Developer Insight - Fair Play Task Force Update

Hunters, in today’s Developer Insight we are bringing an update from our Fair Play Task Force and providing some data regarding recent bans and actions we have taken against popular exploits.

NPI Exploit & Tracking
We recently implemented new detection measures that we are employing to catch several kinds of offenders - one of which is the well-known Nvidia Profile Inspector abuse.

Nvidia Profile Inspector (NPI) is a tool that helps users customize their graphics card performance in ways that aren’t possible in regular settings. It allows players to fine-tune how their machine runs games, making it possible to improve performance or change specific visual effects.

This tool was being misused to force Hunt to render the game at such low graphical quality that the abuser would be able to see through vegetation across maps and remove visibility of certain objects entirely at distance.

After some research from the FPTF, we have now added ways to reliably log players using this exploit and identify every single instance of misuse. As well as tracking and punishing offenders, this has allowed us to collect data on those engaging with the exploit to help us better understand who would be abusing NPI and how many times it was being abused, for every abuser.

We have found a total of 1009 players who have used the NPI exploit at least once.

We applied sanctions to offenders depending on the number of occurrences they have misused this exploit, as well as the number of sanctions they have already received in the past:

• 10 users received a permanent sanction
  
• 32 users have been sanctioned for 30 days
  
• 330 users have been sanctioned for 14 days

However, we have decided that many of the one-time abusers would not be sanctioned. In these instances, the curiosity that led players to engage the exploit didn’t result in repeated abuse. In certain instances, we can understand that some users may have tried the exploit just one time to understand and combat the advantage abusers had in matches without the intention to exploit that advantage themselves going forward.

We also took the chance to explore what kind of players use this exploit, which helps us understanding better the kind of audience we are dealing with:

MMR Distribution
The following chart demonstrates the percentual of sanctioned players’ rank distribution across the last month:


We can see players of the highest 6 star rank are disproportionately represented in the sanction data with around 55% of offenders playing within this bracket, which makes sense given the effect of exploits on performance. However, it also illustrates how few offenders exist in other MMR categories in comparison.

Hours Distribution
This data provides insight into the percentual of sanctioned players’ total play time.



We found an even spread across the combined play time of accounts found to be offenders.

High Ping Players
Last month we provided some insight into our efforts to address high ping players in Matchmaking. Our investigation continues as we look to design a system that can ease tension around this issue and create a fairer ecosystem for gameplay. This may result in making ping a matchmaking factor, allowing us to segment players with high ping – but nothing is currently confirmed as we continue to work on a functional solution.

How To Report Players
While automatic bans are good for banning cheaters en masse, community reporting is still extremely important to us. You can report cheaters by the following methods:

• If you are killed by someone that you would like to report, while on the Death Screen, you can click on "SHOW KILLER PROFILE" or press "R", then select "Report". You can then fill in any report reasons that apply to the case and add any additional information.
  
• After the Mission is over, from the Last Mission "Team Details" menu, you can click on the profile you would like to report, then click on "ACTIONS MENU" or press "F", select "Report", and proceed as outlined above.
  
• You can report via our website if you have any additional context you would like to share. You can do this by going to www.huntshowdown.com . In the bottom right corner of the screen, you'll see "Please log in for support". After logging in, open a new ticket, select your language and platform as well as "I'd like to report another player" and the bot will guide you through the process.

Thank you for your exploit reports so far, we are adding more and more detections that will allow us to find and sanction unfair players, and continue to improve the gameplay experience.