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Cheating can ruin a multiplayer match in any genre, but it’s particularly prevalent in racing games. Speed hackers can make for some frustrating and unfair online races. In EA Sports WRC, players have been reporting cheaters posting suspicious times on leaderboards, but the issue has remained unresolved.
Thankfully, EA is stepping in to fix this issue by implementing an anti-cheat system to create a better online experience in EA Sports WRC.
EA Sports WRC update 1.9 will add an anti-cheat
According to an online FAQ, EA is addiding an anti-cheat to the PC version of EA Sports WRC in update 1.9 next month.
“Rally is a competitive sport where drivers battle against the clock, the car and the world for the best times on the leaderboards. Protecting the competitive integrity of our leaderboards is integral to providing a fun, fair and authentic rally experience for everyone,” EA wrote.
This will be a “kernel-mode anti-cheat and anti-tamper solution” developed by EA in-house. Kernal-mode anti-cheat software runs at a deeper level in your computer's operating system, raising privacy concerns with some players.
In the online FAQ, EA says that kernel-mode protection is “absolutely vital” because “they can make their cheat functionally invisible to anti-cheat solutions that live in user-mode.”
“Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a large increase in cheats and cheat techniques operating in kernel-mode, so the only reliable way to detect and block these is to continue to have our anti-cheat operate there as well.”
Addressing privacy concerns, EA assures that the anti-cheat “will only look at what it needs to for anti-cheat purposes” and has “limited the information EA anti-cheat collects.”
The FAQ also notes that EA’s anti-cheat software will not affect EA Sports WRC’s gameplay and is not required for the PlayStation and Xbox versions as these platforms already have anti-cheat measures.
Will the F1 series get an anti-cheat?
EA Sports WRC getting an anti-cheat is a great step toward stopping cheaters. But despite players requesting it for years, EA’s F1 series still doesn’t have an anti-cheat.
Last year, Codemasters’ senior creative director Lee Mather confirmed to RacingGames that Codemasters is actively working with EA to develop an anti-cheat for the F1 series, but it was still in the “prototyping phase.”
If EA Sports WRC’s anti-cheat is successful, there’s a chance that F1 24 will eventually get one too, if it isn’t ready for the final release later this month.
Are you happy about EA Sports WRC getting an anti-cheat? Let us know in the comments below.
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