The Division Beta Has Already Been Hacked

The Division is a third person cover shooter set in a mid-crisis New York City and the latest entry in the highly acclaimed Tom Clancy’s franchise. Developed by Ubisoft Massive, the studio decided to grant access to the game prior to release, and launch a fairly extensive beta. Ubisoft’s history on the PC platform when it comes to optimization isn’t great, so this provided a valuable insight into the game’s performance. While it’s far from perfect, the overall picture is pretty good and should work well providing you turn off NVIDIA’s advanced effects. Unfortunately, I really don’t like the game’s dull, dreary hue which makes the open world appear lifeless. Perhaps, that’s the idea to properly depict a world in chaos, but I’d like to see more vibrant colours.

Despite this, the gameplay is really fun especially when you team up with a few friends. However, according to initial reports, the game hasn’t got an effective anti-cheat system and hackers have already found a number of exploits. Reddit’s member ‘division_throwaway’ explained:

“However, without stating anything specific on how to ‘cheat’ in this beta. It’s scarily simple.

Everything from ammo count, level XP, Dark Zone currency, player speed are all CLIENT trusted, and take time to sync via server time.

For example. Infinite ammo is possible by removing the instruction that’s responsible for adding/subtracting ammo into your player structure.

Speedhacking is possible by modifying the delta time used in the game’s update.”

Here we can see clear video evidence of the terrible anti-cheat system in operation:

Hopefully this is restricted to the beta because the game will just become a mess, and gain a reputation for having a terrible community. Surely, Ubisoft is aware of the impact of cheating on a multiplayer focussed game and has measures in place to protect players. If not, then The Division really could struggle to maintain a loyal player base after a few months of being released.