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Chinese police and Tencent bust "world's biggest" cheat maker

Chinese police and Tencent bust "world's biggest" cheat maker

Chinese law enforcement and tech giant Tencent have apparently shut down a massive video games cheat organisation called Chicken Drumstick.

As reported by the BBC, police raided the cheat maker in the city of Kunshan. This led to the arrest of 10 people and the seizure of $46 million in assets, including some luxury sports cars. Law enforcement also found and destroyed 17 cheats.

Apparently, this organisation created cheats for the likes of Overwatch and Call of Duty: Mobile. Interestingly Tencent owns a stake in Activision Blizzard, which produces the former, while its TiMi Studios developers the latter.

The cheat creators reportedly made their money via subscriptions, apparently beginning at $10/day and going up to $200 per month. The operation was apparently selling hacks and exploits to "hundreds of countries and regions," which allowed the Chicken Drumstick to make around $76 million in revenue.

This isn't the first time that Tencent has teamed up with Chinese police to fight back against cheaters. At the start of 2018, it partnered with law enforcement to crack down on people selling hacks for battle royale title Playerunknown's Battlegrounds.


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.