Image courtesy of Blue Hole
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds recently passed two million concurrent players, absolutely smashing Dota 2's 1.3 million concurrent players, the previous record. It's not hard to imagine, then, that Battlegrounds is filled with people trying to get an edge by cheating. The number is hard to wrap your head around, actually. According to BattlEye, the anti-cheat software used by Battlegrounds, between 6,000 and 13,000 cheaters are banned each day.All told, BattlEye said more than 322,000 people have been banned from Battlegrounds for cheating, which is "twice as many as posted by @PLAYERUNKNOWN just a month ago." Nearly 20,000 were banned in the last 24 hours.The company said "the vast majority" of cheating is coming from China."We are just trying to give a rough idea," said the company, in response to a question about choosing to highlight China. "Cheating is quite popular in China, no discrimination intended."It would be really interesting to see a regional breakdown of cheaters?BattlEye pointed out another interesting statistic. According to SteamDB, which tracks various Steam-related statistics, game-specific bans have risen significantly in 2017, which BattlEye attributes to the growing popularity of Battlegrounds (and cheaters).
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Given that Battlegrounds still hasn't left early access, there's good reason to think this will continue to be an issue. I'm going to blame all my deaths on this, too.Follow Patrick on Twitter. If you have a tip or a story idea, drop him an email: patrick.klepek@vice.com.Have thoughts? Swing by Waypoints forums to share them!