EA versus Battlefield 1 Cheaters

battlefield-1Source: Blue’s News

A post on the Battlefield Website has an update on EA’s ongoing battle against Battlefield 1 cheaters. They address concerns they’ve heard voiced by players and talk about current and future efforts to weed out miscreants. Here’s a bit:

State of Play: Removing Cheaters

Over the past six months, we’ve steadily ramped up our anti-cheat efforts, working closely with the FairFight team to detect and remove more cheaters than ever before. In October alone, we sanctioned over 8,500 accounts. Since then, instances of cheating have declined. While we have made significant gains, we still can do more.

Improvements to FairFight In-game Messaging

Battlefield 1 veterans may remember the global messaging that was sent every time FairFight had acted against a player. As we ramped up our efforts against cheaters, these messages became a distraction from other in-game discussions, and they were disabled a few months ago based on your feedback. However, our communication about this created some questions. Going forward, our communication will be more clear, transparent, and proactive.

Soon, you’ll see a new form of FairFight messaging. This will condense the combined bans from the last 24 hours into a single in-game post, sent every few hours.

How and When a Player Gets Sanctioned

We saw a rise in the number of social media posts claiming FairFight had banned players incorrectly after the October ban wave mentioned above. However, we are confident that our detection methods produce accurate results. Cheat developers may be attempting to manipulate players’ minds about anti-cheat tools, and to leverage detection information from game developers.

A common misconception regarding FairFight is that higher skilled players are more likely to get sanctioned due to their improved match stats. This is not correct; it is not possible to be banned simply for being skilled.