Every once in a while, you come across a phenomenon that refuses to fit neatly into the otherwise universal boxes of “You love to see it” and “You hate to see it.” Case in point: Fall Guys players are teaming up to boot hackers into the ravenous nightmare abyss that consumes Guys when they Fall (TM). On one hand, it’s always fun to watch hackers lose, but on the other, it blows that it’s even necessary for players to do this in the first place.
Despite a declaration of partial success from developer Mediatonic a couple weeks ago, Fall Guys’ hacker problem has not gone away since the last time I reported on it. Now more and more players are taking matters into their own hands. Most of the time, this means banding together in pursuit of the undeniably honorable goal that is making cheaters eat shit.
The easiest way to stop a hacker from soaring straight to crown town? Turning on them during team games. It’s become an almost unspoken rule at this point. If somebody is clearly hacking during a team game, that person’s own team has a duty to push their ball the wrong way or throw eggs out of their own goal. Then the hacker has no choice but to go down with the ship.
Even more satisfying, though, is watching players in the final minigame—bound only by circumstance, not the color of their Guys—silently coordinate to deprive hackers of a win. For example, here’s a clip of a whole Tail Tag lobby working together to swipe an overconfident flying hacker’s tail, then dogpiling atop the suddenly tailless hacker to seal the deal. More quietly heroic acts, like purposefully wasting time when you’re the last person against a flying hacker in Hex-A-Gone, are also much appreciated.
Today, Mediatonic said on Twitter that dealing with cheaters is a “top priority” and that while its software automatically detects and blocks cheaters after a match ends, it’s working to take “more immediate action.” No multiplayer game will ever be able to completely eliminate hackers, but perhaps someday, we’ll get to live in a utopian future in which Fall Guys players no longer have to wholesomely work together and can instead put their full energies into ruthlessly trampling on and clawing at each other, as nature intended.