In 2019, Garena Free Fire became the most downloaded mobile game in the world. Garena Free Fire is a mobile shooter game on par in popularity with other mobile shooters Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. Unfortunately, the popular battle royale has more in common with these games than popularity, luring cheaters to the game in droves.
Other battle royale games have to deal with cheaters on a consistent basis. Call of Duty: Warzone is plagued by cheaters, with the issue being so bad that an entire team got banned from a Twitch tournament for cheating, and players commonly use apps to dodge the games skill-based-matchmaking. Many players get away with hacking in the game for long periods of time. Another game, PUBG Mobile, itself banned over 2 million players in a single week in 2020.
According to a video released by the team behind Garena Free Fire, it banned over 30 million cheaters in 2020. Apparently, 31% of the bans were the result of player reports, while 69% of them were detected by the game's anti-cheat software. The most common cheat used by players was auto-aim, taking up 36% of bans. The other common cheats were seeing through walls, teleporting, and one that put an antenna on all opposing players so a person could see where everyone was located. Skill-based matchmaking dodging was not on the list of common cheats for Garena Free Fire.
The free-to-play mobile battle royale looks like it takes cheating seriously. The good news for Garena Free Fire players is that the anti-cheat software in the game is doing its job. While players will still likely run into cheaters, those players' accounts will likely be banned, unlike cheaters in other popular games.
Garena Free Fire is available on Android and iOS.