Hello from the dev team! 👋
Hacking has been a big problem in Surviv, for quite a while, and we're excited to finally tell you about our progress toward a more fair and fun island. We've seen your many questions – about hackers, bans, prestige... wondering how it all works. We wanted to make sure our new system was effective, and would be here to stay, before sharing any news about it.
Today marks our fourth ban wave using Surviv's new hacker-detection system! 🥳
Here’s how the updated ban process works:
- We use three independent systems to flag suspected hackers. (More info on each system down below)
- Once we analyze the data, and are confident someone is hacking, we give them a soft ban and a strike. The more strikes they already had, the longer the soft ban. (Subsequent bans get 3 days, 7 days, 14 days)
- Anyone who gets a fourth strike is permanently banned.
So, how do we flag suspected hackers? There are three ways someone could get flagged:
- Tickets: If a Survivr writes to our support team reporting a hacker/cheater, and provides compelling evidence. (This continues to be a great way to help catch hackers!)
- Prestige: If a player is Reported many times from Spectate, and not Endorsed in a way that negates those reports. Example: Reported as Cheater, and not Endorsed as Skillful. It’s often hard to tell the difference between an aimbotter vs someone who’s just unbelievably good. We don’t want to punish players for being awesome at Surviv.
- S.C.O.P.E (a.k.a. Systematic Cheater Odds Probability Evaluation): This is a new system that monitors for in-game statistics that match common hacker behaviors, and predicts the likelihood that a match is a hacker 🤓 We only flag players with very high odds of being a hacker. We can’t share details about these profiles, as that would help people hack, but we appreciate any ideas/feedback about which hacker behaviors to watch for.
We know none of these systems are perfect, which is why being flagged in only one will never get you banned. But so far, this system is working well! In the last two months, we’ve soft banned almost 10,000 hackers – which might sound like literally everyone, but we promise that’s only a fraction of our many Survivrs 💪Only 5% of those banned have shown up again on the list of suspects, and we’ve received very few legitimate complaints about inaccurate bans... Which means far fewer hackers on Prestige Island! Note: If you’re unfairly soft banned, we’re very sorry! Please use the in-game Support button (or this link) to write us, and we’ll get you sorted out.
One last thing: We can only ban hackers from Prestige Island (that’s where you play when you’re logged in). Since Guests can simply start over once banned, banning them doesn’t do much good. To experience the most fun, fair, hacker-free battles, you must log in. ✅
We hope this clarifies how bans work now, and how Reports via Spectate factor in. We continue to work hard at cleaning up the island, so every battle can be fair and fun. Many thanks to each of you who uses Tickets and Reports to help out. May the best Survivr win!