Cheater exposed, nothing happens

[Ludgate]

Hi everyone, I apologize in advance for the wall of text and the mass screenshots. A cheater recently came to my attention. We had been suspicious for a while as he was beating the top Coliseum teams despite being 110k lower in coli power. Luckily this player had been trying to get into my guild so I probed a little. He admitted everything to me freely and openly, and I forwarded all of this to support. I’ll be including all discussions with this player and support, which resulted in nothing more than a harmless warning.

We as a community cannot stand by while PerBlue allows cheaters to get ahead, at the expense of the rest of us. I encourage you all to contact support to voice your displeasure.

[Ludgate]

If someone could link this to the Reddit and Facebook, that would be greatly appreciated.

[ReapersFuryX]

This is completely unacceptable. Here we have a player blatantly admitting to cheating. Why spend thousands of dollars if you can be the best by cheating? If I was a player on Server 1, and my recommendation to everyone there, is to report this player. Take these screenshots and file tickets, do not let this go unpunished. He is not the only person that uses hacks, it affects us all. Lets do our part to get these players banned.

[Kinokan]

Absolutely disgusting. While I haven’t put in a lot of money I have put in a few months of time into the game but no worries it can be all circumvented through hacking. Such players need to be reported en masse and the whole lot of them permanently banned from their respective gaming platforms because if they cheat on this game you can bet they cheat in other games. I can’t say how deep this is being looked into but it should be as much as PB can muster without losing progress on keeping the game going. Please keep this on the top of the forum so people can see this and be on the lookout.

[Razzle_Dazzle]

I know exactly who that is, he was in our guild for maybe 12 hours at best, said something about there are ways to cheat in the game, so we just shut him down saying we don’t want anything to do with it and if you say anything about cheating again you’ll be kicked…he was kicked soon after anyway; we 100% will not accept players who cheat.

We never allowed him to get into that much detail … but well done Lud on getting full admission; that is the type of player the deserves to be banned permanently.

100% behind you on this one.

[Champion_David]

Aaaannnnndddd you failed to cover his name with red highlighter once. I could seenthrough it. I will take advantage of that! Thanks a lot!! soooo @Polaris
Do you have a few words to share?

[ReapersFuryX]

You alone will ruin this post. Notice how people haven’t brought up the players name? It’s for a reason. Player shaming is not allowed here. The post is about the issue of cheating in general, and how it affects us. We are trying to push for immediate and severe action against these cheaters.

[Cicerello]

So we have a player permanently banned from the game who wasn’t cheating - but apparently “abused” Perblue - @polaris - And here we are with a full on frank admission and they get a warning - are you kidding me Perblue - your priorities are all out of whack… This is what will cause good players to leave the game - well done…

[Drone_IX]

What did I just witness?

[Wylina]

This honestly is beyond infuriating to me. As a player who has paid, to see someone able to hack their way to things others worked for or paid for, and then have perblue turn around and say “bad bad don’t do it again” is a slap in the face. How many people have had rewards taken from them, or lost diamonds they should have had (which do have a value) because of just this one person. So knowing this is how they handled this one case, which is the one we all know of, what has happened with others I’m sure we don’t. This isn’t just a disgrace for the paying players, but for the f2p also.

[Champion_David]

I believe that the players name should be pointes out for three reasons:

1: Perblue will know exactly who they are to be looking at.

2: If a person by that name appears in my server, I will be able to warn my server.

3: People shaming? This whole post is about person shaming. Shaming a cheater and hacker in game. If your conscience can’t handle the name then fine. But he/she isnt on the forums and this would be shameful to thwm if it was regardless of how you wanna put it.

[Lord_Lliraeden]

This type of thing definitely needs to be stopped and whatever exploit that allows a hack absolutely must be plugged and those using it permanently banned.

I agree that we as a community we must be vigilant and report such abuse and unsportspersonlike behaviour as it ruins the enjoyment for many others who are both F2P and those who choose to contribute to supporting the development of this game.

Thanks for sharing @Ludgate

[ReapersFuryX]

It doesn’t matter what you believe, people aren’t bringing up the name because it isn’t allowed here, not because we care or don’t care about the player. If you look at the post you will see the OP has already reported the person to PB.

No one said don’t warn your friends, I’m saying you bringing attention and making a post specifically about the person’s name will get this topic locked or deleted.

[Kinokan]

Who the player is or their ranking in his guild, arena or col doesn’t matter at all. It is the sense that a player fully confessed to cheating not only the game and it’s developers but his fellow player and is open with how to do it and how others in that very server are more than likely doing the same thing and PB to give him a slap on the wrist is disgraceful.

