Free Fire: How Garena is trying to combat hacking

Garena Free Fire is one of the most popular mobile games in the world at the moment with it's download count rising everyday. Many Free Fire tournaments are being organised in order to expand the esports scene of the game to match up with the recently boosted mobile esports ecosystem in India.

In an esports competition, one of the most important things is to provide is a clean, competitive set-up without any cheaters via a potent in-game or out-game anticheat. Although Garena is trying its level best to curb the hacking epidemic in Free Fire, specific players belonging to renowned esports organisations have been recently struck by the ban hammer.

At the highest level of competition, these Free Fire players have managed to bypass the game's inbuilt anti-cheat to execute third party softwares on a consistent basis. These hacks have essentially helped them secure spots in the few teams, that are providing salaries for up and coming players in the Free Fire community.

Garena has vowed to ban any professional player who indulges in hacking and has promised to take strict steps against it. They have vowed to enhance their ability to catch cheaters and you can find their response at the end of this article.

If this level of cheating is showing up on the ever-growing professional scene, one can only imagine the grade of usage at the casual level. Over the past six months, players have raised several questions about the in-game anti-cheat, asking for a stricter screening process.

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Hackers in Indian Free Fire Esports

Hackers in Free Fire tournament (Credits: Total Gaming)

Over the past two weeks, the topic of hackers in the Indian Free Fire community has reached it's peak. Hackers are a big shame for any community, but it raises eyebrows, when the reach the very top of the hierarchy to earn from the game.

Recently, players from India's biggest Free Fire organisations such as Entity Gaming and TSG Army were caught using hacks in the Free Fire Scrim Wars 2020, which was detected by the in-game anti-hack system.

Instead of taking a lesson from this incident, some of the 'professional players' didn't stop cheating, another professional team Bandra 50 got banned because of using a modified APK version of Free Fire.

Several popular PUBG Mobile streamers also reacted upon this and said that it will get better with time just like it happened with PUBG Mobile. For this current situation to stop, players are demanding the introduction of a stronger external anti-cheat, similar to the ones used during professional PUBG Mobile tournaments.

Several influential members within the community have also raised their voice about the underbelly of hacks and hackers within the scene.

Apart from the fact that these players are making their way into such reputed organisations, such incidents also dissuade teams from investing money into Free Fire. Once tainted, organisations paying players to play, will think twice before making a return to Free Fire.

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Garena's Response

Garena's response on Free Fire hackers

Garena took strict action against the perpetrators as they immediately banned the players for one year and because of them, both the teams got disqualified from the tournament. In response, Entity Gaming cut off all the ties with the substitute player ETG•ASHWATMA who was found guilty of using a third party software.

Garena quickly responded to Sportskeeda when asked about the recent flurry of cheaters in their official tournaments.

Cheaters have no place in Free Fire. We apply a range of screening technologies to spot suspicious behaviour, and are constantly enhancing our ability to detect the most sophisticated cheaters. We will permanently ban anyone – amateur or pro – who is found to be cheating. Moreover, pro players who cheat will be expelled from our tournaments along with their entire team. We have zero tolerance for any activity that undermines the integrity and fairness of our game.

They have also shared a Facebook post regarding this matter: