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99 per cent of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds cheaters are from China

99 per cent of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds cheaters are from China

In news that will not come as a surprise to anyone who has actually spent any time recently in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, a large portion of accounts banned for cheating are from China.

That's according to the game's anti-cheat partner BattlEye - via Youxi Story - which reports that 99 per cent of the project's cheating accounts are based in China. Furthermore, 46 per cent of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds' playerbase is from the region.

Cheating has become a real issue in the battle royale behemoth. Earlier this month, PUBG Corp rolled out an update that was meant to be killing off the use of third-party programmes with the game. It has also established a dedicated team to dealing with cheaters. BattlEye has had to ban huge numbers of players even from the start, with the firm revealing that one million players were banned in January alone

PUBG Corp's Chinese publishing partner Tencent has been slightly more proactive on the matter, teaming up with local law enforcement to crack down on those making these hacks and exploits in the region. Suppose you really do get your money's worth with Tencent.

Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has been played by well over 30m people since its March 2017 release, with 26m people tuning in to the Early Access version on Steam.

China has formed a significant portion of the game's playerbase, but this growth has waned somewhat with users from the region waiting for an official release via Tencent, or maybe even a free-to-play version.

 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.