An Update on the Battle Against Cheaters - February 1st 2023

Hello Summoners!

We wanted to provide an update in our ongoing battle against modders/cheaters as this most recent Battlegrounds and AW seasons come to an end,

One of the most impactful changes we’ve made since our last update has been tweaks and updates to our automated systems. We have, once again, bolstered our parameters and approach to identifying and banning modders, not just in Battlegrounds, but everywhere across the Contest.

By making these adjustments to the system and continuing with multiple manual sweeps each week, our team has been identifying and banning at least 75% more cheaters over the last month. We feel that this was a change that was felt by many of our Summoners, especially those competing for the top spots in Battlegrounds.

We made a lot of progress over the last month, but the war on cheaters will be a long one. We have plans for more additions and adjustments in the near future that will continue to improve the game experience for honest Summoners everywhere, including shortening the time required to release Battlegrounds rewards.

Thank you for your continued patience,

- MCOC Team

Comments

ChiliDog

This is great, but please announce getting rid of the short term bans. Permanent bans will make people think a little harder before cheating. At least make it for a few months and not just 10 days.

Dude17

Thanks but are bans really only 10 days? Wow, crime really does pay sometimes…

There obviously needs to be harder consequences eg. no season rewards for 3 months, or permanently banning the hardware MAC address for repeat offenders (if you have access to that info).

OR shadow ban them where they fight unwinnable fights against AI competitors. Pls do that!

Bossmode12

This means nothing. 75% more than how many prior? You haven’t banned the cheaters I have reported. I offered screenshots to no reply.

Pemula

Any info when is your target for bg rewards will be distributed ?

TanukiTales

Ok, but "75%" doesn't actually mean that anything of real value is being done. That's just statistic obfuscation; if you banned 4 cheaters last month but banned 7 cheaters this month, that's a 75% increase.

If you banned 10,000 cheaters last month, but 17,500 cheaters this month, that is also a 75% increase.

Some more concrete numbers would be nice.

GreenRaptor413

It’s great that it’s still being worked on. There have definitely been less modders that I’ve matched against. Thanks for your efforts everyone!

TheHeroDeserved

Awesome! Keep up the good work.

unknown

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BostonSpidey124

This season of Battlegrounds definitely appeared much better in terms of obvious cheaters so thank you for that.

One area of the game where it’s hard to see any impact from the improved efforts is Arena. There also has been no mention in cheating in Arena since the massive ban from a year or so ago where you guys have players the rewards they would have earned if not for cheaters finishing above them. Since that time Arena cut off scores have only gone up. Any comments on Arena?

Jkw634

That’s awesome but need to make them pay with longer bans. In reality the 10 day ban does nothing. They take a chance and mod. Bg season ends the same time as aw season. They get busted 10 day ban new aw season starts in 14 days don’t miss aw. An alliance can drop to map 5 those couple weeks. They don’t get caught they get great rewards.

Eb0ny-O-M4w

Bans for modding NEED to be permanent.

Buttehrs

Not sure I understand why bans for cheating weren't ever permanent to begin with. All your doing is slapping them on the wrist, saying it's ok cheat as often as you want you can always come back and cheat again.

natelc4185

Any word on when BG season rewards will be released?

Qwerty12345

First ... this improvement is great. I don't think I reported a single potential hacker. And... appologies for the long message.

I'm going to be a Debbie-downer and show the "power of statistics" to mislead stats without enough information.

saying you banned 75% more people does not necessarily mean a 75% improvement. There can be many reasons for this beyond the improvements made.

Some easy to identify ones before I go into numbers include:

1: more people thought they could get away with it, so more people cheated. Catching more cheaters may just mean more people tried.

2: 75% of what? Letting go of #1 / assuming same population size... were there 1,000,000 players before, with 100,000 "actual cheaters" but only 12 got banned? If so, a 75% increase to 21 people getting banned this season... really isn't statistically significant. you still have effectively the same number of cheaters and had a negligible improvement.

now... those are all hypothetical numbers to some extreme, and I doubt things were anywhere near that bad. I just really have a pet peev when someone say "4 out of 5 dentists prefer this tooth brush"... and forget that there are maybe 1,000,000 dentists out there, so having a population size of 5 and getting an 80% rate is meaningless.

