Back in April, Ubisoft began handing out permanent bans to cheating gamers in The Division. First-time cheaters were not banned, though, as the first offense only entailed a 14-day suspension.
Cheaters were permanently banned from the game upon the second offense in the previous system, which gave players some wiggle room in case they wanted to try out some cheats that they found online. However, Ubisoft has now made the game much less forgiving to gamers who are not playing fair.
Through a post on The Division's official blog, Ubisoft noted the effectiveness of the detection measures against cheating that were implemented in April, specifically against players who were using third-party software to gain an unfair advantage over other gamers.
However, the video game developing and publishing company has decided to make its anti-cheating policy stricter, with permanent bans now to be applied upon the first offense of players.
Ubisoft noted that it took action against more than 30,000 player accounts last month, with 3,800 permanent bans handed out. The 14-day suspension that was the initial penalty for cheating was found to be not dissuasive enough, though. There was a trend among gamers of cheating until caught, and after serving the suspension, they could simply step back into The Division and enjoy all the experience, items and money that they obtained during their cheating spree.
This alarming trend is what urged the company to begin applying permanent bans upon the first offense of cheating, a move made possible by the improvements that Ubisoft has been able to apply in its system to catch cheating gamers.
It should be noted, however, that the ban focuses on players utilizing external cheating software for The Division. There is no mention of players taking advantage of bugs or exploits that have been discovered in the game, so such quirks in the game should be fair game. It would probably be a better idea to just play the game straight, though, just to make sure that there would be no sudden bans being applied to gamer accounts.
The hardline stance taken by Ubisoft against cheating in The Division follows what Blizzard has applied to Overwatch since the shooter's launch. Blizzard has issued permanent bans to players that were found to be cheating on first offense ever since the game was released last month.
Blizzard implemented such a policy to maintain the playability and growth of Overwatch, and it is probably for this same reason why Ubisoft is doing the same thing for The Division.
