Although Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds continues to lose out to other battle royale games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s “Blackout” mode, it is clear that PUBG Corp. is not messing around with how it deals with in-game cheaters - at the competitive level, at least.

Four competitive Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds players have been banned for three-years from participating in the National PUBG League (NPL) after having been caught cheating.

PUBG Esports posted the news via Twitter:

Following a thorough investigation, it was revealed that the four players - Christian “Cuhris” Narvaez, Liam “Liammm” Tran, Tyler “DevowR” Sti, and Mark “Tefl0n” Formaro - had qualified in December's NPL Online Qualifiers through the use of an unauthorized third-party software during the public matches. As such, all four players are banned from participating in any official PUBG esports competitions until December 31st, 2021.

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The respective teams of the four players - Almost, Death Row, Reapers, and Totality - have also been disqualified from the original NPL Preseason standings, replaced by the next four top-ranked teams to round out the 32-team roster.

via destructoid.com

The move has set a precedent for the NPL, and will hopefully deter cheating in the future. Though this instance resulted in only a three-year ban, future occurrences may result in a lifetime ban from competitive play, depending on the situation. It is great that the NPL is taking measures to prevent cheating in PUBG; something that has plagued the game, in general, since its inception.

Though PUBG Corp. has taken measures to stop cheating within the non-competitive community, it hasn’t exactly been an ideal system. Additional focus on the preventing cheating and hacking in the game’s non-competitive realm may help its overall cause to bring back some of the players it has lost (and keep the ones that are actually still playing fairly).

NPL playoffs will occur January 7th through the 12th, with the finals taking place on Sunday, January 13th at 6 PM (PST), the winning team taking home $50,000 USD.

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