PUBG banned over 1 million players in January

[Nergal]

 

New system to roll out today/early tomorrow depending on where you are.

Having drank into the wee hours of January 1 during new year celebrations, I'd technically made an arse of the Jan Ban/Dry January before it'd even started. I thereafter made it to January 12, before succumbing to a boozy weekend because I've clearly got no willpower.

Luckily for us, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp is better dedicated to the cause. Instead of abstaining from alcohol, though, it's clamping down on cheaters—having banned one million rule-breaking players in January alone.

That's according to Battleye, the anti-cheat analysis software that governs the battle royale shooter's servers. Taking to Twitter, it said: "We have banned over 1,044,000 PUBG cheaters in January alone, unfortunately things continue to escalate."

This comes off the back of PUBG Corp's recent moves to block Steam family sharing, as well as its new and incoming "anti-cheat solution". More information on the latter can be found via this blog post, which explains programs that hook into the game's files will be blocked. One of the programs in question is the popular post-processing tool ReShade.

"The new anti-cheat feature will block different helper programs that alter the graphics or aid in gameplay in some way," reads the PUBG blog. "What these programs have in common is that they all hook into our game and transform game files. Programs that are not used to gain an unfair advantage can also be blocked if they behave like cheats.

"One of the popular programs that will be blocked is ReShade. You will not be banned for having it on system but you will no longer be able to play PUBG while it is installed. Please uninstall ReShade (or any other blocked program) and launch the game again. Some players may find that reinstalling PUBG is also necessary."

PUBG's latest anti-cheat measures are expected to roll out today at 6pm PT/tomorrow at 2am GMT.