If you’ve ever played a multiplayer game, the chances are you’ve brushed up against a cheater. If not in the conventional sense, then at least in the realm of someone doing something malicious to disrupt the entertainment of legitimate players. It’s a bigger problem than people realize, and it’s costing some developers millions of dollars to combat.
In recent years, the plague of cheaters impacting the many multiplayer games out there has become an increasingly complex issue. As cheat manufacturers become more intelligent, traditional firefighting routes are being overwhelmed, and it’s now up to companies like Play Safe ID to find alternate ways to push back against the onslaught.
I recently sat down for an episode of Access Granted with Andrew Wailes, CEO and co-founder of Play Safe ID, to learn about the shocking truth behind cheating in games, and how we might all be overwhelmed if something doesn’t change soon.
The Old Ways Are Gone, and Cheaters Are Unstoppable
For those developing a multiplayer game, few things are more critical than securing a solid anti-cheat engine that genuinely prevents malicious players from surfacing – and punishes them accordingly if they do. It’s not a cut-and-dry topic, though, as it has been likened to fighting a multi-headed hydra at times.
In 2025, Battlestate Games’ Nikita Buyanov, the face of Escape from Tarkov, described it as a ‘never-ending battle’. His game is an extraction shooter, and it’s one of the most commonly-targeted titles in the gaming space, because there’s money to be made via RMT (real-money trading).
When Embark Studios released ARC Raiders in October 2025, a similar concept surfaced. On social media platforms, groups surfaced promoting RMT circles, and where that exists, cheaters surely follow. If they can get into a game, secure some rare loot via nefarious means, and sell it on some pseudo black market, they will.
In a drastic turn of events, one popular streamer named ARC Raiders ‘worse than Call of Duty for cheaters’, and that’s saying something.
But why is the situation getting worse all the time? Is it because more people than ever are playing on PC and have easier access to cheats, or is it because our world is becoming increasingly technical and more gamers know how to break games with complex hacks?
According to Andrew Wailes, the CEO and co-founder of Play Safe ID, an anti-cheat and player protection company, the truth is much more concerning.
Hundreds of Thousands of Cheat Developers Are Out There
Andrew Wailes joined me in the most recent episode of Access Granted to talk about the state of play for cheating in gaming. Play Safe ID is revolutionizing the space by ensuring accountability takes precedence, working directly with developers and publishers to foster stronger communities where cheaters simply cannot prosper.
When I mentioned the ‘cat-and-mouse’ concept of the cheat development industry, Andrew assured me I’d hit the nail on the head.
Let’s take a company like Battlestate or Embark, or any studio. You’re really well-funded, you’ve got a really successful, lightning in a bottle game, you’ve maybe got twenty people working on DevOps, anti-cheat detection, stuff like that.
You’ve got Easy, or BattlEye, VAC, Punkbuster, whatever. You’ve got this suite of tools.
But no matter how hard you’re working and all of your employees are working, there are thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of developers who make way more money than any of your staff ever will for cracking this puzzle.
Cheat developers aren’t necessarily bad people or evil, they’re usually very intelligent software developers that like complex, ever-changing problems and they like making a lot of money from solving them.
It’s just a business for them.
In the words of Sun Tzu, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” That’s the concept that Play Safe ID is working with, and Andrew has built a solid profile of the entities he’s trying to help eradicate.
There are so many cheat developers who are so smart and who have a much more vested interest in getting their cheats to work than the anti-cheat does to be reactive and defeat it.
It’s not even like it’s an even fight, where you have the same number of cheat devs fighting as the number of people working to defend it. You have an overwhelming force of people trying to generate these cheats and break the system, and a minority force trying to fight it.
The modern go-to for anti-cheat companies is to use artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven tools to combat cheaters. But Play Safe ID recognizes that even they aren’t silver bullets or a catch-all solution to fighting malicious operators.
Wailes said, ‘Do you know who also has AI? The people developing the cheats, and now that they can iterate and test much quicker, much more aggressively… There is no easy solve to this.”
Play Safe ID wants to make people accountable, using a data-driven ecosystem to empower players to represent themselves more transparently. They use a zero-retention data system to identify players across a range of integrated games, and if they cheat and are detected and subsequently banned on one platform, they’ll be banned across the suite of games.
Some developers, like Gamepires (SCUM), have used Play Safe ID to generate protected servers populated only by players registered with the platform. It’s a way to guarantee only verified, detectable players are using those servers.
Is Play Safe ID The Solution?
Play Safe ID is trying to innovate in a very tricky space. Talking to Andrew, I learned more about the most litigious organizations that are using the power of the courts to chase down cheat manufacturers, but dipping back to the hydra analogy, for every company shut down, two more surface.
In some countries, such as South Korea, cheating in video games is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison or the imposition of a massive fine. Wailes labelled it ‘a great attack vector’, but stressed you need to also encourage personal accountability on the end user and not just on those building the cheats.
It might not be the ultimate solution to cheating, but it’s a sorely needed implementation that’s set to make waves. Some huge updates are coming to Play Safe ID’s corner of the market, and the hope is that the company can make a large enough impact to bring about tangible changes.
To view the full episode with Andrew Wailes and Play Safe ID, be sure to download the Insider Gaming app and subscribe to Insider Gaming Premium+. Also, be sure to join us to chat about these topics on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Leslie Benzies has addressed the ‘Epstein’ allegations
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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