That PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has a hacking and cheating problem isn’t really up for debate. It’s something the developers themselves have acknowledged in the past, and vowed to take more action on. And now, thanks to the work of one Redditor sjk045, we know exactly how much action they have taken over the last year.
Compiling data that PUBG Corp. and Bluehole post on the Korean PUBG Cafe website on a weekly basis, sjk045 calculated that a staggering 13 million players have been banned from the game for cheating over the course of the last year. They compiled a graph based on the data, which you can see for yourself below. The graph seems to demonstrate a huge spike in bans earlier this year, which correlates with Bluehole’s stated doubling down on its commitment to take out cheaters and hackers as well.
With PUBG itself losing popularity (though it’s still very popular!), the number of cheaters who’re bothering with it may have gone down too— maybe now they’ll all move to Fortnite instead, who knows.
PUBG is out now on PC and Xbox One, and a PS4 version of the game has also been rated.
