Fall Guys devs create a “Cheater Island” to punish pesky hackers

Mediatonic has been trying to reduce the number of cheaters in Fall Guys ever since it was released, and their most unique method yet put dozens of in-game criminals onto their own island.

Even though Fall Guys is one of the simplest battle royale games on the market, it’s still overrun with cheaters. Players will use speed boosts to rush ahead of the competition, enable flight mode to zoom towards the crown, and plenty more. It’s been an issue since the game released on August 4, despite the developer’s best attempts to slow it down.

From disabling the ability to account share, to expanding the detection system, they’ve tried to pull cheaters from the game in a number of ways. However, the developers just shared their most surprising tactic to date.

Instead of banning accounts, issuing suspensions, or taking away crowns, cheaters have been allowed to stay in Fall Guys. What they might not realize though, is that they’ve secretly been playing against other cheaters all along.

Early into the game’s release, Mediatonic launched a new playlist behind the scenes. It wasn’t a visible playlist with new minigames or features. Rather, it was a secret playlist called ‘Cheater Island.’

“It was a magical place where cheaters could happily compete against themselves for the Cheater’s Crown,” the devs explained.

If you were flagged by the cheat-detection system, the “next time you tried to matchmake, you would only be able to matchmake with other cheaters.” Essentially, all cheaters were lumped into their own separate version of Fall Guys where they could only go up against one another.

Unfortunately, this new world just for cheaters came with its own set of issues. Mediatonic needed to detect enough cheaters in a given region to actually start up a match on Cheater Island. “If there weren’t enough cheaters, you’d all just be falling forever,” they added.

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Once enough problematic players were flagged, the island was finally populated and cheat-filled games kicked off. A few example videos were shared as all players dashed from the starting line to the crown in the blink of an eye. It seems as though these cheaters can earn all the crowns they like, but they won’t be able to steal the glory from genuine players anytime soon.

Ultimately, the island lasted a few weeks but was ultimately shut down by the developers. Instead of dropping everyone on their own island, cheaters are simply unable to log back into the game moving forward.

“Our cheat detection system was good, but we hadn’t expected so many players. We had no idea the lengths that some players would go to cheat.”

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While Cheater Island might be closed, it’s no cause to be alarmed. Cheaters are still being dealt with in different ways. In fact, Mediatonic will be adding Epic’s Anti-Cheat in the next major update, a big step in their fight against cheaters.