George In The Meta
Is WARDOGS still banning cheaters in Asia?
By George In The Meta · · updated
Short answer: yes, the obvious cheaters still get pulled out of Asia servers fast, often mid-match. The ones getting through now are quieter, and those are much harder to prove.
Why people are asking
On 5 October a Japanese player posted that WARDOGS seems to have stopped banning cheaters: the blatant Asia ones, back-to-back headshots and mass kills, still get banned, but the hidden ones don't anymore. "Is this the limit?"
That matches what I see. Mostly.
How many cheaters are there on the Asia servers?
Every game. On the Asia servers, every single game I hit at least one cheater.
The super obvious ones, who can headshot everyone on the server straight away, are getting rarer. They haven't gone. They've got sneakier.
What does a quiet cheater look like?
A quiet WARDOGS cheater looks like this one from 5 October. Every time he killed me, it was a headshot from 600+ metres with an assault rifle. And every time I died, someone else died too.
So my guess is he kills someone for real, then tacks on an extra kill by headshotting someone random across the map.
The usual signs:
- Instant headshots, every time.
- Pre-firing: shooting you through a wall before you're visible, because he already knew you were there.
- Kills from absurd distances.
The distance one is the problem. You only see the distance when it's you that dies, so it's hard to prove. I can't get anyone to believe a 600 m assault rifle headshot unless it happened to them too.
Do bans actually happen?
Yeah, WARDOGS bans do happen. This morning I spotted a guy on the blue team getting all the headshots on the green team and went to screenshot him. He was kicked before I could even get to the scoreboard. That's how fast the obvious ones go.
People get pulled out straight away, especially the obvious cheaters and the chat spammers on the SEA servers, the accounts that flood chat with links to what I assume are cheat or boosting sites. They get about 20 messages out before they're banned from the server, or at least kicked. Whether that turns into a full account ban, I don't know.
Worth knowing: BULKHEAD's tough talk in update 0.1.2 on 30 September ("zero tolerance", permanent bans "without warning") was about economy exploits, meaning XP and cash exploits and real-money trading. It wasn't a statement about aimbots.
What does a cheater ban look like in WARDOGS?
A WARDOGS cheater ban shows up as a server announcement across the middle of your screen. On 14 October, about 225 hours in, I got one I'd never seen before: "A player from this server has been permanently banned for cheating." It pops up over the middle of your game, and the same line appears in chat.
It isn't new, it's just rare. BULKHEAD added it at launch: its Season 1 changelog on 10 September says "Cheater bans are now announced in server when match termination is turned off." So on servers where a detected cheater doesn't end the whole match, the match carries on and everyone gets told instead. The same changelog added weighted reports, so repeat and bad-faith reporters count for less.
It also answers part of my question above. That one was a permanent ban, not just a kick.
Can a cheater restart your PC in WARDOGS?
There's no evidence of it. On 11 October a player posted on X (the post has since been deleted) that someone on a WARDOGS server claimed to be cheating, an error box popped up with an insult in it, and their PC restarted when they clicked okay. The post got over 3,800 likes.
The official WARDOGS Updates account replied the same day that it had investigated, and saw "no evidence beyond the original tweet to substantiate the posters claim and zero evidence of any RCE occuring". RCE is remote code execution: someone running their own code on your machine through the game.
What should you do if you meet a cheater?
Report the cheater in game. That's it.
There's no point switching server, because you'll just find a different one there. Report, and hope it was obvious enough that everyone else in the match reports too, so they get kicked fairly quickly.
Should cheaters stop you playing WARDOGS in Southeast Asia?
No. I'd still tell people to play it. Any online game has losers who'd rather cheat to look good, look how good I am, my score's massive, when they've done nothing to get there. It's human nature, unfortunately. They pat themselves on the back and believe it's real.
Playing from Southeast Asia? Here's which WARDOGS servers to pick.
Is WARDOGS still banning cheaters in Asia?
Yes, WARDOGS is still banning cheaters in Asia: the loud ones get thrown out fast. The quiet ones are the real problem now, and you're the one who has to report them.
