PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG as it is more colloquially known, is attributed by many to be the title that spawned the surge in popularity of battle royale games when it debuted in 2017. Developed and published by PUBG Corporation, the game passed the notable milestone of selling over 70 million copies earlier this year.
Throughout its three-year history, even in the days of early access, cheaters have been a constant presence in PUBG, causing frequent frustration for regular players and creating extra work for the game’s developers as they try to consistently catch and remove cheaters. In one week alone in August 2020, over two million PUBG Mobile accounts were permanently banned for cheating.
Recently, one such PUBG cheater was caught and banned while he livestreamed on Twitch, and the community response was predominantly one of celebration. Going by the Twitch handle “vesprine,” this specific PUBG player was well known in the game’s online community for continually creating new accounts as old ones got banned for cheating.
During this particular stream, vesprine was supplementing his gameplay with the use of in-game hacks as usual. One viewer known as 701dirty stated that over 100 people clipped vesprine’s actions and reported the cheating while he streamed. A few hours later, a PUBG community manager going by the name of PUBG_Hawkinz visited the stream as a result of the flood of reports. Shortly afterward, in the middle of the stream, vesprine was booted from the game and a notification appeared onscreen that stated: “Restricted Account. Your session will be terminated due to the use of hacks.” PUBG_Hawkins followed up the ban by announcing simply, “Peace, loser.”
Unfortunately, considering vesprine’s known history of cheating and creating multiple accounts to regain access to the game, he probably won’t stay gone for long. One Reddit user, The-Basic-Bro, who has witnessed the behavior commented, “He keeps resurfacing. Same guy over and over… He needs a hardware ban at this point. He legitimately cheats non-stop… I have called him out and disgraced him and had him banned.”
Clearly, these bans have not had a long-term effect on vesprine’s ability to play PUBG, and many players are calling for more stringent repercussions for the cheater. Aimbots, speed and wall hacks, recoil scripts, and other PUBG cheats all have a negative impact on players trying to legitimately enjoy the game. Even though there is an in-game method for reporting cheaters, the problem remains prevalent.
In February 2020, PUBG Corporation and Tencent Games, PUBG’s Chinese publisher, teamed up to announce Project Ban Pan, a method that would hopefully increase the ability to detect and ban cheaters. In the video announcing the collaboration, a player who was making his character invisible got hit with a 10-year ban from PUBG. After the launch of Project Ban Pan, players reported seeing a decrease in cheating and the game’s anti-cheating systems flagged and banned approximately 8000 accounts per day. What effect this has on cheaters like vesprine, who simply create new accounts, remains to be seen.
PUBG is available on mobile, PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
Source: Dexerto