Outriders: Cheaters are punished harshly and very creatively

Outriders

The release of the co-op shooter Outriders from publisher Square Enix and Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly is due in a few days, and it will almost certainly bring one evil to the multiplayer games of the Internet age: cheaters who use unfair methods to gain an advantage want to procure. Although Outriders is not a competitive shooter, it will probably not stop some people.

The makers do not want to stand idly by. Instead of being banned from cheating, they use a much more creative, but therefore no less effective method: If someone is caught cheating, their character is irrevocably branded with a watermark. Thus his teammates know immediately that they are dealing with someone whose achievements in the game should not be taken at face value.

But not only that, in addition, cheaters are no longer "normal" in matchmaking. If you put players together in rounds, it is always possible that someone would otherwise wear their watermark like a medal of honor. Only when enough cheaters have come together can they let off steam in appropriate matches. Matchmaking will therefore take a correspondingly long time for cheaters. In the demo already available, there were only 200 identified cheaters among around two million players.

Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. By the way: Anyone who has gained an advantage with cheats in the demo will get a second chance. You then have to delete all characters and items from your account in order to be able to start with a clean slate.

Meanwhile, the developers define the following offenses as "cheating":

If you play the game on the PC deliberately running without Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) When modifying game files to improve characters; Levels, skills, inventory etc. If you modify the game externally in order to manipulate time-dependent features, such as dealers and challenges. If you use a trainer program or similar to gain advantages in the game. If you use programs that change the gameplay, for example Aimbots or Wallhacks Outriders (buy now € 57.98) will be released on April 1st for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Seres X / S and Xbox One. Xbox players can access it via Game Pass. The system requirements for the PC version have been known for a while.

Source: People Can Fly

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Outriders’ Cheater ‘Watermark Branding’ Should Become The New Norm

(this is not the actual watermark)

People Can Fly

Outriders launches in just under a week now, and one thing People Can Fly has already learned from the demo is that…people are going to be cheating.

It’s not a PvP game, so you may wonder why that matters, but playing in a lobby with an overpowered cheater is not going to be fun for anyone, even if they’re on your side, and that includes people the dev mention like someone who got 600 legendary weapons in the demo, likely due to altering the files to increase drop rates.

Outriders has promised to deal with these cheaters in a…unique way.

First, we have something that we’ve heard before, banishing cheaters to “cheater hell” where they are only matchmade with other cheaters so they can’t influence any legit players’ experience. People Can Fly warns this will make matchmaking take significantly longer, so much so that you may just want to play solo from then on.

But that’s not all. You can play solo, but your HUD will then be watermarked with a “discreet but visible watermark placed on it so that gameplay footage created on this account can be readily identified as coming from a flagged account.”

Alright, now we’re talking. This is something that directly targets potential content creators who want to show off X or Y sick build or legendary drop but don’t want to actually earn it, and mod their game to get the gear quickly. But now if they do that, their footage will all be watermarked by this HUD image, though we don’t know what it is yet. I am very, very curious to find out what it will be.

Outriders

People Can Fly

I have seen too many YouTubers amass clicks by showing off cheats and trying to pass them off as skilled play or good luck, so this is a great solution to that and one that I hope more games adopt. I’m picturing Destiny cheaters getting branded with a giant disapproving Zavala face in the corner of their screen or something.

And yes, this will apply if you’ve cheated in the demo, because Mr. 600 Legendaries over there can carry all those mods forward into the actual game. The only way around this if you’ve already cheated is to delete all your characters and start over, People Can Fly warns.

Of course, all cheating punishment systems require first, the ability to detect cheats accurately and quickly, which is a problem for many games. Perhaps as a PvE game Outriders will have fewer problems with that, but we’ll see. I know plenty of people who have modded games with local saves like Borderlands or Avengers to over-max weapons and things like that, so it’s a problem even in non-PvP games. And no, I just don’t agree with the idea that since there’s no PvP, cheating shouldn’t matter, especially in this world of co-op play and content creation that relies on getting good weapons and gear to show off.

We’ll see how this goes in practice, and I just really, really want to know what that HUD brand is going to be.

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