about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Hey everyone!

Cheating is a problem that affects the entire PUBG community. The problem itself is quite nuanced, so it requires a holistic solution of game design changes, automated systems, and player reporting to help alleviate and stop. Our team continually invests significant resources internally to combat cheaters and our announcement today is another step towards providing a cheat free experience. Today we are releasing PUBG Shield, a community anti-cheat initiative that gives players the ability to submit reports via the PUBG Discord, into open beta.

PUBG Shield is a system that will allow players from NA and EMEA regions to submit reports of players who break our rules of conduct. Players will review submitted reports by others and vote to determine the validity of the submitted evidence. We will then review the reports that have been voted on by a majority of players and give our final call.

Throughout our time interacting with the community, we’ve received kind and heartfelt requests from players who want to do their part to improve the game experience. This is why we have created the PUBG Shield. During our closed beta test, we worked closely with a select group of players who volunteered to help us build and test the app. During the closed beta we’ve issued over 3000 bans with near perfect accuracy! With the open beta, we’re looking to grow that number with our community, working hand-in-hand to stop cheating.

Will this be a replacement for in-game reporting?

No, in-game reporting will always be the most efficient means to report players. These systems train our machine learning algorithms and are critical to ensuring efficient automated banning.  However, even with the best automated systems some cheaters still slip through the cracks. PUBG Shield was created to help us identify these cases with your help.

What types of cheaters can be reported?

Some types of cheating are very easy to identify, and others are more difficult. As we take bans extremely seriously there will be strict evidence requirements that all players must follow when submitting reports. We may relax this over time, but we plan to keep the requirement high initially to ensure high quality reporting and fairness. You can report players for:

  • Cheating
    • Usage of unauthorized programs & hardware devices that promotes unfair gameplay
  • Teaming
    • Cooperation of players not on the same team in order to cheat or deceive other players
  • Discrimination
    • Disrespectful or use of offensive actions towards others based on their race, gender, nationality, etc.
  • Exploiting bugs
    • Users exploiting game errors and bugs for their own advantage
  • Inappropriate nicknames
    • Offensive nicknames or those that may provoke negative imagery
  • Teamkilling
    • Intentional / malicious teamkilling
  • Stream sniping/stalking
    • Using external information to follow or locate a streamer without any prior in-game knowledge
  • Verbal harassment
    • Use of profanity/offensive slang/toxic behavior
  • Statistics Manipulation
    • Intentionally exploiting game mechanics to manipulate in-game statistics

What’s required in a report?

  • Infraction Type
  • In-game nickname
  • Platform
  • Link to evidence of infraction as well as a PUBG Lookup link to the match in question where required
  • Brief explanation of infraction / additional notes

How do I join?

Visit our official Discord server and head to #pubg-shield for all the information regarding gaining access to the tool.

Is this the final version PUBG Shield?

PUBG Shield is currently in open beta and we will continue to update and improve the app over time to make it more effective and easier to use. We welcome your feedback, so please share your thoughts and suggestions about the app in our #pubg-shield-feedback channel on our official Discord server.

External link →
about 4 years ago - /u/DanBennett - Direct link

Originally posted by PubsandDubs

Will community be able to ban obvious cronus users?

The community can report these instances, but any banning will be done by PUBG staff - not the community.

When a report has a certain ratio of votes, it'll then be flagged to PUBG Staff to take action on it and have the final say. :)

about 4 years ago - /u/DanBennett - Direct link

Originally posted by PubsandDubs

Right but i know this group has been going for a while now. Are they issuing bans for recoil mods?

If the clip of the accused is conclusive enough, then yes it is likely.

about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by dezje_cs

so basically, the csgo overwatch system.

will this be accessible by all levels of pubg players? or, like csgo overwatch will it only be experienced players that have the opportunity to review and pass judgement on potential cheaters?

This is accessible to all players. We need to build up a trust system with data. The goal is to eventually have a system that will recognize and differentiate experienced players from players who are just spamming the votes or are inexperienced.

about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by OPERATOR-09

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMCpVNrnntc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chMJ1mjdnEo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlAVg2XbZ5A

for three years? now? that players no longer care about dead game? you ask us to help you decide?

for three years I've been reporting it in your forums and you guys banned us from the community. now, this?

Pathetic top management and developers. XD

Hey man! I can see that all of the players in your linked videos have already been banned by our AC.

The reason why we haven't allowed posting videos of cheaters on our forum is due to the naming and shaming rule and we already had established ways to report players who break our rules of conduct, which are the customer support or the in game reporting system.

Now we have another way where we can work with players directly to make a difference and I am super excited about that. Join us on discord!

about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

I cannot express how excited I am that this system is finally in open beta! We have worked hard on making this possible! I am super proud and excited to work directly with you guys and make a change!

And this is just the begining. We have a lot of cool stuff/improvements planned for the future and I cannot wait to get there!

See you on discord! We have a channel for feedback and chat so drop by, say hello! We love you all!

about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by HypeBeast-jaku

Actually a pretty cool system.

