Among Us: Why is the game being hacked?

If you’ve had the misfortune of playing a public game on Among Us lately, then there’s a decent chance that you’ve run into a specific type of spam flooding the in-game chatbox. While the message has changed a few times, it’s always the same, and the developers have been scrambling to get ahead of it. Now, we know the reasons why the game is being hacked.

Who is the hacker ruining Among Us?

evergreen tweet https://t.co/xvdpgnYzlN

— Forest (@forte_bass) October 23, 2020

A quick note about this hack: the hacker in question is doing this to seek attention, partially for his/her YouTube channel, as well as for political influence (it’s an election year in America). I would advise that anyone who reads this does not give the hacker any more attention.

There is an old adage that states that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Even angrily commenting on their YouTube videos or anything like that will only encourage him/her to keep going and encourage YouTube to prioritize their channel more.

Through this article, we attempt to inform you why this is happening and help you get around it, but we will avoid using the hacker’s name (though you likely already know it), and we will also avoid making this about him/her as much as possible.

The relevant details about this Among Us hacker is that he/she is a college student who sells cheats and hacks. During an interview with Eurogamer, the hacker stated that “I've been making cheats for lots of video games and I sell them, this is just a publicity stunt,” later adding, “I'm a college student, and I support Trump, with the election and this hopefully getting publicity wanted to add that.”

How far-reaching have these Among Us hacks gotten?

During their interview, the hacker boasted about the hack’s results, and Eurogamer reported it as “claiming to have hit 1.5 million games and affecting 4.9 million Among Us players in total.” This outreach seems to be mostly focused on the North American server, which makes sense considering the hack’s political messaging, but there obviously isn’t any reason it can’t spread.

However, the reach is still limited in scope. Reportedly, playing Among Us in a private lobby with players that you trust is enough to keep the spam out of your games. As a result, Among Us gathering hubs have become more important for organizing games than ever before.

If you want to find games with people you can play with consistently, to build a playgroup of players you trust, you might want to check out the Among Us subreddit or one of the various public Among Us discord channels. At the very least, if you end up getting spammed in private games organized this way, you can kick players until it stops and simply not play with them again.

Additionally, you can try to play Among Us on the Asia or Europe servers, though don’t expect that to be a perfect solution.

What can InnerSloth do to protect Among Us?

Alright, wave 2 of anti-hacks are going out:Wave 1 did fix impersonation, this is why the prominent hack now is just chat spam and mass despawn (black room)Wave 2 should fix both of these. We'll see where we need to go from there.

— Forest (@forte_bass) October 24, 2020

Reminder!! Please play private games or with people that you trust!!! We're doing what we can!!

— InnerSloth (@InnerslothDevs) October 23, 2020

Reportedly the developers at Innersloth are hard at work attempting to find a solution to this hacking issue. Forest Willard, the game’s sole programmer, says:

“We’re rushing to get an account system in place so we can have better moderation and reporting systems built around that. Also getting help with making the servers better at detecting and blocking hacks. And investigating client-side hack prevention as well. I’m sort of scrambling to get all the right people in place, but I’m attacking it from multiple angles so it can get better in many ways, hopefully all at once.”

However, there appears to be a simple problem with numbers. While this specific hacker has been the most troublesome and has been receiving support from like-minded individuals, there are plenty of other hack developers out there, each of them employing their own methods to get around any kind of anti-cheat made by Willard. At a certain point, it’s simply too much for a single programmer to handle.

InnerSloth likely needs to find someone well versed in online security to assist them in developing a system that will, at the very least, make hacking Among Us more difficult. For now, they are all doing their best.