Outriders Is Branding Cheaters Permanently With On-Screen Watermarks, Matchmaking Delays

As Outriders preps for its April 1st launch next week, the team at People Can Fly have detailed some of what players can expect with its first week, including how it plans on handling cheaters on PC.

During the Outriders demo period, the developer identified 200 people cheating (out of 2 million total players), and the team has plans for them - or anyone else who cheats when the game officially launches. The team cautions players that they can "see you all." Even specifically calling out one player who gave themselves 600 legendary weapons.

As such, if you're identified to have cheated, or cheating once live comes, the effect will be felt account-wide, not simply on the offending character. People Can Fly is putting matchmaking limits on cheaters, as they will not be able to play with legit players, as well as a HUD watermark so that anyone streaming or sharing gameplay footage and has been cheating can easily be identified as a "flagged account."

People Can Fly lays out exactly what they consider cheating in the post on Steam. This includes: 

• Intentionally running the game on PC without Easy Anti Cheat (EAC)
• Modifying game files to enhance a character: levels, skills, inventory, etc.
• Externally modifying game time to reduce time dependent features such as vendors and challenges
• Using a trainer program or similar to gain advantages within the game
• Using gameplay altering programs such as aimbots or wallhacks

Individual players who are found to be being regularly kicked by multiplayer hosts shortly after joining may also be manually reviewed as an additional anti-cheat/anti-grief safeguard.

Using programs like Riva Tuner aren't considered cheating by the team. Additionally, people who cheated during the demo but want to go into the retail version of Outriders with a clean slate are advised to completely delete their characters and all the items on the account before the account is checked on April 1st for instances of cheating. 

Outriders is an upcoming co-op third-person RPG being developed by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix. It will hit PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as PC next week on April 1st. If you're on Xbox One or Series consoles and have Game Pass, you'll be able to check out the game as part of your subscription.