In the Horror Coop Game Phasmophobia, the goal is actually to get scared. But when hackers make shocking moments occur in supposedly safe spaces, causing streamers to be terrified, the fun ends for many. Read here what happened and how to protect yourself.
What is Phasmophobia? Phasmophobia is a coop game where you and 3 other players track down a ghost in a haunted house. The ghost actively communicates with you, and the longer it takes to get rid of it, the more dangerous and scarier the situation becomes. To do this, the game offers you various items to identify the ghost.
What happened? The game revolves around horror. Fear and solid shock moments. But these occur directly in the game. However, some streamers were terribly scared because hackers made the creepy ghosts appear in the lobby before the game.
The lobby is usually a safe zone where players gather for the upcoming mission or recover from the shock between games. It’s quite unfortunate when suddenly a spooky howling ghost appears and grabs the players with disgusting ghost hands.
Many a streamer visibly lost their composure, and streamer JasminWolfe even broke down in tears. In emotional tweets, she urged the hackers to please stop.
But how do such attacks even occur, and what can be done about them?
Hackers Use Mods for Terror
What’s Behind It? The cause of the unwanted ghost appearances are likely mods. Phasmophobia is a PvE coop game, and the developers have not implemented an anti-cheat protection. But that seems to be the problem, as it appears to be quite easy for hackers to invade lobbies and make changes to the game via cheats/mods.
There has also been a statement from the developers:
We are aware that there have been a number of rounds in which the game has been modified using third-party tools (cheats). These include changes such as increasing player limits, altering AI behavior, and simply increasing cash or levels. We cannot support this as it causes a number of problems throughout the game, including corrupting saved games and destabilizing servers for other players.
How Can You Protect Yourself? Until the developers do something about the problem, you should first stay away from lobbies that are clearly “modded”. You can often recognize these by the fact that more than 4 players are in them. To be sure that no hacker comes to you, streamer 8Bit advises using the beta version of the game. The developers reportedly suggested this to him.
If you like Phasmophobia despite the current problem with hackers and want even more scary games, check out our list of the 5 best horror games for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. There you might find more horror shockers that will bring you joy and fright.
