Cheater Islands in Fall Guys - A Cheater Battle Story
The creators of Fall Guys revealed that for some time they secretly sent cheating players to cheater islands, where they had to spend time in the company of similar users, instead of poisoning the lives of the rest of the community.
The great success of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is one of the biggest surprises of the year. Unfortunately, the game from Mediatonic, like every other popular online game, has a problem with cheaters. The creators reacted to it in an unusual way - isolating cheating players on separate islands.
On launch, the devs prepared their own cheater detection system. Initially, the developers stopped with bans, because they wanted to collect enough data to be able to precisely point out the players deserving punishment. When they obtained the necessary information, they quietly launched the so-called cheater islands, i.e. special maps, where only scammers were sent.
People sent there were unaware of this. Initially, the populations on these maps were too small to play normal matches, so the chaters only dropped endlessly on an endless loading screen, considered by the players most often as technical errors. So if you've ever seen someone complaining about such a problem, it was probably a cheater who didn't realize that he was caught in the act.
It was an effective solution, but problems quickly appeared. Some cheaters suspected that they had been detected and began to come up with ways to get around the punishment. They discovered that joining a team of honest users allowed them to escape from the cheater islands, just like playing on another account, thanks to the game sharing feature. These escape routes were closed with patches.
After a while, the number of cheaters became so large that it became possible to play full games on cheater islands. Such rivalries were hilarious, but only for spectators, not the users taking part in them.
Ever played a round of Fall Mountain where all the players are cheating? from r/FallGuysGame
The system worked as it should, and the cheaters were isolated from the rest of the community. However, the creators did not foresee another problem. Videos that most likely showed such competitions started to appear on the web. The problem is that based only on the video, the developers were unable to determine whether these gameplays really came from cheater islands. Ordinary players had no idea that such material depicted cheaters in action, so it damaged the reputation of the game, as it gave the impression that it was technically underdeveloped. As a result, the approach was changed - cheater islands were closed and now cheating players receive traditional bans.
It is worth mentioning that the situation should soon improve a lot. The team at Mediatonic recently announced that within a few weeks they will implement an anti-cheat system made by Epic Games - the same one used in Fortnite.
As a reminder, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout debuted on August 4, this year on PCs and the PlayStation 4 console. The game was a huge success. Over 7 million copies have already been sold on Steam alone. It is also the most downloaded game of all time on PlayStation Plus.
