PUBG Has Banned Over 150,000 Cheaters So Far

Published: September 16, 2017 9:30 AM /

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PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

Less than two weeks ago the wildly popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds crossed the 10 million units sold mark, which is an incredible feat considering it only came to Steam's early access in March. A popular game with a lot of players and a ton of attention on places like Twitch is going to attract a lot of people, those that cheat among them. Brendan Greene, the titular "PlayerUnknown," tweeted out that so far 150,000 of those cheaters have been banned so far and 8,000 of those came in just 24 hours between September 12th and 13th.

We don't know if that 8,000 is an outlier but considering PUBG gained approximately a million owners (+/- 97kish) between September 7th and September 14th according to Steam Spy, a mere week, that number is likely to only go up. And with 150,000 banned so far, that is a little over 1% of the playerbase in total.

PUBG has taken a hard stance on cheaters and hackers, with Greene telling Eurogamer: "If you're caught cheating or using any third-party tool that gives you an advantage we ban you straight away, permanent ban, no appeal." This is likely a lesson learned from other online games of similar nature, like DayZ where cheats have become so prominent and part of the game the developers are now combating a market made for selling said cheats.

Reporting someone cheating while playing PUBG is a pretty simple process. Just go to this link and follow the instructions there. Basically, you create a forum topic, supply a name, evidence, and the date and time of the offense. From there, the claim is investigated, and if found to be true, a permanent ban will be put in place with, as Greene said, no appeal.

PUBG bans have been met with some controversy, the most significant being their approach to steam sniping—those that watch streamers and use the stream to find and kill them. The saga is mostly detailed in this Reddit thread, but the core of the issue is: how can PUBG know or prove that someone was stream sniping to ban the player? Some argue that it's impossible to prove and that PUBG was showing some favoritism towards a popular streamer. In response, Brendan Greene released this statement via Twitter:

https://twitter.com/PLAYERUNKNOWN/status/891315798488240128

So, it seems PUBG is committed to its hardline stance when it comes to cheating, though some may think they are being overzealous.

Have you encountered much cheating or hacking in PUBG? How does it compare to other games? Let us know in the comments below!

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Andrew Otton
| Editor in Chief

Andrew is the Editor in Chief at TechRaptor. Conned into a love of gaming by Nintendo at a young age, Andrew has been chasing the dragon spawned by Super… More about Andrew

More Info About This Game
Learn more about PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Developer
PUBG Corp
Publisher
Bluehole
Platforms
Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4
Release Date
December 21, 2017 (Calendar)
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