Hello players,

Anti-Cheat Team here to discuss a new topic: ESP, a specific illegal software that heavily disrupts gameplay, and a brief outline of our plans.

If you remember our previous PUBG Care Package EP. 2 session, we shared a concise review of our Anti-ESP solution. In today's Dev Letter, we plan to dig deeper.

But before that, what exactly is ESP? Extra Sensory Perception - aka ESP - is an illegal software that automatically pinpoints other players' positions in-game. It currently stands as one of the most frequently encountered cheating methods that causes significant stress for our community.

Anti-ESP

ESP gathers information about where other players are within a match to provide a visual context to the cheater through images or text. This brings an unfair advantage in shooter games, where stealth and sightlines are essential. 

ESP programs are relatively complex to detect compared to other illegal software because they don't tinker with our game data and leave no trace on existing files. Additionally, it's challenging to perceive ESP usage from a third person's perspective when monitoring in-game reports. While recognizing the importance of identifying ESP usage and banning cheaters, we are primarily focusing on eliminating ESP.

Thus, the solution we've developed to counteract ESP is called Anti-ESP in PUBG, which is also commonly referred to as "Fog of War" in strategy simulation games. Anti-ESP disrupts ESP by eliminating location details of players who are out of sight, rendering it infeasible for cheaters to identify where other players are. Developing Anti-ESP posed several challenges for us, as it is required to have players' location, sound, and behavior available in replays/death cams while not in-game.

We've created an image that shows the effect of Anti-ESP. In the upper image where Anti-ESP is disabled, the locations of other players in-game are visible. However, when Anti-ESP is activated in the lower image, you can see that the screen is shown as it should.

Results

After numerous rounds of internal development and testing, Anti-ESP was implemented on live servers in September 2023. Further security enhancements were made in three subsequent waves in December 2023, January, and March 2024. Since then, there has been a noticeable decline in cheater metrics, such as:

• Following the introduction of Anti-ESP, cheaters' average distance of in-game damage was reduced by approximately 23%. With enhancements to Anti-ESP in January 2024, we observed an overall decrease of approximately 30% compared to August 2023.
• Cheaters' average Kills per match has decreased by approximately 20% after the implementation and enhancements of Anti-ESP.

These indicate that implementing Anti-ESP has considerably diminished the advantage cheaters unfairly gain with ESP.

Future Plans

Anti-ESP is still a work in progress, and we are continuously pursuing even more improvements. These include world texture, server performance, and replay/death cam graphic refinements when Anti-ESP is enabled. In November 2023, our priority was to optimize servers, replays, and death cams. For the December, January, and March updates, we worked on ensuring better in-game graphics and security measures.

We are committed to continuously expanding on what Anti-ESP can cover through ongoing research and development efforts to provide a more equitable environment to our players. While we prioritize minimizing the unfair advantage ESP brings, we are also focusing on the fundamental step of detecting the use of illegal software.

Furthermore, we've recently received reports from the community regarding various illegal software functions, including one that enables abnormal vehicle driving. In response, we have fortified our countermeasures and additional actions are underway. More details will be shared in the future.

To wrap up today's Dev Letter: As we strive to fortify our anti-cheat measures to thwart illegal software and cultivate a fair gaming environment, we are also attentively monitoring your feedback regarding our system and actions.

We'll see you again with another Dev Letter on our anti-cheat plans and updates.

Thank you.

PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS Anti-Cheat Team