of the game’s community managers confirmed the latest statistics while replying to a post on Reddit about the current state of the game. Players are becoming increasingly frustrated with the battle royale due to an increase in cheating, the lack of communication from PUBG and the “volatile” esports scene.
“In terms of volume of reports, we haven’t seen this many in a very long time,” the community manager says. “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.
“We often ban over 100k accounts per week. For the week of 8th-14th December, we permanently banned exactly 116,531 accounts. Do we hardware ban accounts? Yes, we employ HWID bans as well.”
Hawkinz also confirmed new anti-cheat measures had been added in recent months to try and tackle the ongoing problems of PUBG hacking. PUBG Corp is also discussing possibly putting a ping limit on servers to stop players from abusing region locks.
The community manager also touched upon the future of its esports scene, despite not really being involved with it. He says PUBG Corps is “going hard as fuck on global events” and people should expect a “big 2020.”
However, Michael ‘Jabroni’ Cecere, one of the only players to be held onto by Ghost Gaming, who earlier this month withdrew from competitive PUBG, says the 2020 esports announcement is a “curtain to hide what is really going on.” Like other players, Jabroni is upset that the regional professional leagues have been cut, that personalised skins were never fulfilled, and communication with PUBG Corp is near non-existent.
And while it’s good PUBG Corp is finally talking to the community, it’s clear there are some differences between what the community and the company see as successful.