Permanent Bans For Cheating In The Division

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Ubisoft has announced permanent bans for people caught cheating in The Division. Although the company has already taken action against over thirty thousand accounts, including thirty eight hundred permanent bans, that is just the start. No more warnings will be given, if you are caught cheating now you will be permanently banned, even if it is your first offense. Here's a snippet from the blog post:

This marked the beginning of an intensive campaign during which actions were taken against a total of over 30,000 accounts, including 3,800 permanent bans. This led to a significantly improved experience, particularly in the Dark Zone. Following this campaign of suspensions and bans, it also became clear that while huge progress has been made in terms of cheat detection, our 14 days suspension on first offense policy has not been dissuasive enough. Judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game, we have now decided to push our policy one step further: we will now start applying permanent bans on first offense when players are caught using cheat engines and we will communicate clearly when new ban waves are taking place.
 
now if only perma bans would come to DOOM 4...

glad to see this becoming an industry standard response
 
This is largely ineffective in free to play games unfortunately. Planetside 2 has many hackers who keep coming back, and they've been proven powerless to stop them from creating new accounts.
 
This policy should have been in effect from day 1 and should be clearly stated in the installation and login screens, so no one can claim they didn't know. And don't announce when the checks are being made. They should be in place full time.

Hope they have a decent appeals process, I am sure there will be a few false positives.
 
People don't accidentally cheat games. The second anything like that is installed the user has already decided to cheat so they should be banned without ANY second chance.

Every developer should do this. It should be zero-tolerance from day 0.
 
Too little, too late. I didn't personally run into more than 2 or 3 cheaters in the 200+ hours I have logged, but people have been leaving in droves for this and a multitude of other reasons. Even if we consider that they've actually been fixing a large number of bugs lately, they're still managing to screw things up like not including in the patch notes that they've hard capped crit hit chance well below the possible limit, claimed weapon balancing was coming(so something other than an SMG and m1a would be useful) and delayed it(for those unaware, an SMG will outperform an LMG at just about any range, which is absurd. and the bolt action marksman rifles only do a few percent more damage than the m1a that fires 5 times as fast), took months to stop players from using exploits known since the beta to farm their end-game content and then outgear people for PvP, balanced their PvP around 1 shot to the back of the head battles...

The game is a mess and this policy should have been in effect from the start instead of going to reddit and claiming some nonsense about a law in europe preventing them from doing it when plenty of other devs and publishers don't have such an issue.
 
Glad to see them finally take this hard line. Granted, silly, but you have to factor that it's Ubisoft's first game of this nature.

Not sure I will go back into it that much as it became a grind which was no fun and the PVP is biased to more hardcore players. Casual play does not give you the same power sadly. The gains seem exponential for PVP,there is a lot of time to get to the sharp rise though.
 
MavericK said:
Now if only they would take this action for R6: Siege...
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Actually, they did update the code of conduct for r6 siege(I think they actually announced it for r6 before the division) Code of Conduct Update: Up to Permanent Ban for First Offense Cheaters | Rainbow Six® Siege Game News & Updates | Ubisoft® (US)

Koko56 said:
Glad to see them finally take this hard line. Granted, silly, but you have to factor that it's Ubisoft's first game of this nature.
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I honestly hate that excuse. It may be their first game of this type, but it's not their first PC multiplayer game, and they've had plenty of examples over the years of what happens when you let cheaters run rampant. The fact is that they did nothing for months(till their community managers finally started getting 1 shotted by AKs from across the map live on stream), while letting it blow out of control.

The same "it's their first game of this type" excuse was given for the horrid loot system, as if they had no other examples over the years to look at well before release and see what happens when people get fed up with a stingy loot system in a loot game. The only reason the loot was so scarce is that they had a bunch of developers from pay-will ridden mobile games on board. They could have seen "loot 2.0" and how it affected the Diablo 3 community in a positive way ages ago while the division was still in development, but ignored it.
 
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Too late. If you check steam charts, you'll see that the community has dropped from an average of 65k to what is now an average of 8.5k.

Sure, that's just those tied into steam and not UPlay. But it's a large enough sample of the PC population to be relevant percentage wise to the entire PC population.
 
