Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the last couple of months, you’re probably aware of Fall Guys. It’s an online party game from the developer Mediatonic. In the short period of time after it released, it went on to achieve some pretty impressive player numbers.
It’s still going strong today in September, a testament to the fun and hilarious designs that the developer mastered. At its heart, Fall Guys is just about having fun — trying to get through round after round. Like every popular multiplayer game that has success, it has been plagued with cheating. It has been brutal in Fall Guys though.
Just as your character looks like it has things mastered, you see players soaring above in the sky like superman. They’re clearly not obeying the rules like a good gamer would. Mediatonic has done their best to address the heavy presence of cheating, even going so far as creating a special cheater island.
That’s right. There was actually a special place with its own dedicated global servers for cheaters. Talk about a brilliant strategy. In theory, there’s no better way to curb cheating than to give cheaters a taste of their own medicine. Then the playing fields are leveled and may the best cheater win.
All of this sounds good in theory, but the problem was not enough cheaters were online to get matches going. There were an abundance of complaints. The developer has since switched strategies. Now they simply prevent cheaters from logging in. They’re also working hard at improving anti-cheating tools.
It’s a shame cheater island didn’t have mainstay. It seems like a great way to keep everyone playing the popular game, but ensuring optimal experiences on both sides. Though running this island is probably harder than it looks.
Now Mediatonic is looking to Epic’s cheating solutions as a way to improve Fall Guys. It has worked particularly well in Fortnite and there’s no reason to think otherwise for Fall Guys. That’s the hope anyways.
In the meantime, players will just have to report cheating activity when they see it. If you want to avoid the hammer, you better stay on the up and up. And why would you want to cheat in Fall Guys? It’s supposed to be a fun time where you’re not supposed to take things too seriously.
A lot of gamers have taken this approach and they’re all the better for it. That doesn’t mean you can’t get into some mischief between rounds though.