War Thunder has a bot problem, but what MMO nowadays doesn't? The devs behind the military MMO recently dove into the botting problem, detailing steps it's taking to combat it, but also trying to understand just why people bot in the first place.
Botting isn't a unique problem to War Thunder. Nearly every single MMO on the market deals with botting at some point in their life - and most never eradicate the issue entirely. War Thunder's devs recently opened up to the community in a new post on the official website about exactly what the devs are doing to try to stop botting in games.
"Over the past few months, we have been conducting a comprehensive study to understand how these bots operate, what motivates their creators, and, most importantly, how we can most effectively combat them. This is not an easy task, because in many cases, real players move and fight in battle similar to how these bots do, not identically of course - but we need to be careful and eliminate any margin of error, and make sure we can avoid any false positives when detecting them."
For the why part of the equation here, Gaijin Entertainment has a pretty simple answer: profit and power.
Bots, according to War Thunder, are primarily used in the military MMO to "artificially boost accounts," and then those accounts are sold to players in the community. Bot software can also be sold to players who boost their accounts themselves.
This past weekend alone, the developers banned 215 accounts associated with botting behavior, whether using 3rd party apps such as botting software, or were bot accounts themselves. This is thanks to reports from players who noticed the "unnatural" player behavior that many bots exhibit during the course of a match and reported the account.
War Thunder's dev team is emphasizing to players that "purchased and boosted accounts" will ultimately lead to a ban, emphasizing that it'll be money wasted for those players who turn to botting to boost their account.
"Hence, we’d like to emphasize that purchasing bots or boosted accounts will - sooner or later - lead to an account ban, meaning the loss of both money and in-game progress. We’re also kindly asking you to report all bots via the in-game reporting system. Your support will allow us to get rid of those bots even quicker."
In order to combat this, War Thunder players can expect an overhauled reporting system, making it easier and more responsive when reporting bots. Additionally, the team is looking into adding CAPTCHA either before or in battle for accounts that they deem "suspicious," but that route the team calls "drastic," so likely won't be implemented right away.
Either way, War Thunder's devs are promising a "clearer" picture once they release the next update. You can check out the post in detail on the War Thunder website.
