Competitive Integrity Update - Ballistic Exploit Crash
Our Anti-Cheat team recently identified an exploit being used to disrupt matches by intentionally crashing game servers. After thoroughly investigating the suspected perpetrator, we have delivered a permanent account ban, and implemented a fix to the exploit.
While investigating a suspected player who appeared to be repeatedly causing lobbies to crash, we identified an exploit involving Ballistic’s Sling passive. The exploit used a modified game client to duplicate a weapon optic far beyond its intended limits. Generating enough duplicated items placed an excessive load on the server, causing the match to become unresponsive and ultimately crash for everyone in the lobby.
The player would then reconnect to the match after the crash and attempt to take advantage of other players being disconnected.
Once identified, we worked to understand the behavior, confirm the cause, and put a fix in place to prevent this exploit from being used to disrupt matches again.
We permanently banned the suspected user and are actioning all accounts found to be using this exploit.
We take intentional match disruption seriously. Exploiting vulnerabilities to crash lobbies and interfere with other players' ability to play is unacceptable, and we will continue to investigate reports of this type of behavior and take action when we can confirm abuse.
Thank you to everyone who reported suspicious lobby crashes and provided information that helped us investigate this issue. Fair play is for everyone.