Last before I get off my soap box... I agree with several above including @Eb0ny-O-M4w that bans need to have larger teeth... all rewards remotely associated with anything potentially gained from modding needs to be stripped "rounding up", and while I am all for a 3 strikes rule... the first strike needs to be severe enough that someone doesn't do it once or twice and then stops knowing its only the 3rd strike that matters.

Having an alliance fall from P1 to further down P1... does not make it up to the other alliances they the a modded alliance might have faced. The opponents need to be "given wins" in those matches, and while I'm not a fan of punning say 28 members of an alliance if only 2 cheated... in this case a small penalty (at least to the officers) wouldn't be a bad thing, plus an actual flag on an account saying "this account has been bannend before"... so that a simple change in profile pic an change name token can't be used to hide one's history. (maybe after a year of good behavior that flag could go away... but I don't think a single post needs to solve every little detail about the game... so I'll end there

BowTieJohn

Thank you!

Deacon

Well all I can say is that my alliance was directly impacted positively because of these bans so cheers!

Typhoon

I can safely say I encountered fewer cheaters in Season 4 than I did in previous Seasons. Glad to see change manifesting.

Chovner

They probably look at realized revenue from the banned accounts and determine that they can't afford to permanently ban all of them, hence the useless slap on the wrist bans.

Dude17

They probably look at realized revenue from the banned accounts and determine that they can't afford to permanently ban all of them, hence the useless slap on the wrist bans.

The cynical side of me thinks that. But I suspect Kabam’s legal team may have advised them against permanent bans to avoid liability.

(Note: NAL, just another schmuck who watches too many legal dramas)

Chatterofforums

Got this message on my yt account as response to a BG yt vid I did where in the video I mentioned modders. I left his yt name out. Bottom line so many modders just justify jacking over other players and have no intention of stopping.

TanukiTales

I'm amused at the eleven people who disagreed with me, who probably don't even know how statistics work. They just see "75%" and go "That's a big number! It must mean a big number! Big number!"

Djehouty

In BG it is true that I met a lot less cheaters, that's good.

On the other hand on the other game modes there are plenty. For example in incursions, lots of players complete the 25 rooms with their account and another fake account with a bot in order to win without any difficulty. It's frustrating to see that, personally I did it solo, and I spent 1500-2000u...

I'm not even talking about the EOP, there are plenty of players who cheat to get the rewards quickly. There is still a lot of work to do to remove all the cheaters...

phillgreen

I cant understand why, if a first offence ban cannot be permanent, why it's not for a full season of whatever game mode the cheating was discovered.

I appreciate the effort from Kabam but honestly, I could quite happily put the game down for 10 days after modding a bunch of content* and I doubt modders care about 10 days of calendar rewards.

*not a cheater, never will be.

Wakandas_Finest

Just a suggestion but how about not making the Battleground store available until after the season. I’m pretty sure the only reason to mod in BGs is for the rewards in the battleground store. Or since you are doing multiple scan and bans a week make the store only available after a round of scan and ban.

Dude17

I'm amused at the eleven people who disagreed with me, who probably don't even know how statistics work. They just see "75%" and go "That's a big number! It must mean a big number! Big number!"

That’s because 50% of people have a below average IQ.

thewass1980

Bans for modding NEED to be permanent.

People disagreeing to this (and other posts) are most likely modders themselves.

RoronoaUchiha

It’s amazing that y’all can make a post about cheaters, but not about how and why we haven’t received rewards yet. Y’all post a lot of psycho babble that isn’t helping us or y’all. Just like we’re still experiencing parry issue in the game, but y’all act like it’s of little concern. Where are the Battleground rewards, and why do we have to wait so long?

SirGamesBond

and banning modders, not just in Battlegrounds, but everywhere across the Contest.

That's the biggest W in my dictionary.

Yodabolt21

Permanent bans would be great. But I think 30 days is what they settle on.

unknown

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