If you are a great Battlefield 1 player, you might want to tone down in showing off your skills for now, as you could get banned.
FairFight, the real-time cheat detection system that has been used by the Battlefield franchise since Battlefield 3, is apparently banning legitimate players for being too good at the game.
Skilled Players Being Banned On Battlefield 1
One of the skilled Battlefield 1 players to have banned by FairFight is a gamer who goes by the handle kL-Spazmo. He and his friend were marked as cheaters by the system and then kicked out and banned from the game.
On a thread started by Spazmo, under the username oh_my_god_please_no, on the official subreddit of Battlefield 1, he narrated his love for the Battlefield franchise and the events that led to his banning.
According to Spazmo, he has owned and played all games in the Battlefield franchise, except the Korea-exclusive Battlefield Online. At first, he was skeptical of FairFight when it was launched for Battlefield 3 but over time discovered that it was doing a good job at keeping cheaters off the game.
After playing over 2,800 hours on games by Battlefield developer DICE that utilize the FairFight system, Spazmo and his friend found themselves receiving a one-week suspension on Dec. 26. When the suspension was lifted and they started playing Battlefield 1 again, Spazmo and his friend received a permanent ban.
Spazmo contacted Ali Hassoon, a producer at the Stockholm office of DICE who is active on Twitter, to ask for help. He was told to contact EA Support, which Spazmo has done.
As Spazmo noted, he is not the first legitimate gamer to have been banned by FairFight from Battlefield 1. Minidoracat, the second-ranked player in the world on PC leader boards, also received a one-week suspension hours before Spazmo and his friend received theirs. Other players have also contacted Spazmo, claiming they too were wrongly banned by FairFight.
How Does FairFight Work?
FairFight prevents cheating by analyzing the statistics of players and comparing them against the global average while also scanning for events that are impossible to happen without resorting to cheating, such as massive kill streaks and shots hitting targets over long distances.
Once FairFight detects anomalies in gameplay, it checks if any of the player's activities can be considered improbable. Once it finds such activities, the player is banned from the game. However, it now seems that FairFight is not able to determine which activities can be considered as cheating and which ones are legitimate accomplishments made by extremely skilled players.
Battlefield 1 Bans Now Under Investigation
An update on Spazmo's Reddit thread confirmed that, while he remains banned on Battlefield 1, several DICE employees have reached out to him and are currently investigating the case. If everything checks out, his banning should be lifted soon, as well as for other legitimate players who were wrongly taken off the game.
A form of anti-cheating system that issues permanent bans is definitely needed in online games, but DICE should certainly fix FairFight to make sure that skilled players are not taken away from the games that they have poured hours of practice and hard work into.
