Hero image: PUBG: Battlegrounds. Image: KRAFTON
The PUBG: Battlegrounds Anti-Cheat Team says it has banned 10,237 accounts that dodged earlier bans by changing their PC’s hardware ID, in a new Dev Letter dated 5 November.
The trick it describes is a familiar one. A banned player alters the HWID — the identifying information for their PC — and logs back in on a new account, hiding the fact that the machine was already banned.
The team says it now uses “two complementary sets of detection criteria” built on identifying information that stays consistent when someone tries to change it. Both were “thoroughly validated” before use, it says, so legitimate players are not caught.
It has also updated that identification logic four times since the start of October, according to the letter.
The second number concerns the people selling cheats rather than using them. From January to September 2026, the team says, it reported more than 280,000 pieces of content selling or promoting cheat programs to the websites, marketplaces and social platforms hosting them.
That work leans on a machine learning-based detection system which tracks posts and videos as well as seller accounts and distribution channels that reappear. Removal is up to each platform — the letter says “action is being taken based on the platforms’ reviews” — and it concedes a single takedown “is not enough”.
The third item is a warning. Forming a premade team with a cheater is already punished under PUBG’s Rules of Conduct, and the team is now “considering stronger penalties” for it. Players who suspect a teammate are told to use the in-game report feature, since playing alongside a cheater “can also lead to serious penalties against your own account.”
No new penalty, date or threshold is given for that last change.
The letter follows Update 44.1, which ended the LMG meta rotation earlier this week. PUBG was third on Steam’s most-played chart when it was read this morning, so the ban evasion figure lands on one of the platform’s busiest games.
Source: KRAFTON – Dev Letter: Anti-Cheat Update – Combating Cheat Distribution and Ban Evasion, KRAFTON – Dev Letter announcement (Steam)