Tencent Games and Krafton won a lawsuit against a PUBG Mobile hacking group that was distributing cheats to players. Earlier this week, federal courts in the U.S. and Germany ordered the group to pay the game developers $10 million in damages.
Calling the ruling a “resounding victory” for the broader video game industry’s battle against cheaters, Tencent and Krafton said they will be using any recovered funds to further develop anti-cheating technology in the mobile battle royale title.
Besides ordering the defendants to cease their illegal activities of developing cheats, the courts also instructed them to provide details of how they exploited PUBG Mobile to make the hacks.
This victory comes after police in China bust a large video game cheating operation last year in a collaborative effort with Tencent Games. The local police called the ring the “world’s biggest” cheating case after a large sum of money and assets, which included luxury cars, were recovered.
“Millions of players worldwide enjoy PUBG Mobile and we will ensure a level playing field for everyone,” Rick Li, the producer of PUBG Mobile at Tencent Games, said in a statement. “Sadly, the actions of hacker groups undermine the fairness of the game. These Judgements send a clear message that we will not tolerate cheating in PUBG Mobile.”
Hackers in PUBG Mobile are a huge problem that disrupts the experience of the common player. Recently, Tencent announced a strict anti-cheating measure that bans players’ devices from accessing the game. As a part of this, verified cheater devices will be permanently banned and won’t be able to log in or create an account in PUBG Mobile.
Tencent also releases a weekly “Ban Pan report” which shows the number of banned hackers. The latest report, with data from Dec. 24 to 30, showed that 827,365 accounts were banned. Besides this, hundreds of Facebook pages and groups and Instagram accounts were also taken down for distributing or advertising cheats.
