[2022] News | Update on Cheating

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Cheating is an ongoing battle in any online game, and Dead by Daylight is no exception: There is a never-ending arms race between game developers and cheat makers to find and fix new vulnerabilities. Tackling these vulnerabilities has always been and will remain a top priority to us.

Lately, many of you have shared your experiences playing against cheaters, and we have no intention to leave you in the dark. First and foremost, we are abundantly aware of the ongoing situation, and we have been treating it very seriously. To put it bluntly, cheating sucks, and while we have made many measures to prevent it, it frustrates us just as much as you to hear that someone ruined your experience.

We tend to stay quiet when it comes to cheating to avoid giving cheat developers vital information, but given recent events, we’ve decided to pull back the curtain and shed some light on what we’ve been doing to combat cheating and what we’ll be working on moving forward. Please forgive any vague language in this post; we cannot share any information which could be used to make it easier to cheat.

How We Deal With Cheaters

In Dead by Daylight, we have zero tolerance for cheaters. Once we detect someone has cheated (or is trying to cheat), their account is permanently banned from the game. There are a few ways we address cheats:

1. Automated bans: We work with our anti-cheat partner, Easy Anti-Cheat, to report and track new cheats. If the anti-cheat detects one of these being used, they are automatically banned.
   
2. In-game countermeasures: We make changes to both the game client and dedicated servers to prevent cheaters from doing certain things. This lessens the impact of cheats and reduces the amount of damage they can do.
   
3. Manual bans: We investigate your reports and manually block cheaters. This is crucial when a new cheat has not yet been tracked by the anti-cheat.

In the last 7 days alone, we have banned over 2,000 cheaters, contributing to a total of over 200,000 banned over the lifetime of the game. Additionally, we have continued to expand our team and processes to deal with cheaters more efficiently.

There is still work to be done, but our team has made considerable efforts to strengthen various aspects of the game, such as preventing modification to certain game files, to block specific avenues for cheaters to exploit and lessen the impact of the cheats that surface.

Future Improvements

Going forward, we plan to further bolster the game against cheaters. This will be done in various ways.

First, we will continue to identify & fix vulnerabilities to limit the effects of cheats. This includes additional measures to prevent player sniping (forcefully joining a specific player’s lobby). The first version of this fix is currently slated for this fall, and we’ll continue to monitor the situation to ensure that it does not resurface. Fixes like these will be an ongoing process.

Second, we will be adding failsafes to commonly exploited portions of the game. For example, should a match ever continue beyond the end game collapse for longer than 5 minutes, the game will forcibly end. Additionally, the max game time will be reduced from 2 hours to 1 hour or less. This particular change is planned for this Q4 2022, and further measures are being explored.

Third, we will continue to implement server-side validation where possible. This takes authority away from a cheater’s game client and puts it on a dedicated server, making cheating much more difficult. This is an ongoing process.

Fourth, we have improvements in the works for both our player support tools to better deal with cheats internally, and in-game report system to give you feedback on when a player you’ve reported was banned. Player reports are a keystone of our cheat prevention measures and providing this feedback is essential to letting you know that your reports are being dealt with seriously. These improvements are scheduled for Q1 2023.

Beyond in-game improvements, we will be communicating on our progress against cheats more regularly as part of our Developer Updates and beyond. We want to keep you in the loop and share as much information as we safely can. Last but not least, we want to stress that these are by no means the only measures we are working on, but rather the ones we can safely share with you at this time.

How You Can Help While cheating will always be dealt with as swiftly as possible, your help is invaluable. There are a few ways you can help is in the fight against cheating.

The best way to help is to use the in-game report system. These reports are critical and help us identify possible cheaters. If you have a video of someone cheating, you can also send it to our support team through this link: https://support.deadbydaylight.com/hc/en-us

Beyond reporting cheating you encounter, our support team is always available should you have any information on potential exploits or cheats.

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Fostering a safe, cheat-free experience in Dead by Daylight is and will always be a top priority for the team. As with any online game, cheating is an ongoing battle, and we remain committed to making cheating as difficult as possible. We have been working diligently to limit the number and impact of cheats, and we hope that this post shared some insight into the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes. Going forward, we hope to keep you in the loop with regular communications regarding cheating and share as much info as we safely can.

Until next time…

The Dead by Daylight team