Hunters,

We have an update for you regarding cheaters, as well as what we have implemented so far and what the future next steps look like in order to deter them.

Since introducing our Fair Play Task Force, we have decided to focus on two key points when it comes to cheaters. The first is reducing the time to react when someone is hindering the game's fairness and making faster sanctions against them. The second is to improve the accuracy of our systems by gathering compelling evidence against players we strongly suspect of cheating and being able to quickly ban them.

What the Upgrades Have Brought

Groundwork

With Update 2.0, we upgraded our anti-cheater service (Easy Anti-Cheat, referred to going forward as EAC) alongside our workflows. With this update, we have seen a huge uptick of cheaters which we otherwise might not have found manually. In total, we have banned over 2,300 people since the release of 2.0.

What we can see on the graph is that we had a surge of automated bans, as the new EAC upgrade caught cheaters that originally flew under the radar. We then see a return to a pre-upgrade ban rate—this is to be expected, but by having the ability to upgrade EAC more regularly, those players will stay unnoticed for less time.

The update has brought short-term improvements in the form of speedier automated detection systems (as shown below) as well as longer term improvements by allowing us to upgrade EAC in a faster and more stable way.

Emerging Issues

Some players reported an exploit which allowed the purchase of Traits which were not supposed to be purchasable, and we have added a fix for this in the latest backend update.

We have also tracked and taken action against people who intentionally used this exploit to gain a competitive advantage. A total of 269 players who abused this exploit in live games have been banned, and this is reflected in this week's numbers. Players who used the exploit but did not join a game have not had their account suspended, but any Hunters who benefitted from the exploit have been removed from their rosters.

In the future, if you encounter this type of exploit, please report it and do not use it for competitive advantage. This allows us to fix the exploits faster and reduce the impact on competitive integrity. It will also allow you to keep your account out of the ban waves and keeps your Hunters safe in your inventory. If we are not aware of an exploit, it does not mean that it's ok to use it. Once it's on our radar, we will take action and ban people retroactively.

(The graph below shows the ban trend with the first

spike displaying the launch of 2.0 with new EAC, and the second spike is the

ban of exploit abusers.)

Extra Precautions Taken

We acknowledge that while the EAC upgrade improved the automatic bans, it is not enough in a world where cheating is a major topic for online games. This is why we are pursuing additional options which are specifically tailored to Hunt.

One of the options is working on a data-orientated approach. This allows us to track patterns of suspicious behavior which are specific to Hunt that EAC might not detect. We have already identified profiles that would have flown under the radar just weeks ago, so we are confident that this is a good option to roll out on a large scale.

We are working hand-in-hand with this solution to improve our internal tools, which allow us to identify and collect evidence against players that we already suspect of cheating. And as much as we would like to give you numbers, the details of that will have to stay secret for a bit longer. We'll be covering the topic more extensively very soon, so stay tuned!

We have other ideas that are still cooking, and while some of it is already bringing results that we can use, some of it is still in an experimental phase. Once it passes our internal tests, we will be scaling up these new solutions and automating the process. This means lower sanctioning times and more efficient ways of targeting cheaters.

Known Issues

The issue of players hiding their identities via an exploit has been fixed. We are aware there are ways to hide nicknames/player names, so we're observing this and taking additional steps to combat this.

We also want to shine a light on another known issue—the no-shadow exploit, which has been partially fixed on our side. This is because the new lighting system and enforced “medium" lighting quality limited the impact, but we still need to examine the engine components that are affected by these changes, so please hold tight!

Connectivity Matchmaking

Another issue that we're aware of is the problems that arise from high ping players in-game. Some plans are in place, and we want to finalize the design of them once the study is done. That might look like making ping part of the matchmaking process and separating those with high ping from the rest of the player base to make the experience fair for everyone. As mentioned, this is just something we are looking into and is not set in stone just yet. We need to properly test the solutions and will let you know once we have decided on a final call.

Reporting Feedback Feature

As for reporting feedback, we hear you on the issue that reporting cheaters could be more gratifying. We have not forgotten the pop-up feature we promised where you can see how many people we have taken disciplinary action on when you report an exploit. Due to the current UI player feedback, we are prioritizing that for now, but will look at the pop-up feature once we have more resources available.

How To Report Players

While automatic bans are good for banning cheaters en masse, community reporting is still extremely important to us, as it gives us accurate info as well as factors that might not be picked up by software. Please keep up the good work in reporting cheaters, as it is extremely useful to us as a team!

As a reminder, you can report cheaters by the following methods:

• If you are killed by someone that you would like to report, while on the Death Screen, you can click on "SHOW KILLER PROFILE" or press "R", then select "Report". You can then fill in any report reasons that apply to the case and add any additional information.
• After the Mission is over, from the Last Mission "Team Details" menu, you can click on the profile you would like to report, then click on "ACTIONS MENU" or press "F", select "Report", and proceed as outlined above.

· You can report via our website if you have any additional context you would like to share. You can do this by going to www.huntshowdown.com . In the bottom right corner of the screen, you'll see "Please log in for support". After logging in, open a new ticket, select your language and platform as well as "I'd like to report another player" and the bot will guide you through the process.

We are still working on a solution to provide player feedback on sanctions or bans that resulted from your reports, but it is not ready to roll out yet. We have prioritized all the efforts detailed above as more critical to providing a fairer environment sooner, and we continue to pursue improved feedback on reporting as well.

We hope this answers a few questions as to what we are planning and have implemented around cheaters. It's a sensitive topic and one we take seriously. Stay tuned for more updates via our social media channels. Thank you again for your continued support for Hunt: Showdown 1896, and we'll see you in the bayou (and the mountains).

---