I've got lots of spicy content for you this week - The Dev team have been super busy on the new update

For now...

BUCKLE UP

Let me tell you a wild story

It's called

The RISE and FALL of Cheater Island

Tagging @Netflix incase they want to make a film or series out of it

At launch, we had some of our own cheat detection built into the game

We weren't banning anyone at this point, just gathering data carefully

We wanted to be 100% sure that our cheat detection would only catch people who were legitimately cheating

No false flags!

After we confirmed that it was working - We secretly launched

Fall Guys Cheater Island™

It was a magical place where cheaters could happily compete against themselves for the Cheater's Crown*

*Literally just a normal crown but tainted with a hollow feeling of guilt and regret

Remember, at this point, we had data on who was cheating, but we weren't acting on it

Fall Guys Cheater Island™ had a population of 0

So, very carefully, over time, we started to lower the threshold on the cheat detection

If you passed the threshold... you were tagged as a cheater

It's worth pointing out at this stage - Cheaters are very smart

If they know they've been tagged as a cheater - they'll work out what caused them to be tagged - and they'll tell other cheaters

Our threshold was originally really tolerant

Cheaters would get caught... but not be insta-banished

We hoped that they might realise cheating kills the fun

Most continued

We want people to have fun, but not at the expense of others

So we kept lowering the threshold

So...

If you were tagged as a cheater... you'd be able to finish the game you were in

Then, the next time you tried to matchmake... you would ONLY be able to matchmake with other Cheaters (Without realising)

You were there...

You'd made it...

Queuing for Cheater Island™

Now, if you can imagine:

You need 40+ players to actually populate a game.

Cheater Island isn't a location in the real world...

Cheater Island had it's own set of global servers

You'd need enough cheaters in your region in order to start a Cheater Island game

If there weren't enough cheaters... you'd all just be falling forever...

There were a few genuine bugs that would cause similar things to happen...

But mostly, when people said they were "Falling forever"...

They were cheaters and we didn't want to give them extra info

I'm sure you've noticed...

We try to be super open and upfront with you in all of our communications

It's been very difficult to talk about cheaters though... because everything we say... gives the cheaters more ammo

They were using any info to improve their cheating...

For a long time, there weren't enough cheaters to actually start these matches up

As we lowered the threshold on our detection, more and more cheaters were getting caught

But still... no Cheater Island matches

Cheaters were all falling forever and saying the game was broken...

At this point...

Cheaters started to realise that they could team up with friends who weren't cheaters... and they could matchmake with them...

They were escaping Cheater Island

Oh no

We raced to patch this out before they all realised

Cheaters also realised that they could use family-sharing to share their game to another account... and then use the other account to bypass Cheater Island

We disabled Family-Sharing to fix this problem

Dealing with cheaters is difficult... they're honestly very crafty

During all of this time... we kept increasing the thresholds on our cheat detection. We were 100% confident that anyone being flagged as a cheater was DEFINITELY cheating.

This was super important to us.

We didn't want to falsely ban anyone.

Last week... something exciting happened!

There were finally enough cheaters to actually matchmake and create Cheater Island matches!

Here's a new problem though...

People were uploading videos that we *think* are Cheater Island...

Somebody actually uploaded this video to Reddit with the title:

"Ever played a round of Fall Mountain where all the players are cheating?"

The problem is... this LOOKS like Cheater Island but we can't be 100% sure

Here's another video that we think is Cheater Island

The person recording isn't cheating...

Either they didn't cheat, just for the video...

Or it's a genuine server and a legit player...

Either way, it makes the game look bad

We DO know that Cheater Island matches were happening

We just DON'T know if that's what those videos show

For that reason, we have closed down Cheater Island

Instead, cheaters are now unable to login

We are continuously improving the threshold on our cheat detection too

Our cheat detection system was good... but we hadn't expected so many players... and we had no idea the lengths that some players would go to cheat

We tried to create a system around "Honesty"... but as soon as we realised we were in an ARMS RACE we called up the experts at Epic

Now...

Our next update is called:

BIG YEETUS AND ANTI-CHEATUS

I'll tell you more about the Yeetus part later

But the Anti-Cheatus part...

We're actually adding Epic's Anti-Cheat which will be a huge step forward as we continue to improve things!

COMING SOON

I realise this has been an insanely long thread...

But...

That's the story of Cheater Island...

And the reasoning behind why we've been so cryptic and vague!