In recent months, Gray Zone Warfare found itself bearing the brunt of a divided community as cheaters decided to plague the game in multiple ways. It reached a breaking point when MADFINGER Games took to social media to engage directly with players, especially those making content calling out the developer and the cheaters making the game a miserable place to be.
During a recent behind-closed-doors discussion about the future of Gray Zone Warfare, the studio’s CEO, Marek Rabas, addressed the situation with cheaters and said what their plans are to tackle them going forward. There’s a huge update on the horizon, and anti-cheat efforts aren’t being forgotten.
MADFINGER Wants To Slam Down on Cheaters
Marek Rabas, the CEO and Co-Founder of MADFINGER Games, was transparent during a recent media briefing about Rogue Ops, Gray Zone Warfare’s incoming 0.5 update. It’s one of the biggest overhauls the game has ever seen, and it’s set to introduce the second ‘gameplay loop’ that’s centered around passive income, building a life in Lamang, and moving towards Ground Zero.
Rabas spoke about the cheaters that have been heavily spoiling Gray Zone Warfare this year, prompting some creators to go on a warpath and condemn MADFINGER Games:
We’ve discussed it a lot… How to do it. We’re making a proper plan, we’re working on it, and the main goal is to react as soon as possible.
We cannot prohibit all the cheating, but we can find these people and kick them out as soon as possible.
If you’re any kind of multiplayer-focused gamer, you’ll know how unbelievably hard it is for any developer or publisher to absolutely eliminate cheaters from their ecosystems. It’s a multi-headed hydra kind of discussion, and when you take down one cheater or even a cheat manufacturer, more will surface.
It’s a situation that was recently addressed by Embark Studios, with the team explaining that they’re all up against an $8.5 billion industry that’s backed by extremely intelligent cheaters… Millions of them.
Therefore, it comes down to reacting as quickly as possible when cheaters do surface. For instance, Call of Duty’s Team RICOCHET has facilities that enable close-to-real-time elimination of cheaters. They’ll be reported during a match, and before that match has wrapped up, they could blink off the scoreboard, banned from the game.
Gray Zone Warfare’s situation is especially tricky because the game and the developer behind it don’t have the resources of an Activision, nor does it have as large a player count to better dilute the malicious operators trying to spoil everyone else’s fun.
As a fan, my hope is that MADFINGER Games can deliver on speeding up the elimination of cheaters, but as a PvE-exclusive player, I will also say that it doesn’t really impact me anywhere near as much as PvP-focused gamers.
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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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