Cover Image and Thumbnail Credit: Levinho
In a recent move by the game’s developers, PUBG Mobile has banned over 3,500 players’ accounts for a duration of over 10 years. This ban wave was announced as part of a PUBG Mobile Fair Play and Ban Notice for dated 30th September 2019. IDs were banned for a variety of reasons such as ‘Used Cheating Tools’, ‘Modified In-Game Data’, ‘Used Virtual Apps’ and ‘Cheating with Auto-aiming’.
As prize money in PUBG Mobile esports continues to grow, so too does the incentive for players to cheat. Per our internal estimate, a total of over INR 2.4 Crore (USD 354,268) could be won through Indian PUBG Mobile tournaments in 2019 alone. Over and above this, there are multiple online tournaments by third party organizers that offer significant sums of money and prizes in kind to the winners. For example, the Pro.gamers PUBG Mobile Championship 3.0 offered INR 12.5 Lakhs (USD 17,857) along with a Royal Enfliend and an iPhone XS Max as part of its prize pool.
Hacking and cheating is a phenomenon that has been prevalent in other esport titles such as CS:GO for a while now and game developers have to constantly be vigilant about detecting and dealing with these cases in order to maintain legitimacy in the competitive circuit.
See also- the story of OpTic India and Forsaken:
