Ubisoft needs to get a grip of XDefiant’s hacker situation
UbisoftXDefiant is taking the FPS world by storm and as the popularity of Ubisoft’s Arena Shooter increases, the challenge Ubisoft now faces is to cut cheaters out of the picture.
Many people have begun to encounter issues and negative experiences while trying out Ubisoft’s FTP Arena Shooter. Some XDefiant players have been seen abusing mechanics or going a step further, using hacks to ruin games.
Members of the game’s community have been turning to Ubisoft’s official channels to report these issues, mostly to XDefiant’s official X account, where their reports are public for all to see.
Though, some have been expecting more from Ubisoft in terms of tackling these issues head-on.
On May 27, one user took to Reddit to report a cheater in their game – and this is something I have also experienced in games on European servers but not yet screenshotted.
They said: “How lame do you have to be to cheat in a game that came out 5 days ago?”
Ubisoft/Select_Land_5300Before this, other Reddit users also reported having flagrant cases of cheating during their matches:
“Not even 3 days after launch and we already have cheaters in the game. I was in a match where this one guy on the enemy team got over 80 kills with a vector just lasering everyone across all ranges. Nothing but him on the kill feed.”
Some have said that if this issue is not resolved promptly, “the game will die like The Finals.”
And though this is only the opinion of a moderate group among XDefiant’s community, if a problem persists for too long, it could quickly escalate into an uncontrollable chain reaction.
FPS players are no strangers to similar events, with the likes of Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefield, Tarkov, Apex, CoD, and many others suffering the same fate. Cheating is a serious issue and one of the top reasons why players stop playing a trending game.
The internal reporting system seems to work just fine, though its anti-cheat engine, BattleEye, could definitely use some improvements to detect cases of cheating on the go.
A clear example of a dynamic anti-cheat engine is Ricochet, which spots cheaters during gameplay and immediately kicks or bans them depending on the gravity of their foul play. Due to its zero-tolerance policy, some users have filed complaints about unfair bans happening for silly reasons in the past.
While examples of open lines of communication with the players have proven to be a powerful tool to improve Early Access games, XDefiant is a totally different case. The game is already in its Preseason stage, and a full launch led to a considerable increase in popularity.
If Ubisoft want to keep enjoying XDefiant’s success, they should probably follow the example of Gray Zone Warfare developers. Hear out the players and keep their anti-cheat system up to date to stop the snowball before it comes crashing down.