I’ve been keeping an eye on the latest Community Care Package from the PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS team, and let me tell you—the anti-cheat fight is still a wild ride. The last dev letter promised updates, and this one delivers a mix of hard numbers, behind-the-scenes moves, and a few home truths about the free-to-play era. As a player, I’m glad they’re talking, but I also know talk is cheap. So, what’s actually going on?
The elephant in the room is free-to-play. When PUBG went free-to-play, the community rightly worried that a lower barrier to entry would mean a flood of cheaters. The team says it was aware of those concerns, and its Anti-Cheat Team has been fighting cheat programs harder than ever. The proprietary solution, Zakynthos, has been reinforced to tackle client vulnerabilities. According to the Care Package, Normal and Ranked match metrics haven’t seen a significant negative change compared to before free-to-play. In fact, there were even some improvements. That’s no small feat, but players expect more—and the team knows it.
Since free-to-play, the team says it has been issuing permanent bans to more than 200,000 cheat accounts every month. That’s a hefty ban hammer. But here’s the kicker: a significant number of reported cheaters in Ranked matches turned out to be hacked accounts—cheaters using other players’ accounts. During investigations, the team found that only about 2% of permanently banned new accounts after free-to-play were Plus accounts. Roughly 61% were basic accounts, and about 33% were accounts created before the free-to-play shift. Since basic accounts can’t access Ranked, most Ranked cheating reports pointed to pre-free-to-play accounts. The exact numbers are hard to pin down, but the team reasonably presumes many of those accounts weren’t used by their original owners. Instead, they were hacked and used by cheaters.
| Account Type | Share of Permanently Banned New Accounts |
|---|---|
| Plus accounts | ~2% |
| Basic accounts | ~61% |
| Pre-free-to-play accounts | ~33% |
That’s a real headache. To lessen the damage, the team is improving internal logic to recognize hacked accounts and considering solutions to immediately block accounts suspected of being hacked. They’ll share updates when they have notable achievements. And a reminder to all of us: your account belongs to you and only you. Check the PUBG Support page to learn how to protect your account. Account sharing or rental goes against the Terms of Service and can lead to permanent bans and other penalties. The team has also strengthened countermeasures against illegal account rental sites that mass-generate accounts—a cheap and easy way to use cheat programs. They’re logging related account-sharing tools and issuing penalties based on extracted information.
Another eyebrow-raiser: since free-to-play, the team has noticed large quantities of accounts being created on identical hardware within a very short period, with nicknames following a certain pattern. On average, about 2,000 accounts are generated this way every day. These accounts are then distributed to cheaters and used for cheat program promotions, account rental services, and various in-game abuse. The Anti-Cheat Team began initial countermeasures in April, and those actions will continue to expand.
Now, about those 1 Day Temporary Bans. They’re issued based on player reports and specific in-game data. The team is keeping this system because it has detected many abnormal activities when they thoroughly examine banned accounts and their cheat program use during the temporary ban period. But yes, innocent players sometimes get caught in the crossfire due to inaccurate judgments. To fix that, the Anti-Cheat Team implemented a new solution in May. They’re monitoring its effects and will keep updating it to reduce false bans. That’s a relief, because nobody wants to be on the wrong end of the ban hammer.
Zakynthos is also evolving through machine learning techniques to detect cheat programs better and faster. The team admits there’s a limit to reactively countering cheats—especially unclear ones—through regular monitoring. That’s why improving technology is more important than ever. Fundamentally, to reduce cheaters, they need to create an environment where it’s difficult to develop and use cheat programs in the first place. So, the Anti-Cheat Team will further reinforce permanent account bans, hardware bans, and various defense mechanisms against in-game vulnerabilities. Terms and policies will also be reinforced to stomp out cheat development and use, especially in Ranked matches.
Of course, the team can’t go into detail about many tactics. The more they share, the more hints cheat developers get. I get it—it’s a cat-and-mouse game. But they do want to communicate more frequently where possible. Every PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS team shares the same goal: fair gameplay for all. The Anti-Cheat Team says it will relentlessly counter cheaters and reassure players with safer, more trustworthy games.
As a player in 2026, I’ve seen the cheater problem ebb and flow, but this Care Package shows the team is still swinging. Will it be enough? Only time will tell. For now, I’ll keep my account locked down, report suspicious players, and hope the ban hammer keeps landing. After all, a fair Battlegrounds is the only Battlegrounds worth dropping into. 🎮🔨