Fall Guys once had ‘cheater island’ for the jerks

They deserve one another

Bubblegum battle royale game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has had a cheating problem since launch, and while some of these folks have been banned, developer Mediatonic recently revealed that some of these jerks became a part of a fun social experiment instead.

Over on Twitter, the official Fall Guys account described a now-defunct program where cheaters were pitted against other cheaters. At first, Mediatonic simply watched fans who were breaking the rules to make sure it had enough data to capture the right players. Apparently, the devs made the threshold for being tagged a cheater “really tolerant” in the hopes that some would rehabilitate their ways, but unfortunately, most folks just continued to cheat.

Once enough information was gathered, the aptly-named “Cheater Island” was spun up. The game worked as it normally would — everyone competing for a crown — except your rivals were all also frauds who could do the impossible, like float above the map.

“Cheater Island had it’s own set of global servers,” the Twitter account says. “You’d need enough cheaters in your region in order to start a Cheater Island game.”

For some, this meant that their games were stuck trying to find matches without ever progressing — there weren’t enough cheaters to populate the island.

“Cheaters were all falling forever and saying the game was broken,” the account continues.

And then, last week, Mediatonic says that it gathered enough crooks to actually start Cheater Island matches. The developer shared video of matches that it believes depict Cheater Island, but it should be noted it’s not entirely sure — Mediatonic is certain that Cheater Island had started existing, but that’s about it.

But now, Cheater Island is no more. As of this writing, Mediatonic says that it is now stopping cheaters from logging in altogether, along with continuing to improve its anti-cheat tools. To this end, Fall Guys will soon start using Epic’s Anti-Cheat solutions, which should help improve the state of the game. The new protections should go live with its “Big Yeetus” update, which will also randomly add a chaotic hammer to matches.

“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,” the account said.

“We tried to create a system around ‘Honesty’... but as soon as we realised [sic] we were in an ARMS RACE we called up the experts at Epic.”