We want people to have fun, but not at the expense of others
So we kept lowering the threshold
So...
If you were tagged as a cheater... you'd be able to finish the game you were in
Then, the next time you tried to matchmake... you would ONLY be able to matchmake with other Cheaters (Without realising)
You were there...
You'd made it...
Queuing for Cheater Islandβ’
Now, if you can imagine:
You need 40+ players to actually populate a game.
Cheater Island isn't a location in the real world...
Cheater Island had it's own set of global servers
You'd need enough cheaters in your region in order to start a Cheater Island game
If there weren't enough cheaters... you'd all just be falling forever...
There were a few genuine bugs that would cause similar things to happen...
But mostly, when people said they were "Falling forever"...
They were cheaters and we didn't want to give them extra info
I'm sure you've noticed...
We try to be super open and upfront with you in all of our communications
It's been very difficult to talk about cheaters though... because everything we say... gives the cheaters more ammo
They were using any info to improve their cheating...
For a long time, there weren't enough cheaters to actually start these matches up
As we lowered the threshold on our detection, more and more cheaters were getting caught
But still... no Cheater Island matches
Cheaters were all falling forever and saying the game was broken...
At this point...
Cheaters started to realise that they could team up with friends who weren't cheaters... and they could matchmake with them...
They were escaping Cheater Island π
π¨ Oh no π¨
We raced to patch this out before they all realised
Cheaters also realised that they could use family-sharing to share their game to another account... and then use the other account to bypass Cheater Island
We disabled Family-Sharing to fix this problem
Dealing with cheaters is difficult... they're honestly very crafty
During all of this time... we kept increasing the thresholds on our cheat detection. We were 100% confident that anyone being flagged as a cheater was DEFINITELY cheating.
This was super important to us.
We didn't want to falsely ban anyone.
Last week... something exciting happened!
There were finally enough cheaters to actually matchmake and create Cheater Island matches!
Here's a new problem though...
People were uploading videos that we *think* are Cheater Island...
Somebody actually uploaded this video to Reddit with the title:
"Ever played a round of Fall Mountain where all the players are cheating?"
The problem is... this LOOKS like Cheater Island but we can't be 100% sure
Here's another video that we think is Cheater Island
The person recording isn't cheating...
Either they didn't cheat, just for the video...
Or it's a genuine server and a legit player...
Either way, it makes the game look bad
We DO know that Cheater Island matches were happening
We just DON'T know if that's what those videos show
For that reason, we have closed down Cheater Island
Instead, cheaters are now unable to login
We are continuously improving the threshold on our cheat detection too
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"... but as soon as we realised we were in an ARMS RACE we called up the experts at Epic
Now...
Our next update is called:
BIG YEETUS AND ANTI-CHEATUS
I'll tell you more about the Yeetus part later
But the Anti-Cheatus part...
We're actually adding Epic's Anti-Cheat which will be a huge step forward as we continue to improve things!
COMING SOON
I realise this has been an insanely long thread...
But...
That's the story of Cheater Island...
And the reasoning behind why we've been so cryptic and vague!
π΅οΈπ
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[PC] Our new anti-cheating system for PC is now in!
[PC] Added ability to bind game actions to mouse buttons
[PS4] Improved stability when creating parties on PS4
Objects in certain rounds will now have dynamic variations from one playthrough to the next, including new objects entirely. We plan to expand this system in the future to more rounds.