EA Working on Anti-Cheat System That Will Ignore 20% of Cheaters' Button Presses

gamerant.com:

Cheating is a huge problem in the gaming industry, especially at times when the gaming landscape has become more competitive than ever with the rising popularity of online multiplayer games. For publishers of such games like EA, battling cheaters and hackers will always be an ongoing endeavor, and one practical solution is to develop an anti-cheat system that employs effective mitigation techniques.

EA's popular multiplayer games such as the Battlefield series and Apex Legends have always been susceptible to cheating, resulting in players calling for more drastic measures in dealing with cheaters. While developer Respawn Entertainment has its own plans in cracking down on cheaters, EA has much bigger vision in the works. It appears that EA is developing its own anti-cheat system that works in a rather clever way.

Respawn is Committed to Stopping Apex Legends Cheaters

According to a patent filed by EA last January, the anti-cheat system it's working on will be able to put cheaters at a disadvantage by imposing several penalties, one of which is to ignore 20% of their button presses. This is clearly designed to make it very difficult for cheaters to play the game, as every fifth move they make will be completely disregarded. On paper, this mechanism can give players a better chance to defeat cheaters on their own.

While the diagram shows an example of disregarded moves that are uniform, the patent also claims that the moves can be dismissed according to other patterns, such as Fibonacci pattern or reverse Fibonacci, while also still roughly conforming to the proportion of 20% over time. This way, cheaters can never know which of their intended moves will be completely dropped from the game.

The anti-cheat system EA is working