Developer Krafton has ensured there’ll be no more chicken dinners for 170,000 PUBG: Battlegrounds troublemakers (predominantly cheaters) with a swathe of bans.
The developer got busy with its mighty ban hammer (or should we say frying pan), banning 170,165 accounts in the space of a week at the end of August. The bans come in part because of the recent enhancements to the game’s anti-cheat system.
It comes as the developer continues its relentless pursuit of a level playing field in the ever-popular battle royale game, where the world’s best PUBG players can still get unstuck by those cheating the system.
PUBG: Battlegrounds cheaters are getting panned. Image Credit: Krafton
PUBG: Battlegrounds bans by the numbers
As part of the PUBG 2025 anti-cheat roadmap, Krafton enhanced its proprietary anti-cheat solution, called Zakynthos, to combat DMA-based hacks.
For the uninitiated, DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, and is touted as a “safe,” hardware-level cheat in many popular titles. The hackers should probably rethink what the word “safe” means, or hopefully, just stop altogether. The result of this anti-cheat enhancement is the banning of over 30,000 accounts that used DMA-based hacks.
These 30,000 banned accounts are included in the impressive overall stats, making up 17.6% of the total accounts banned in the last week of August. Check out the breakdown below.
Krafton is not going easy on those who cheat. Image Credit: Krafton
Krafton explained its progress in combating cheaters who use DMA-based hacks:
“We have been consistently monitoring DMA-based hacks and applying penalties. Including the 30,000 accounts banned in August, more than 80,000 accounts have now been permanently banned. Furthermore, through a detailed analysis of attempts to bypass our anti-cheat systems, we have permanently banned over 50,000 additional accounts.”
The developer also detected hacks used to “manipulate certain software,” which results in removing or significantly reducing weapon recoil, giving these cheaters an unfair advantage. The developer continued by providing examples of prohibited activities, including but not limited to:
- Linking hacks with other software to enable abnormal gameplay.
- Altering or tampering with certain software to gain unfair advantages.
- Other misconduct that violates our Rules of Conduct.
If you are curious to see who has been hit with Krafton’s ban hammer, you can read the massive list of permanently banned accounts. There are over 1,200 pages of names you’ll no longer see dropping School so buckle up.