Any cheater, hacker or abuser of bugs should be punished to the maximum possible extent and should be reported to Apple/Google depending on his device and be permanently banned from both. As I said before anyone who is this shameless and open about their cheating will more than likely have done so on other games.

“Jailbreaking” a device is commonly something done to an electronic device to allow for different 3rd party programs to be ran. Some are benign such as emulating an older game no longer sold or availible on market or allowing some sort of direct capture recording to be done with the device. However it can also lead to malicious programs such as the individual in question is using. I believe depending on the country of residence this can also be charged as some sort of crime along the lines of fraud although I am no legal expert to say so with confidence. The very underwhelming response both in the support and on here has left a bad taste in my mouth personally. I would highly recommend everyone keep on the lookout for other such fraudulent players and report on sight.

[Polaris]

We have not changed our policies about cheating. We do monitor the game data for cheating, and take action against players who we find to be violating the rules.

When we find someone violating the rules, they get a warning for the first offense. I know that’s frustrating when someone is affecting ranking, rewards, and status, but when we created our game policies, we felt that was the best way to go.

For players who continue to cheat after a warning, the punishment does escalate quickly to a permanent ban. Those players have shown they don’t intend to follow the rules, and are toxic to the game experience.

Many people don’t realize the impact their cheating has, and once we give them a warning, they stop cheating, and continue to enjoy playing the game. People make mistakes, and we’d like them to have the opportunity to learn and grow. It would be a shame to lose them as members of the community for a single offense.

[DigitalSCT]

@Polaris

It’s not like they unknowingly cheated… they purposely used a version of the game to gain an advantage. As a player who’s VIP16 and lost my rewards multiple days to someone who knowingly violated the terms of service, this is a complete slap in the face.

You guys have lost a large number of the beta players faith after the handling of this situation. You’ll see it once refunds start rolling in, as I know a number of players who have filed them.

[Khalid]

I hope you guys will learned from this and grow too. Maybe after more refund or review bombing on both store, upper management will notice? What the hell is this answer, it is fine to cheat until we are caught and get a warning?

[Kinokan]

I mean no offense towards you or anyone in PB when I say this but I find this policy to be entirely counterintuitive. A person who is cheating doesn’t do so accidentaly. The only case where that might be is if someone finds a bug an with said bug does something they shouldn’t have been able to. For instance say someone found a bug similar to the Quorra Bike bug. If they then reported it than that could be considered an accidental advantage.

However this is not an example of this extremely unlikely niche case. This is a guy who went into full detail of the hack, how it worked and then proceeded to offer the tools to use for someone else. Not only is this a cheater this is someone who very well may have developed or distributed said cheats. Also in no other medium who cheating be excused. If someone in the Olympics was found to be using some sort of performance enhancing substance they wouldn’t get a warning and be told, “Hey come back for the next Olympics!”

That sort of thing just doesn’t happen and for good reason. I think your policy should be ammended to a zero tolerance stance. “If found guilty of cheating a permanent ban will be enacted immediately, no questions asked and any monetary resources are hence forfeit for breaking our tems and conditions.”

As it stands @Polaris this exists as a precedent to have cheaters able to abuse the game as their pleased. I understand this may not be your or PB’s intention, but that is how many players, myself included, will view this.

[Polaris]

Hypothetical. We have a segment of the community who is young. They hear about this cool tool that lets you have unlimited energy. Someone in the guild offers to help them get it working. The kid tries it out, and bam. No more game. No warning, just a permanent ban. The kid has never done anything wrong in the game before, and now they’re out for good, losing connection with friend, and missing out on a fun game.

I understand this particular case doesn’t fit into those parameters, but our game policies were created with the entire community in mind. No rules are going to be perfect in every situation, but we have to enforce them the same on all accounts, in order to have a consistent experience.

[Ludgate]

Hypothetical. A grown adult is playing this game, trying to play catch up to people who’ve been playing 5 months longer than them. They gets frustrated at their lack of progress despite putting some money into the game. They knowingly research how to cheat and find this same tool. They install it, use it, and abuse it.

Over the course of a month, they fast track their way through arena and coliseum, gaining extra rewards each day. They use those extra rewards, gained at the expense of honest players, to get further ahead.

Once caught, they are told by the game developers “Naughty naughty. Just don’t do that again.”

Meanwhile they continue to profit from their unearned rank.