In a new dev update, developer People Can Fly has thoroughly addressed the topic of cheating in Outriders. They explained how to deal with cheaters. MeinMMO summarizes the important information for you.
This is what the developers say: In the dev update published in the Outriders subreddit, People Can Fly has now released some information about cheaters in the demo. They also clarified how they plan to handle future cheaters.
They explained what counts as cheating and what does not. Initially, cheaters will not be permanently banned, but there will still be consequences. The penalties affect matchmaking, and moreover, cheating players who are caught will be made publicly visible.
Cheaters will be marked with a mark of shame
This is how they plan to combat cheaters: The developers emphasize that they have extensive means to identify cheaters. They write: “We see you all. Even those who have given themselves over 600 legendary weapons.” Especially with the 10 legendary weapons from the demo, most players cheated.
They provide a list of consequences:
- Exposed cheaters receive a watermark as a mark that is visible to all other players
- Cheaters themselves see this “branding” in the HUD, to clearly mark their recordings
- Cheaters are excluded from the regular player search
- The player search will take significantly longer to connect cheaters with others
- As the Square account is affected, this applies regardless of the platform
The developers are currently refraining from permanent bans. However, anyone who has cheated in the demo must delete all their characters to “cleanse” their account. Otherwise, these measures will take effect at the release.
200 identified cheaters in the demo
The developers also address how many cheaters they caught in the demo. The number is around 200 identified cheaters.
At this point, the demo had recorded around 2 million players. People Can Fly assumes that the ratio of “normal” players to cheaters will remain the same after the release.
What is considered cheating? These are the criteria from the developers:
- Playing without Easy Anti-Cheat or circumventing the protection
- Modifying files to influence levels, skills, inventory, etc.
- Manipulating in-game time to manipulate vendor offers
- Using trainer programs to gain advantages in the game
- Employing programs for aimbots, wallhacks, etc.
Tools that improve game performance and similar are not classified as cheating.
Farming items by exploiting game mechanics is not considered cheating. Even though the developers deem it ethically questionable how much the captain was mistreated in the demo: “RIPThatCaptain”.
The captain was a miniboss in the Outriders demo who was particularly often taken down by players. According to a tweet from Outriders, he was taken down over 30 million times – and the post is already several days old.
Killing the captain is the most popular farming method in the demo, which we have listed alongside others here: The 5 best farming spots for legendary weapons in the Outriders demo
People Can Fly also points out that these rules could be adjusted in the future.
What do you think about the anti-cheat policy? Would you like to see harsher penalties? Or is this the right approach? Let us know in the comments.
In the dev update, the developers also discussed start times and preload: Outriders reveals exact release times for all platforms and pre-load
