Krafton bans 25 lakh accounts on Battlegrounds Mobile India to stop cheating

South Korea's Krafton said it has permanently banned over 25 lakh accounts between October 1 and November 10 on Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) game as part of its efforts to provide a fair gameplay environment to its players.

It has temporarily banned 7.06 lakh accounts during the same time period, it said in a blogpost.

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"At the end of September, we promised you that fair gameplay has always been and will be our priority...Cheaters have no place in BGMI and in order to provide a fair gameplay environment to our players, we've been taking severe measures to remove cheaters from the game," it added.

Krafton said that many players ran into cheaters even after it made its previous announcement on September 30, and the company has now "cleaned out most of the cheaters in the game, making BGMI a much more fun experience, and will continue to take whatever step is necessary to keep BGMI fair and fun".

The number of permanently banned accounts stood at 2,519,692, while 706,319 accounts were temporarily banned during October 1 - November 10.

Earlier this year, Krafton had announced the launch of Battlegrounds Mobile India, a successor to the popular mobile game PUBG that was blocked by the Indian government last year.

Krafton noted that it has taken a number of steps, including stronger cheat detection and banning mechanism, permabans, manually verifying and banning any accounts that use or promote illegal programmes among high-rankers, and blocking YouTube channels that promote illegal programmes working with YouTube.

"Our systems continue to evolve as we bring near real-time ways to detect cheats and ban users employing illegal means...Based on such measures taken, the number of accounts that are being banned has significantly increased compared to before and resulted in the decrease of the number of reports made in the game," it said.

Krafton highlighted that if users are using cheat tools, they will get banned eventually, if not immediately. It also urged users to not share accounts with anyone.

"Apart from the obvious implication of losing your social media access, it might be used to test cheat tools, and your account will be banned...Doesn't matter if you have spent UC, or have not been detected earlier, or if you have a social media presence if you cheat or use cheating tools (or have used in the past) you will be handed a permanent ban," it added.