PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been suffering from a serious hacker infestation for a year now and it seems like pest control is only waking up now. Apparently, the newly announced anti-cheat system will ban users' hardware permanently.
PUBG Corp. have addressed their Korean players recently, stating that new policies will be in motion by 10 November 2018. This includes the new anti-cheat system which is apparently already functioning and the the first ban wave is expected in November.
There is no mention of whether players caught cheating in October, but PUBG Corp. did notify players that the new measures are being applied with the . Therefore, it's highly likely that if someone is caught cheating at the time of writing, their hardware will be permanently banned, on top of the account ban, come 10 November 2018.
According to the patch notes from September, the anti-cheat is still optional as players can choose to disable it, but this option will be gone after 10 November 2018. Needless to say, PUBG Corp. did issue enough notices and warnings, so any apparently unjustified bans may not have merit to them. That is, unless the anti-cheat system backfires again and starts banning random people for no good reason.
PUBG Corp. waking up just recently may mean that it's too little too late to salvage the game's glory though. Sure, it still has concurrent players daily, but the numbers are still in steady decline. Just a month or two ago, having over one million concurrent users was the norm. Perhaps the best indicator of the game's popularity decay is Twitch.tv streaming service, where the PUBG barely manages to get over 20.000 viewers lately.
PUBG Corp
Many expected this, with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 swooping in with its Blackout mode, and once PUBG's heavy hitter streamers such as Shroud and DrDisRespect left to try their luck with wingsuits instead of parachutes, PUBG's popularity suddenly waned.
PUBG / Playerunknown's Battlegrounds by PUBG Corp and Bluehole
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