Sonicks said:
People don't accidentally cheat games. The second anything like that is installed the user has already decided to cheat so they should be banned without ANY second chance.

Every developer should do this. It should be zero-tolerance from day 0.
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I don't play division, but I have been kicked offline on different games for "cheating" even though I wasn't, and never did.

That hasn't happened in quite a while, and I don't even remember what game(s) that happened to me on though.
 
Spidey329 said:
Too late. If you check steam charts, you'll see that the community has dropped from an average of 65k to what is now an average of 8.5k.

Sure, that's just those tied into steam and not UPlay. But it's a large enough sample of the PC population to be relevant percentage wise to the entire population.
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Wouldn't be surprised if there was a similar percentage drop for those who purchased through UPlay.
 
Sedriss said:
I personally feel this should be for all games that are paid for. I guess ubisoft is doing this for Siege as well. Good. I actually enjoy that game a lot. Tired of the wall hacks.
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I have gone away from playing games on the pc as my pc isnt to snuff to play todays games... q6600 / geforce 560 gt... but I even stopped playing xbox one games. My oldest has been bummed lately as I heard him playing on line (using my turtlebeach x42 headset so he didnt know i was near) say to a friend...

Yeah my dad and I used to clean up big time against cheaters. We would play kill confirmed and I (my son) would snipe the shit out of people by not cheating and sniping the cheaters and Id cover him to get the tags.. they were the days...


I just lost all ambition as the games get tougher (yes you need to get more skill) you are also fighting all the hackers making it not fun. I work a lot... drive 65miles each way for work, kids in sports and I coach... so when I play I want to go play and have fun... not deal with this crap.

I actually had fun this weekend. I played 2 matches of nuketown as COD Black ops is a free port to xbox one... then a hacker got on and i put the controller down and walked away... sheeze...


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hell my gamer tag is TeleFragger which I was given by a guy online in Quake III Arena days. I could read where people were going for the teleports and I would jump in and "Tele-Frag" them.... was tough to beat me... guy kept saying.. dude you Telefragged me AGAIN.. then started calling me the TeleFragger thus I kept it...
 
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
 
gxp500 said:
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
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yes it is but how to get to that point is unknown...

now while it isnt cheating there is maps like.. sorry i forget which Modern Warfare... but there was a map with containers... you just spawn holding fire button and backup... people spawn in front of you... while your killing them then all of a sudden you back into a guy that knifes you in the back...

lvl boost map... you could level up really fast...

so is that cheating? you end up level 50, unlocked everything then go and play normal matches...
 
Sonicks said:
People don't accidentally cheat games. The second anything like that is installed the user has already decided to cheat so they should be banned without ANY second chance.

Every developer should do this. It should be zero-tolerance from day 0.
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Yes and no. I agree with your viewpoint, but the way the cheat is defined has some play here.

Here are two cases:
1. Someone pirates the game with a cheat pre-installed. They accidentally cheated. Regardless, they still deserve permaban because they didn't pay for the game and thus not contributing to the costs of maintaining multiplayer services.
2. Overlay programs have been known to cause false positives. Case in point, MSI Afterburner during earlier versions was being mistaken by Punkbuster as a cheat program because it was overlaying the screen with information (fps, gpu usage, etc.) just like some wallhack programs did. In this case, people "cheated" per the game's detection mechanisms even though they didn't actually cheat.
 
gxp500 said:
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
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No, letting cheaters fester in your game and take up valuable server infrastructure is unfair to players who abide by the terms of service.
 
gxp500 said:
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
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Then this requires infrastructure to create a home for cheating players. You want to cheat, play offline or private matches (not always an option I know) but to play with the goal of ruining other players experience with cheating software (because you lack in skill) is not the toxic player base you want associated with your product. You will sell less copies of course, but creating a quality product and environment will likely carry on much longer and further than these quick deaths caused by cheats.
 
I am not sure how I feel about perma bans. Are they banning your PC's UID? Would right piss me off if they did that and my child (currently 3) at some point tries to cheat on some random game and I can no longer play.
 