Thank you! Me and the team behind this are very proud of it. Cannot wait to make further improvements and evolve it live by working with the players!

about 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by HypeBeast-jaku

I have one question, are players able to see reports against their own account? Or does the system automatically stop that?

Right now, they would theoretically be able to stumble upon a report against themselves but their vote on it would not have any meaningful impact on the outcome.

almost 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by suit1337

u/SteveTheHappyWhale

i like the system so far, but there is room for improvement

so far i filed 4 potential cheaters in 5 different reports - 1 guy (the one i reported twice) was banned (for ESP/Wallhack) the other 4 reports were teaming

1)
you don't see why you have reported a person and why he got or got not banned, it should pe possible to review old reports you filed or at least see the reason, which will be helpful in the future

2)
the table below shows banned and not banned and is associated with the players name - it is a bit odd to read a player twice, once banned and another time not banned - it should report the players current status as active, suspended or banned _and_ in another colum if the report was voted conclusive, inconclusive of skipped by the majority of voters

i just want to figure out why one ban was successfull and the other one not one was basically a long description with multiple links and proofs, the other one was just one very evident video without too much of a description

3)
the "success calculation" an the overview table is not very straight forward - it also should account for player vs report

currently it lists 20 % "ban rate" for me - though i technically got 25 % of the players i reported banned or 40 % of the reports were bannable, but one slid trough als a false negative

4) it is not clear what "banned" means - do you really ban players with an inappropriate name

don't get me wrong: i don't want a community with toxic persons, nazis or racists - but if someone got perma-banned because of an unfortunate name, i'd rather not report them at all - imho there is a difference between someone calling himself 'n*gger_destroyer_5000' and someone having 'lick_my_ass' as a name - for the second example i'd rather like to see a "player renamed" or "player got a 3 days temp ban strike" rather a permaban - same goes for teaming or teamkilling - if someone accidentially shoots a buddy and you pull the evidence out of context, you can easily force a very conculsive report

thats why i heavily support the idea showing conclusive and inconclusive in the stats and _additionally_ show what action was taken by the PUBG staff

thx for your time, i really like PUBG shield :)

Hey u/suit1337! Thank you for taking the time to write this out!

Agree with you, we will have the status be more accurate and show whether a not banned player has been voted as inconclusive by the community or by pubg staff which should provide more clarity!

Banned simply means that a player has received a ban. Inappropriate nickname offenders can not get permanently banned, you can see our maximum penalties for each infraction type on our rules of conduct page https://www.pubg.com/rules-of-conduct/ :)

almost 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by Stocki-98k

Is there any way to see the outcome of my review votes? It would be nice to see how many were actually banned and how often my vote was "correct", especially for improving on future decisions.

Is something like this planned to be implemented?

Thanks for the feedback man! You can see your 20 most recent reports on your profile page and their statuses, whether they've been banned or not. We'll have a think about further improving the profile page!

almost 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by LordChaoz

Is there any kind of using an AI for analysing just the simple stats of a player? This way you could flag a lot of "new" players instantly. For instance you could check insane high k/d ratios. A lot of possibilites are hidden within the stats.

Another way of using an AI is analysing the movement and the way of looking ... you could identify wall hacks this way.

Hey Lord! I am affraid I'm not able to say what the AC team is doing in detail but I can say that they are constantly making changes and improvements to the anti-cheat!

almost 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by MT1982

Why do you blank names out for your existing ban notifications/updates? I get reports about Sxwy***** being temporarily/permanently banned and I have no idea who that is because you blank 80% of the name out. Can you include more information with those updates? Full game name and when they were reported and what they were reported for?

Thanks MT1982, I'll forward the suggestion :)

almost 4 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by kaptainkeel

This needs to have the reports in-game streamed to the site to be reviewed. Having people go outside of the game, to this website, and fill in the form is... a bit much. Not to mention I reviewed 4 (all that were in the queue, I guess, no more after that), and 2 of the 4 were just inappropriate nicknames while 1 was verbal harassment. Those first 2 inappropriate nicknames should have been found automatically by a simple check without there even needing to be a review. Last one was an accused cheater, but it was obviously not a cheater.

Would love to review more, but don't seem to be able to get anymore.

Hey man! Thank you for your feedback! Apologies for the late reply. There has been a bug associated with reports not showing up in peoples review/voting screens. This has been fixed recently and things are back to normal now.

I understand your point about the non cheating reports. Some other players share the same opinion / would rather just want to be able to report and review cases of cheating. We may end up only allowing just that to make it simple for everyone and be able to focus on a single goal -> cheaters, instead of everything else as well.

over 3 years ago - /u/SteveTheHappyWhale - Direct link

Originally posted by loser_tpp

Can you implement raw mouse data recording, when player opens fire, and then compare game crosshair data to compare if players are using recoil macro. There should be patterns to be found on cheaters.

Thanks for the suggestion.