Battlefield 1: DICE Is Banning More Cheaters Than Ever Before

Battlefield 1 developer DICE has published a blog post in which it addressed concerns that some in the player community have raised about cheating in the popular military FPS. Starting off, DICE said it is "working tirelessly" to make Battlefield 1 a "safe, secure environment for the players." The studio is intentionally holding back specific details on the "more intricate" elements of Battlefield 1's anti-cheat measures so as to not give cheaters the information they need to circumvent the anti-cheating measures.

In the past six months, DICE says it has "steadily ramped up" the way it is hunting down cheaters, both internally and with the team that runs the FairFight tools that the game uses. More cheaters "than ever before" have been removed from Battlefield 1 over the past half-year. Specifically, sanctions have been made against more than 8,500 accounts, and DICE said since then, instances of cheating have declined.

"While we have made significant gains, we still can do more," DICE said.

DICE also mentioned that updates are coming to the way that FairFight informs players about disciplinary actions. The studio disabled these messages "a few months ago" because they became a distraction, DICE said. These messages are returning, but they will be condensed into a message that informs players of all bans over the past 24 hours.

Also in the blog post, DICE talked about how some Battlefield 1 players spoke up recently on social media claiming they were being banned by FairFight when they had no reason to be. It's not the tools that are getting it wrong, DICE said, but rather it might be outside cheat software developers doing bad things.

"We are confident that our detection methods produce accurate results," DICE said. "Cheat developers may be attempting to manipulate players' minds about anti-cheat tools, and to leverage detection information from game developers."

"A common misconception regarding FairFight is that higher skilled players are more likely to get sanctioned due to their improved match stats," DICE added. "This is not correct; it is not possible to be banned simply for being skilled."

Finally, DICE anti-cheat producer Sean Merson said the studio is constantly coming up with new ways to get prevent cheating and ban those who are breaking the rules. "We will not stop until the community is happy with the results," Merson added.

In other news, Battlefield 1 publisher Electronic Arts recently announced that the game has now passed 25 million users.