Since the Early Access release of Hunt: Showdown, we've seen quite a lot of questions and comments in regards to cheaters. We wanted to take some time to address a number of concerns that have been expressed by the community and give some detail on how we are working to create a fair, secure environment for our players.
Please note: we are intentionally leaving out some of the more intricate details and numbers around our anti-cheat efforts to avoid revealing anything which cheaters and cheat program developers may take advantage of.
State of play: removing cheaters and Easy Anti-Cheat
As most of you are aware, Hunt uses Easy Anti-Cheat as its primary anti-cheat system. For more information on Easy Anti-Cheat you can visit their site: https://www.easy.ac/.
Over the past few weeks, EAC has been actively banning accounts from Hunt for anti-cheat violations, and as some of you have noticed, this included a recent ban wave that sanctioned a large number of accounts. This is in part thanks to members of the community who have brought some commonly used cheats to our attention. When a report is received, we forward it to EAC for further investigation, and if it is legit, you can be sure that anyone using it will be caught pretty soon after the fact.
Common issues that can give the perception of cheating
In some of the feedback we have received, we have noticed reports on issues that can be explained by specific bugs in the game. When these bugs are encountered, it can be easy to misinterpret them as something suspicious. Here are some of the most common:
· Missing walls/textures not loading – From time to time an entire wall will not render, exposing anyone who was concealed behind it. This is a bug we are aware of and not a wall hack.
· Weapon sound bug – If you die without hearing a shot two things may have happened: you have been shot by a silenced pistol, or you have encountered a bug where shots produce no sound.
· Missing weapon – If you are killed by someone with no weapon in their hand, you have encountered a visual bug related to the weapon animation. Though seemingly unarmed, the player's weapon has gotten stuck somewhere else on the map. For them, everything appears as usual, and they are still able to fire.
· Teleporting players/direct hits not registering – Teleporting hunters and hits that do not register normally is a connectivity issue. In some cases, hits will not register because of a server desync or disconnecting from the backend. Teleporting Hunters is usually due to latency/lag spikes.
· Objects popping - Objects such as trees, bushes, and even extraction points can disappear from view when aiming or moving. If you are hiding behind something, it could disappear, exposing your Hunter to enemy players.
What are the next steps?
Anti-cheat is an ever-changing, constantly growing system, and it needs constant upkeep. Going forward, we will be looking at further ways to keep cheaters out of the game. This will include looking into to more ways to detect players who prefer to circumvent the fair rules of the game, as well as looking at removing those that cheat from our leaderboard. This will be an ongoing process that we will keep you updated on in the future.
How can you help?
If you wish to report a cheat/cheater that you have encountered in-game or online, then please report them to our Customer Support team for further investigation. You can do so by creating a ticket at https://huntshowdown.kayako.com/. We ask, however, that if you see videos online “advertising" cheats to not post them on our official channels. We don't want to use our spaces to advertise potential cheats. Forwarding these to our support team will ensure that they are investigated thoroughly.
As always, please continue to give feedback on our Steam forums, official social media channels, and our official Discord. While we might not be able to directly respond to everything, you can rest assured that these messages are being read and relayed to the team every day.