Battleye, one of the anti-cheat measures used in PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, has reported that they banned over 1,044,000 cheaters in January 2018 alone, according to a tweet from the service. Two days prior, PUBG Corp had laid out their plans to improve the game's anti-cheat systems in a news post on the game's Steam Community page.
As of late December 2017, Battleye had reported over 1.5 million bans for PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS. They've now added another million on top of that already impressive number, characterizing it as a situation that is, unfortunately, escalating. A tweet from the company in October of last year indicated that the majority of the early bans by BattlEye were from China.
PUBG Corporation is taking the issue seriously, recently releasing an update on where they're headed with their anti-cheat strategy. They begin by stating the obvious: PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS only works well if each and every one of the 100 participants are on a level playing field. In a game with Permadeath, an aimbotter or wallhacker can ruin a lot of people's evenings quite quickly.
A dedicated team has been formed within PUBG Corporation to combat the cheating problem that is currently affecting the game. In addition, the devs have come up with their own anti-cheat solution that should be introduced to the game's live servers in the next few days.
Players will no longer be able to use Steam Family Sharing with PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS due to a number of vulnerabilities that were able to be exploited. The post was not specific as to whether these vulnerabilities were in Steam, the PUBG client, or both. A number of "helper" programs that might not necessarily be considered cheating but still give players an edge are going to be blocked, and any software that hooks into the game and gives players an advantage will likely get the same treatment. Lastly, the game's in-game report function is getting some streamlining that should allow the devs to handle troublesome players quicker.
As for the source of all of these cheaters, it seems that the community agrees with BattlEye's assessment from last year - the comments of the Steam Community news post are filled with demands that the developers region-lock China. Regardless of the source, the people behind PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS have an escalating cheating problem to deal with, and they're putting forth a good show of commitment to handling the problem before it gets out of control.
