Palworld outlines anti-cheat measures as players struggle to connect to servers due to “fraudulent activities”

Palworld is stepping up its efforts against cheats and hackers in the coming weeks, with the developers of the hugely popular Pokémon-a-like survival game saying they are focusing on stamping out ne’er-do-wells on its official servers.

Pocketpair admitted that their Pokémon labour and gun-factory simulator was suffering with cheaters on its public servers shortly after launch, with hackers reportedly killing other players - despite there technically being no PvP in the game - and stealing their things using various glitches. While several patches have addressed some of the most egregious exploits, Pocketpair said at the time that it might take some time to address all of the cheating going on.

Weeks on, that seems to remain the case, as Pocketpair acknowledged today that some players are still having trouble connecting to servers and are “unable to play the game properly” as the result of “cheating and the influence of fraudulent activities”.

Obviously that’s not ideal, so the developers have offered an outline of a few of the measures being taken in future updates to address the problems. Namely, two key parts of a coordinated effort to bring cheaters to task and keep them out for good.

The first part will be a “player list function” arriving in servers at the end of February. From the sounds of it, the list will essentially be a way to report cheaters so they can be banned as necessary: “We will strengthen the identification of players who engage in cheating and the suspension of their use by the development team,” Pocketpair wrote in their blog post.

After that, the big guns: a dedicated “external anti-cheat solution” that will target “particularly frequent fraudulent activities and cheating”. Exactly what form that will take and when it will arrive isn’t clear, but Pocketpair reassured those having fun with mods on private servers with friends that the anti-cheat feature will be option in single-player, community servers and co-op, meaning you should still be able to use mods and mess around to your heart’s content if you set up a dedicated Palworld server.

Between those bigger steps to clean up Palworld’s servers, Pocketpair said they would continue to deal with issues day-to-day, apologising for “many cases where we are not able to keep up”.

“Our entire team is working hard to get everyone back to a state where they can enjoy the game comfortably and with peace of mind as soon as possible,” the developers wrote with the undertone of that weariness of a group of people desperately trying to keep up with their game’s stratospheric success.