Titanfall cheaters aren't as many as "gamers expect" but have a 'large community impact'

Titanfall developers Respawn Entertainment recently implemented anti-cheat measures by tossing cheaters out of general population and onto their own servers, which it likened to "the Wimbledon of aimbot lobbies."

Recently, network engineer Jon Shiring and community manager Abbie Heppe sat down with Gamasutra to discuss the effect cheaters have on a game, and how their actions lessen the fun for other for players.

"In a multiplayer game like ours they will ruin the match for others and the memory of it will stick with them for a while," the duo said. "A small number of cheaters will have a much larger impact on the community. So it's really important to us that we quickly find and flag the cheaters."

Respawn uses the FairFight system to catch cheaters, and the developer has "nothing but confidence" in the product, citing how well it filtered the good from the bad in Battlefield.

"We're careful to look at each cheating scenario and see if it's a bug, a cheat, or just an unexpected use of the game," said Respawn. "In some cases they are really rare bugs, and we don't punish the players for that -- we've spent considerable time investigating those to see how they could happen.

"In many cases, we can fix it with a server patch so the bug just goes away. We feel pretty confident that we can only flag players who are actually cheating."

Respawn Entertainment said it would begin enforcing Titanfall anti-cheat measures back in March, and later in the month it confirmed the implementation on March 21.

The first bans  kicked in on March 18.