The War on Cheaters Update - September 2023

Hello Summoners!

Season 10 of Battlegrounds was busy for the anti-cheat team as we monitored the leaderboard to ensure the integrity of our Battlerealm Brawl qualifiers. Over the course of the season, we developed a method to identify a new cheating strategy, as well as improved our detection for win trading. Both ended up paying off and impacted the final qualifiers for the Brawl. Congratulations to those who qualified fairly, we look forward to hosting you in Vancouver!

We believe our anti-cheat methods are in a pretty good spot. There is still work to be done, and we meet regularly to improve our detection algorithms, but we have active programs in place across the game, regularly banning modders in Battlegrounds, Arenas, Incursions and solo content.

With that progress made, we have had a chance to dive into the “shelling” problem in Alliance War. For those unfamiliar with the concept, some alliances have been using an exploit to modify the matchmaking parameters to their favor. This off season we carefully monitored the movement of players, and three alliances near the top of the leaderboard were clearly engaging in this anti-competitive behaviour. Today the officers of those alliances were issued temporary bans, and when they return they will find their shell alliances at the very bottom of the AW rankings. If they want to compete for the top rewards in AW, they will have to do so from their primary alliances. Given this is the first time we have taken action against this exploit we were slightly more lenient; consider this a 'warning shot' of sorts. In the future, any alliances that we catch shelling will receive harsher penalties up to and including permanent bans for all members of guilty alliances.

Additionally, we have had the time to take a closer look at mercenaries in Battlegrounds. A number of accounts have received escalating bans for being played by someone other than the owner. Those that were not banned permanently will be banned from the Battlegrounds game mode for three season.

Finally, there is already a post up about players exploiting the Enlistment gifting event, but we wanted to note this is still on our radar and there will be action taken before the end of the event. The most extreme exploiters will receive bans, and we will be taking additional action against some accounts.

Comments

Adevati

It’s funny to me people would cheat to the top of the BG event. What is their plan if they get away with it? Show up and get completely thrashed by actually talented players?

BringPopcorn

I like shutting down BGs for 3 months, would be nice to see it reflected to other game modes. Cheat in War and make sure the player cant play it for 3 seasons, meaning most competitive alliances won't even take them.

Pikolu

I love that cheating in AW is finally being addressed

AverageDesi

Anything about the supposed matchmaking exploit not related to shelling?

Anggito11

Kindred arena???

MrSakuragi

It’s funny to me people would cheat to the top of the BG event. What is their plan if they get away with it? Show up and get completely thrashed by actually talented players?

Probably bring in their mercs like this

drsnow69

i think cheaters should be banned permanently they know they are cheating and because of them cheating the players that have lost to them are affected negatively. Multiple warnings have gone out about it so a temp ban to me is useless and they will just find another way. i also believe somehow they are modding your attack rating in battle grounds because some of my heaviest hitting champs are throwing virtually no damage at times and other times it’s fine so idk maybe look into that but cheaters should be removed permanently. zero tolerance is the best way if they know they will be perma banned if they get caught they may think twice about doing it.

drsnow69

And what is shelling?

Iamnike

I like shutting down BGs for 3 months, would be nice to see it reflected to other game modes. Cheat in War and make sure the player cant play it for 3 seasons, meaning most competitive alliances won't even take them.

This game would be on life support without BGs 3 months is insane

unknown

This content has been removed.

BitterSteel

And what is shelling?

A group of 30 will have 2 alliances. One they do a season in (A) , and they let the other “shell” alliance (B) lose 12 wars, lose a lot of rating, so that when they finish the season they jump over to the (B) shell alliance and do the next season with lots of easy matchups and they crush lower rated teams while getting 10-12 wins in a season and could potentially finish masters when they’re most likely a platinum 1 rated team.

While they’re in alliance B, the other alliance A now becomes the shell, loses 12 wars and loses its rating so that they can jump back to A at the end of that season and continue beating up on lower rated alliance.

