'Player Unknown's Battlegrounds' News: Tencent Help Chinese Police Crackdown On 120 Hackers
Even before their version of "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" is released in the region, Tencent is already helping Chinese authorities crack down on cheaters. The Chinese tech giant assisted in opening 30 cases and making over 120 arrests of cheat software makers in the country.
According to Bloomberg, the biggest gaming company on the planet has enlisted Chinese police to root out the underground rings that make and sell cheat software. Among the many cheating software that conferred unfair advantages ranged from those that provide X-Ray vision to auto-targeting.
Tencent has a lot riding on cleaning up "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" in China as the country accounts for more than half of the game's 27 million players. Last year, the company reached a deal with Bluehole subsidiary PUBG Corp. to localize the game for the Chinese market.
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However, the game's large presence in China has made it a hotbed of large-scale cheat makers. The cheating epidemic has gotten so out of control that program designers have made the game's leaderboards into a kind of advertising for their wares by using their contact information as their gamer tags.
As of Tuesday, eight of PUBG's top 10 players bear names such as "contact QQ574352672." The name, ironically a private account on Tencent's own QQ messaging service, is one many where enterprising players can procure cheat software for as little as $15.
"PUBG is going through a puberty of sorts and cheaters threaten to stunt its growth," said Kim Hak-joon, who analyzes gaming stocks for South Korea's Kiwoom Securities Co. "Cheaters mostly drive away new users, and without retaining new users, PUBG won't be able to consolidate its early success and become a long-lasting hit."
So far, Bluehole's own anti-cheats partner, BattlEye, has banned 1.5 million accounts for using illegal cheating software, a whopping 6 percent of the total community. Creator Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene also stated in an interview last month that an automated banning system has helped cut down hacking in the game by 67.5 percent.
"Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" is currently available for the Xbox One and PC.
