Fanboys Anonymous

The Titanfall team at Respawn Entertainment has found an interesting and sound way to handle cheaters! Since the game's launch, they've been collecting data on PC cheating, but that's about it; nothing much had been implemented to handle the problem. On Friday, March 21, Titanfall implemented a banning system for all those using aimbots—or anything else that sore-losers use to depreciate game play, for that matter. "How do I know if I've been banned," you ask? Well we've got that covered!

If you open the Private Lobby menu, and see the image below, you are banned.


What's changed in the menu? The "Challenges" selection has been locked, and "*FairFight: Cheat detected" appears on the right-hand side of the screen. This means you can no longer associate with normal society in your multiplayer experience. But the good(?) news is that you can still play, but only with other cheaters. "You can play with other banned players in something that will resemble the Wimbledon of aimbot contests," says the official Titanfall site's FAQ.

Normally, cheaters can only play with other banned players. But you can still play with your friends, so that's nice! According to Titanfall.com:

Q.) If I’m banned, what happens if I make a party with my non-cheater friends?
A.) When anyone in your party is banned, then everyone in your party will be treated as banned for that play session. If you are a non-cheater and you invite a cheater friend into a party, you will be stuck playing against cheaters. If you stop inviting your cheater friend, you will once again get to play with the non-cheater population. You do not get permanently tainted just by playing with a cheater—you are only banned for cheating if you are actually cheating.

 Have you been wrongfully banned? Then you can email anticheat@respawn.com to plead your case and get your life back! If you're unsuccessful in regaining your access, then "hopefully the aimbot cheat you paid for really is the best," said the developers, "or these all-cheater matches could be frustrating for you. Good luck."

I really think this is the best idea for dealing with cheaters who can't play nicely with everyone else. Ruining the game for the rest of the player base is a jerk move, and Respawn Entertainment has handled the situation extremely well—as long as nothing goes wrong, like undeserved mass bannings. Do you agree that this is a good resolution, or is there something Titanfall's developers could have done better?