PUBG has cracked down on cheating in recent months. Not only have players been banned, but 12 pro players have since been punished for what is being described as PUBG “radar hacking”.
The purge started back in December, when PUBG banned 30,000 players (via Kotaku) along with 4 pros. This ties into a cheat method known as “radar hacking”. It is what it says: a radar hack that uses a VPN to read packets of data sent to servers and not the game files themselves, allowing cheaters to see their opponents location on a second screen.
This method of cheating had been hard to detect until recently; the team at PUBG Corp figured out a method to see who had been using this hack, and as a result troves of people have been suspended from play.
PUBG announced a few days ago in a tweet that a further 12 people have been punished for using this method of cheating. Six players received three-year suspensions, while those who used it in non-competitive play got two. Two more got three-year suspensions not for cheating, but knowing that people were using this method of cheating.
Sans domicile fixe, who are part of PUBG’s contender’s league, will only be able to re-join events once they assemble an entirely new roster.
In the future, PUBG Corp has said that anyone who participates in eSports competition will go through a “comprehensive background check” on all their accounts, with anyone sporting suspicious activity being banned from competing.
PUBG has had massive success since its release; in 2017 it represented 14 percent of Steam’s game sales revenue. Back in June, it had reached 400 million players, becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
But another game has taken over the battle royal spotlight: Fortnite. When the game launched last year, it became an instant cultural phenomenon. While PUBG commanded an impressive $100 million in revenue on Apple’s iOS, Fortnite quadrupled that with $455 million.
