Ubisoft seems to be serious about cracking down on hackers and cheaters in their games. Following up on their recent announcement that Rainbow Six: Siege players will be perma-bannned for their first-time cheating offense in the game, they’ve now announced that first-time cheaters in The Division will also be hit with the permanent banhammer.

Over on their official The Division website they have a lengthy post explaining that they’ve already doled out actions against 30,000 different accounts and they’ve handed out more than 3,800 permanent bans.

However, they mention that their cheat detection system in The Division may not be getting the job done the way they want. They further state that they’re now going to be taking the disciplinary actions to the next level when it comes to first-time offenders, stating on the website…

“[…] while huge progress has been made in terms of cheat detection, our 14 days suspension on first offense policy has not been dissuasive enough. Judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game, we have now decided to push our policy one step further: we will now start applying permanent bans on first offense when players are caught using cheat engines and we will communicate clearly when new ban waves are taking place.”

Ubisoft has been pelted frequently by the community about a lack of security and punishment when it comes to dealing with hackers in both Rainbow Six: Siege and The Division. Things get especially hairy when it comes to The Division’s Dark Zone, where hackers try all sorts of exploits to avoid being killed while trying to loot all the top gear and get out scot-free.

Hacking has become so rampant that there are even YouTube channels and players within The Division who go “hacker hunting”, as indicated in the video below from XfactorGaming.

Whether or not this will make a serious difference in the play experience of The Division remains to be seen, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s a problem that needs some kind of resolution. I guess time will tell if the name-and-shame game coupled with perma-bans will work in Ubisoft’s favor as they fight against the cheaters and hackers in their less-than-stellar MMOTPS.