Hi everyone,
I’ve had a few questions on this subject, so in this week’s dev update I will talk about cheating in game and the different approaches we’re taking to tackle the issue. First and foremost it is player feedback that helps us identify and then deal with cheating. This is especially true if a new method has been discovered to cheat in the game and that brings it to our attention to look into. Reporting cheats also means that we can conduct a thorough investigation of that player’s history to confirm if they have ever cheated or not.
We don’t just rely on player reports. We also have various tools that inform us of incidents of cheating. We’ll then review all incidents of cheating to ensure we take the correct course of action. In a few cases it can be that we identify a cheat that can’t be proven retrospectively but we can at least block and/or track the same behaviour for the future. We are constantly expanding the behaviours and markers that can be detected by the game and the servers.
We’re able to detect a variety of cheating instances which fall into these main areas: account trading, client hacking, bug exploits and player harassment or abuse. I’ve included account trading and harassment here because they follow a similar procedure to investigating cheating.
If we determine that a player has cheated (or some other proscribed action) then we have a range of measures that we can apply based on the seriousness of the action. For minor issues we can issue a warning, this is communicated to the player by customer support. Warnings are discretional only and not an automatic first step in the process. Indeed for serious issues we are likely to proceed immediately to the higher level penalties. We can also remove any quantifiable gains from the player if that is deemed appropriate.
We also have the concept of a shadow ban. A shadow ban will allow an player to continue playing Elite: Dangerous but will put them on a separate server that won’t affect any of our honest players; or the galaxy simulation. A player can be shadow banned for a day, a week or permanently depending on severity of the action and if the player repeatedly performs prohibited actions.
There is also the option for a permanent ban, this would only usually apply to account trading, severe harassment or abusive players.
You can help us react to incidents of cheating by remaining vigilant and help us by continuing to report players in game who you believe are cheating so we can investigate further.
On a lighter note, this week also saw the release of the latest Mac beta build with a some good performance improvements and stability fixes.
Thanks
Michael