It’s cowardly, and been going on for far too long. So I’m really glad kabam are cracking down on it

BringPopcorn

I like shutting down BGs for 3 months, would be nice to see it reflected to other game modes. Cheat in War and make sure the player cant play it for 3 seasons, meaning most competitive alliances won't even take them.
This game would be on life support without BGs 3 months is insane

Dude read the post, cheaters in BGs won't be able.to.play it for 3 months, the whole mode will br shut down for them.

HulkbusterN1

Hmm, I expect AF (Made in Brazil) and even probably X-k9 to be docked, but Palo… I really thought they are good guys… So, we can trust nobody. I’m really glad that anti-cheat is working and upgrading. Good job, Kabam👏

DNA3000

i think cheaters should be banned permanently they know they are cheating and because of them cheating the players that have lost to them are affected negatively. Multiple warnings have gone out about it so a temp ban to me is useless and they will just find another way. i also believe somehow they are modding your attack rating in battle grounds because some of my heaviest hitting champs are throwing virtually no damage at times and other times it’s fine so idk maybe look into that but cheaters should be removed permanently. zero tolerance is the best way if they know they will be perma banned if they get caught they may think twice about doing it.

That's impossible. A modder can change how combat works on their own device in theory, they can in extreme cases trick the servers into thinking their fight went completely differently, but a modder cannot affect how your fight runs on your device. Unless they have somehow hacked your phone. And if a hacker has done that, you have bigger problems.

JerryJiver

Well done, keep up the good work.

With regard to the enlistment event, could you please clarify… if one person has a large number of alts (entirely under his own control) and uses them to gift his main account, is that considered actionable abuse? Or are you only targeting ppl who are using third party alt farms?

SlayerOfGods

This is awesome. Keep it going!

Darkness275

Amazing.

Well done to everyone at Kabam involved in making this an actuality.

HungaryHippo

Kabam firing on all cylinders and it's great to see it.

Typhoon

Cheaters never prosper!

Dimacream

AverageDesi

Well done, keep up the good work.

With regard to the enlistment event, could you please clarify… if one person has a large number of alts (entirely under his own control) and uses them to gift his main account, is that considered actionable abuse? Or are you only targeting ppl who are using third party alt farms?

Third party only.

laserjohn26

Has anything been done about the alliance who plays at a low p1 level yet keeps getting top 3 masters because they somehow figured about how to abuse matchmaking?

Seenk

NATH/NA_ON passed by again, lol. Kabam just doesn't want to check them

Valmez

Well done Kabam for taking these steps and shutting down AF, XK9 and PALO. NATH/Nothing Impossible alliance got off, although they're manipulating matchmaking on a different way to shelling in the way it was described in the initial post.

phillgreen

shell description

I never actually understood what this was until now. Thanks!

Luke9523

Hey Kabam, I think you missed a guy.

He's even took the screenshot and admitted it all in the forums, all by himself. 😅😅

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/347059/act-6-need-nerfing-and-changing-so-cavalier-and-uncollected-players-can-get-through#latest

captain_rogers

Cheating in any game mode using mods or hacks, should result in a permanent account ban.

SummonerNR

Well done Kabam for taking these steps and shutting down AF, XK9 and PALO. NATH/Nothing Impossible alliance got off, although they're manipulating matchmaking on a different way to shelling in the way it was described in the initial post.

The 3 alliances for “shelling” don’t seem to be the ones that started out the season with some extra amount of points, that started out at top of leaderboard and then as season went by slowly dropped to various Plat levels as their lower WR (lower Tier Multiplier than what is needed to be top of charts) was seemingly rewarding their correct points in subsequent wars each time.
But why they had started out with excess points that boosted their season totals at the beginning ? Miike had said they were looking into that early on, but could see they were still much higher that their WR should allow them to be towards the end (not sure about how they actually finished after the season was completely over and rewards sent out ?)

And secondly, did “Nothing Imp.” actually get rewards based on their ranking they were in that people saw during the season, or was that situation rectified for Rewards (even if not seen on Leaderboard) ? Still not sure how someone could manipulate matchmaking to avoid similar WR matches, but if that is what happened, we’re they docked as well ?

FunnyDude

NA.ON is still alive, they cheated for 6 months or even longer time

GroundedWisdom

Grateful to hear that something is being done about unsavory behavior in War.