Let me tell you a crazy story. It's called ...
The Rise and Fall of the Island of Cheaters!
At the time of launching the game, several of our own cheat recognition systems were built into it. At this stage, we did not ban anyone, but simply collected data carefully. We wanted to be 100% sure that our cheat detection system will only catch people who are absolutely cheating. No false positives!
After making sure everything worked, we secretly launched the Fall Guys Cheater Island. It was a fabulous place where cheaters could light-heartedly fight each other for the cheater's Crown (in general, this is an ordinary crown, only tainted by a deep sense of guilt and regret).
Keep in mind that at this stage we had data on who was cheating, but we did not take any action against them. The population of Fall Guys Cheater Island was 0 inhabitants. Gradually, we carefully began to lower the cheat detection threshold. If you crossed this threshold, then you were marked as a cheater. It is worth noting here that cheaters are very smart. If they find out that they have been tagged, they will find the reasons for this and inform other cheaters.
The threshold was initially very bearable. The system caught cheaters ... but didn't ban them right away. We hoped they could understand that cheating ruins the fun of the game. But the majority continued to cheat. We wanted people to have fun, but not at someone else's expense. And we continued to lower the threshold.
Therefore, if you are marked as a cheater, then you can end the current game. But the next time you try to find opponents ... you will be able to compete ONLY with other cheaters (without knowing it). Congratulations, you did it. You are ... in the queue on the Island of Cheaters!
Imagine: you need forty or more players to start the game. Cheater Island is not a location in the real world. The island of cheaters has its own set of global servers. There must be a sufficient number of cheaters in your region to start a game on Cheater Island.
If there weren't enough cheaters, the player just waited endlessly for opponents. In addition, there were real bugs due to which this also happened. But more often than not, when people said that they "endlessly fall", it meant that they are cheaters, and we do not want to give them unnecessary information.
In the process of waiting for opponents, the animation of the player's character falling is played.
I'm sure you have noticed that we, the game developers, strive to be open and honest in all our statements. However, it is very difficult to talk about cheaters, because whatever we said could be used by cheaters against us and the players. They use any information to improve cheating.
For a long time, there were not enough cheaters in the game to collect whole game matches from them. We gradually lowered the recognition threshold and caught more and more cheaters. But still ... there have been no cheaters on the Island yet. The cheaters continued to "fall endlessly" and claimed that the game was faulty.
At this point, the cheaters began to realize that they could team up with their friends who did not use cheats, and participate in games with them ... They fled from the Island of cheaters. Oh no! We patched this issue as quickly as possible before they all knew it.
In addition, the cheaters realized that they could share games using the Family Sharing feature to transfer the game to another account ... and then use that account to avoid the cheaters' Island. To fix this problem, we have disabled Family Sharing. Fighting cheaters is difficult ... to be honest, they are very resourceful.
All this time, we continued to increase the cheat detection threshold. We were 100% sure that if someone was tagged as a cheater, then he was EXACTLY cheating. This was extremely important for us, we did not want to mistakenly ban a single player.
Something amazing happened last week! We finally have enough cheaters to create matches on Cheater Island! However, a new problem arose - people started uploading videos that we thought was Cheater Island ...
One user uploaded this video to Reddit with the caption: "Have you ever played a round of Fall Mountain in which all players cheat?" The problem was that it LIKE Cheater Island, but we couldn't be 100% sure.
Here's another video, which we think shows the Island of cheaters. The person who writes it down is not cheating. Either he does not use cheats only on video, or this is a server for honest players and he is also honest. Be that as it may, because of this, the game did not appear in the best light.
We KNEW there are matches on Cheater Island. We did NOT know if these videos were filmed there. Therefore, we closed the Island of cheaters. Now cheaters simply cannot enter the game. We are constantly working to improve the threshold and cheat recognition system.
Our cheat recognition system was good, but we didn't expect that many players ... and had no idea how far some players would go to cheat. We tried to create a system based on "honesty" ... but as soon as we realized that we were in the process of an arms race , we turned to the specialists from Epic.
Our next update is called BIG YEETUS AND ANTI-CHEATUS. We'll tell you more about Yeetus later, and about Anti-Cheatus ... - we are adding Epic's Anti-Cheat to the game, which will be a huge step forward in the development of the game! We understand that the article turned out to be very long, but this is the story of the Island of Cheaters. That is why we had to keep secrecy and keep silent about the details!