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In a collaborative effort, Chinese police, also known as Kunshan Police, and Chinese gaming giant Tencent busted operations of the world’s largest video game cheating ring. This group is speculated to have earned roughly $760 million.
The Anti-Cheat Police Department Twitter handle, one of the most reputed video game cheat reporting accounts, exposed the takedown news to the western world after Kunshan police made arrests and seized huge amounts of property, including luxury cars.
Kunshan police reported this phenomenon in March 2020, approximately 12-months after they started tracking this cheating ring.
The biggest video game cheating ring gets busted
Cheating has plagued almost all competitive multiplayer video games. It has hampered the scene of all video games.
Almost everyone in the gaming community has tried to co-exist with cheating as part-and-parcel of video games. Justice being served regarding defrauding in video games didn’t capture the mass imagination till now.
Moreover, developing cheats for competitive video games has been lucrative for companies because there is a hefty demand.
The primary focus of cheaters has usually been mobile games. However, cheats for popular titles like Overwatch and Valorant were up for sale as well.
Their monetization model is subscription-based. Players would buy “subscription keys” to use these cheats for a set period of time. According to the report, it costs roughly $10 for a day, $50 for a week, or $200 for a month for such subscriptions.
This ring was reportedly earning $10,000 daily by selling subscription-based cheats. So one can imagine how widespread its users might have been.
Perhaps this crackdown will change the paradigm in which video game cheaters continue their illegal shenanigans with legal impunity.
