Here at GAMINGbible, we think cheaters are lame. They're right up there with people who stand on the left side of London Underground escalators and don't give up seats for old people, that's how bad they are. That's why we're always happy to see developers coming up with creative solutions to put those who don't play by the rules in their place.
There's no secret that Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has been having problems with cheaters. The alternative battle royale is one of the most popular releases so far this year, and players are reporting seeing people using hacks in as many as 25% of games. Not ideal. The good news is that developer Mediatonic has been working hard on multiple ways to combat the problem - including forcing cheaters to play together on something it called "Cheater Island".
"At launch, we had some of our own cheat detection built into the game. We weren't banning anyone at this point, just gathering data carefully. We wanted to be 100% sure that our cheat detection would only catch people who were legitimately cheating," A tweet from the official Fall Guys account explained "After we confirmed that it was working, we secretly launched Fall Guys Cheater Island."
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"Our cheat detection system was good but we hadn't expected so many players and we had no idea the lengths that some players would go to cheat. We tried to create a system around honesty," the studio continued. "But as soon as we realized we were in an ARMS RACE we called up the experts at Epic."
Unfortunately, Mediatonic eventually made the decision to quietly remove Cheater Island after multiple videos of matches filled with cheaters started to surface online. The studio came to the entirely understandable conclusion that such videos just made the game look back, and would put off any potential players.
While Cheater Island may be a thing of the past, Mediatonic is far from finished waging war on cheaters. In an update last week, the studio promised that it will soon be enabling the same anti-cheat software used by games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, which should bring the ban hammer down in a big way.
Featured Image Credit: MediatonicTopics: Fall Guys, PlayStation, PC
