According to an announcement posted on the official Darkfall Online forums, 213 players were banned today from the game's beta phase for using third-party programs to cheat. The announcement states the cheaters were automatically detected, verified manually and warned repeatedly.

These 213 players apparently account for 90 percent of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The other 10 percent have already been detected and just need to be verified. The post offers this bit of advice: "Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one way. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods."

The Darkfall team emphasized players who aren't running third-party cheats have nothing to worry about, but the team will continue to agressively detect and ban cheaters from the game. You can read the full post after the jump.

We banned 213 cheaters today. These are the people using 3rd party programs to cheat with. They were not banned for macroing, they were banned for cheating. They were automatically detected and also verified manually in a variety of ways. This number represents 90% of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The rest have also been detected, and we’re waiting for them to be verified before we ban them as well.

These people were warned repeatedly. They chose to believe that we cannot detect what’s going on in our game. They took the word of the makers of these hacks over the word of the creators and administrators of the game. There are no exceptions. We don’t care if journalists, clan leaders, or our friends are among them. They were cheating in order to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. They deserve to be banned.

What comes into play here is something called “selfish punishment” in social science. Cheaters are likely to be some of the most outspoken people against cheating, and more likely to report cheaters. This is as so to maximize the benefit for themselves - taking it away from others. This is also the case here; we recognize some of the people from the boards habitually accusing the company for not doing anything and complaining that cheating is rampant in Darkfall, when in reality it’s not.

If you cheat in the game, you will lie about it too. Whenever we ban a cheater he or she will appeal to the community, denying it on the forums. Then come the excuses to Darkfall support about their little brother, their roommate, or about their account being hacked. So now we expect a couple of hundred people to take to the boards. Threads along these lines will be removed and posters will be banned. Darkfall Support has been instructed to not provide more than the automated ban message. Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one ways. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods.

We will keep aggressively detecting and banning players that cheat in the game. If you’re not running 3rd party cheats, you have nothing to worry about. Those that don’t take our word for it, will be banned like those banned today.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team