JayteeBates said:
I am not sure how I feel about perma bans. Are they banning your PC's UID? Would right piss me off if they did that and my child (currently 3) at some point tries to cheat on some random game and I can no longer play.
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It's usually always per license. That way they get rebuys from cheaters who want to go straight or try again.
 
aeliusg said:
No, letting cheaters fester in your game and take up valuable server infrastructure is unfair to players who abide by the terms of service.
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Cheaters paid for the game just like everyone else, banning them from playing unfairly is a bit harsh no matter what some terms of service thingamajiggy says, terms of service is simply a suggestions guide, not law.
 
gxp500 said:
Cheaters paid for the game just like everyone else, banning them from playing unfairly is a bit harsh no matter what some terms of service thingamajiggy says, terms of service is simply a suggestions guide, not law.
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Terms of service are the terms for using the service. Breaking said terms gives the curator of the service the right to ban you, whether or not you paid for said service. Software is licensed, meaning you have to abide by the rules for use set forth by the publisher. These people are knowingly breaking the rules, so I have no sympathy for them.
 
gxp500 said:
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
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Yeah, let me think about how well that worked in GTA Online... Oh wait, the cheaters would just cheat themselves out of the cheater pool.

No, they need to play the damned game like everyone else. If they can't play the damned game like everyone else, then they need to not be wrecking the experience of everyone else who is just trying to play the game like normal. It honestly sounds like you're a cheater who wants an excuse to just be a dick in games online, get dumped in a cheater pool temporarily, and then eventually come back and fuck with everyone else again.
 
gxp500 said:
Cheaters paid for the game just like everyone else, banning them from playing unfairly is a bit harsh no matter what some terms of service thingamajiggy says, terms of service is simply a suggestions guide, not law.
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They can challenge it in court. I'm sure the judge will be pleased to have his time wasted by 14-year-olds whining about being banned in a game.
 
Armenius said:
Terms of service are the terms for using the service. Breaking said terms gives the curator of the service the right to ban you, whether or not you paid for said service. Software is licensed, meaning you have to abide by the rules for use set forth by the publisher. These people are knowingly breaking the rules, so I have no sympathy for them.
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You've been trained in the publisher lingo very well my young padawan. Seeing the tos in doom 4 made me roll my eyes, can't believe the industry is going this this way.

Merc1138 said:
It honestly sounds like you're a cheater who wants an excuse to just be a dick in games online, get dumped in a cheater pool temporarily, and then eventually come back and fuck with everyone else again.
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No im not.

aeliusg said:
They can challenge it in court. I'm sure the judge will be pleased to have his time wasted by 14-year-olds whining about being banned in a game.
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I'd rather return it to the store and say i don't agree to the tos, wonder what they would say.
 
gxp500 said:
I'd rather return it to the store and say i don't agree to the tos, wonder what they would say.
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Interesting point, but I doubt they would refund you. Either way it goes to court eventually. This is probably the reason why developers aren't more draconian actually, especially if cheating doesn't affect sales. I think people who abide by the rules laid forth in the TOS in the interest of fair play are in the right, though, and companies have no inherent obligation to serve those who refuse to play by the rules of a video game.
 
These premabands should have happened long ago. Would like to play online again
Especially Doom.
 
JayteeBates said:
I am not sure how I feel about perma bans. Are they banning your PC's UID? Would right piss me off if they did that and my child (currently 3) at some point tries to cheat on some random game and I can no longer play.
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Maybe you dont let your 3 year old play a mature rated game. Simple fix.

I agree that if you cheat period the PC should be banned kind of how Overwatch has approached this issue. I'm tired of excuses like the one in quotes.
 
My son got tempabanned by PSN. Someone must have complained about his ID after he had it for years. Contained the word "fap". Lame idiots.
 
gxp500 said:
Banning players for cheating is not the solution, the solution is to clump them together with other cheater, once they figure out that they can't win because everyone is cheating they'll eventually stop cheating. Once that is done the server lets them play with non-cheating players, if they start cheating again they get bumped to the cheating servers.
Isn't this a better and funnier solution?
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No, you cheat you lose your money. Want to play again? Pay again.
 
This is what is shadowplay is great for, record the hacker and submit a report using that video as proof. when i played i reported least 5-6 guys over 3 days.
 
Too late, Ubisoft. Why did this take so long? Sorry, but I'm not coming back to Dullfest 2016 to deal with others who find the next 200 exploits before bans, nerfing galore and a lack of much to do.
 
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