Albion Online has been reporting a crackdown on botting and hacking, having removed thousands of malicious accounts in recent weeks.
In any online game, there are unfortunately going to be cheaters or people trying to scam. What the team is reporting are a series of successes, especially following new technical measures that they have been applying against speed hacking, botting, and other things like macroing or engaging in RMT.
In just one week last month, the team caught and banned 6,500 accounts for speed hacking, botting, or other similar cheats. This was one of the first steps after the team added new technical countermeasures and began attacking the problem with more resources. They wanted to be sure that these accounts were 100% cheating or associated with cheaters, so this first batch was done very carefully.
The most recent update came yesterday and, since the launch of Albion East on March 20th, through both East and West, the team has banned over 38,800 accounts that have either cheated or benefited from cheats.
One thing that they have noticed is that they have been receiving way fewer reports of cheating than they did before they began these efforts. So this tells them that they're going in the right direction and that their methods seem to be doing a good job.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the work is done, and they are still asking the community for help. In addition to using those new technical resources to battle bots, the Albion Online team is still asking players to report others they see engaging in some of these cheats. You can even report anonymous “Mysterious Stranger” players in The Mists if you see suspicious activity.
These issues are so common that if you play online, you’ve seen them too often to count. The Sandbox Interactive team promises to keep vigilant on this, but so far, so good.