PUBG publisher enlists police to catch and arrest cheaters

Tencent, the Chinese publisher for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), is going after cheaters in the online Battle Royale game in a big way. Police have been enlisted by the company to “root out the underground rings that make and sell cheat software”. In fact, Tencent have already “helped law enforcement agents uncover at least 30 cases and arrest 120 people suspected of designing programs that confer unfair advantages”.

The report comes via Bloomberg who suggest that widespread use of cheats in the game are a big concern to the game’s developers and publishers since it can annoy and scare off legitimate players.

The police operation is targeted at the Chinese population of gamers where cheating is particularly prevalent. So prevalent that PlayerUnknown himself has already suggested that they will be ping locking servers to stop the spread of cheaters heading to other regions, alongside other benefits.

ICYMI on our dev blog in December, we announced we’re working to create a system that will provide a fair gameplay experience for all players. These systems take time to build & implement on the servers without major issues, so please bear with us!https://t.co/oxmuka5OZt pic.twitter.com/yIgjxcEUrD

— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) January 12, 2018

How successful this police operation ends up being is still yet to be seen. Although the severity of the actions being taken will hopefully send a very strong message to cheat distributors and hopefully make the game a more fair battleground.