The folks at Tibia have taken a hard line on cheaters within the game, recently banning almost 5000 accounts for using unofficial software.

Regensburg, February 3, 2009 — CipSoft has taken action against cheaters within their MMORPG Tibia. Almost 5000 player accounts have been blocked for the use of unofficial software.

“Tibia is online for more than 12 years.” says Florian Eckert, responsible Product Manager at CipSoft. “During that time, our community developed a sophisticated and balanced society. Protecting this equilibrium is one of the key tasks for us.”

The use of unofficial software, generally referred to as ‘cheating’, gives players an unfair advantage over others by automating tricky tasks or even controlling the whole character in game. Identifying players who use such programs is sometimes very hard, as the used software is designed to imitate natural behaviour.

“Cheaters endanger the sensitive balance within our grown community.” Eckert continues. “We do not tolerate this. We've tried a few things but ended up developing our own tool which now automatically detects cheaters with complete accuracy. The current measures are just the first act in the play and we will intensify our efforts even further.”

For some of the affected accounts, this block is a final warning, for others it constitutes the ultimate deletion of their account. Asked about the financial consequences for CipSoft, caused by blocking or deleting thousands of customers’ accounts, Eckert explains “We are convinced that our game will be even more attractive, once we are done with the cheaters. Therefore, we are very optimistic.”

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