BIG YEETUS & ANTI-CHEATUS is now live!

Surely that’s worth a retweetus? pic.twitter.com/xcBOG4b5f3

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) September 15, 2020

“Easy Anti-Cheat is used by the best in the business and will mean our jelly beans receive the very best protection from the bad eggs seeking to exploit them,” Mediatonic wrote in its announcement.

That’s not the only change coming to the game, though. Mediatonic is remixing levels, so you can expect round variations, new obstacles, random rotations and more tumbling fruit. Be on the lookout for a giant hammer obstacle named Big Yeetus, too. As Mediatonic says, the changes should keep the jelly beans on their toes.

We’re really sorry about the cheating problem!

We’re expanding the current detection system this week to improve things

We also have a BIG update in the next couple of weeks that adds the same anti-cheat used by games such as Fortnite

Thanks for bearing with us!

[Not BeanBot]

— Fall Guys | BeanBot Activated (@FallGuysGame) September 6, 2020

Fortnite developer Epic Games owns and uses Easy Anti-Cheat. The software is used by more than 120 games, and it’s proven to be pretty reliable. So this update should provide the anti-cheat support that Fall Guys fans are looking for. 

Mediatonic has been working to fight cheaters for weeks now. It changed its detection criteria so that players would no longer have to report individual cheaters, and it started blocking cheaters in the middle of games, rather than after each round. It also closed a loophole that allowed cheaters to get around bans by creating new Family-Sharing accounts on Steam. 

But as Engadget’s Matt Brian found, those efforts haven’t done much to stop cheaters. 

So, @FallGuysGame insists that cheaters are auto-detected and removed from the game ASAP. Notice this little complication of four rounds (first two blink and you’ll miss), but pay attention to the last two rounds and how they continued to blatantly cheat and progress. pic.twitter.com/qjhASDOdQG

— Matt Brian (@m4tt) September 5, 2020

Hopefully, adding Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat will be more effective, so Fall Guys players can stop fighting cheaters and get back to playing the game. 

A team that includes Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has won the charity competition to have their likeness included in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the adorable but deceptively brutal battle royale everyone on Twitch has been playing. At nearly the last minute of the two-week-long competition, the popular Fortnite streamer said he would team up with G2 Esports, Aim Lab and YouTuber MrBeast to donate $1 million to SpecialEffect, a UK-based charity that helps those with physical disabilities experience video games. Each of the four contributors will get their own skin added to the game.

BIDDING IS FINISHED

THE WINNERS ARE:@G2esports @Ninja @AimLab @MrBeastYT

With a combined donation of $1,000,000 for @SpecialEffect

Probably the spiciest team up since The Avengers??????https://t.co/Q2G3h9UyDh

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) August 31, 2020

Developer Mediatonic announced the competition on August 17th, just two weeks after it released Fall Guys and the title became all anyone was playing. “The thirst from brands has been unreal… so we’re turning it into something positive,” the studio said at the time. It promised to add a skin to Fall Guys representing the brand that was willing to donate the most amount of money to SpecialEffect. Initial bids came in the tens of thousands of dollars, but things quickly escalated. At one point, Warframe developer Digital Extremes pledged $20,000. Before Ninja and company came in with their pledge, the leading bid was $510,000.

We knew it was coming, but we finally got our first sneak peek at Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout season two during today’s Gamescom livestream. Unlike its inaugural run scheduled to wrap up next month, the game will take on a theme this fall: medieval fantasy.

That means knights, wizards, Vikings and even colorful dragons for the costumes. And new games “inspired by epic quests from the Middle Ages” that incorporate elements like castles, drawbridges and swinging axes. We don’t know any of the new rules yet, but some of the boards will have blocks and ramps that can be moved around. Hopefully none of the new levels will be as infuriating as Slime Climb.

It’s now no longer necessary to report individual cheaters, since we’ve been tuning our detection criteria we’ve noticed a large drop in cheaters – getting better!

A huge thank you to everyone who has been playing the game fairly, you’re all awesome, and we love you! pic.twitter.com/lPZJVBjzIm

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) August 11, 2020

At first, cheaters were removed after the round was over, but Mediatonic said it would take “more immediate action soon,” presumably kicking cheats out instantly. 

Dealing with cheaters is a top priority for us

At the moment, when a cheater is detected, they are able to finish the current show before being blocked

We are going to start taking more immediate action soon

As mentioned before: It isn’t necessary to manually report cheaters

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) August 24, 2020

And when Mediatonic discovered that some were using a Steam family-sharing feature to get around bans by creating new accounts and sharing with themselves, it disabled that loophole. Not only did that move block relentless cheats, it also proved that Mediatonic is committed to a sustained campaign of checks and balances. 

We discovered cheaters were using Family-Sharing to get around our banning system on Steam by creating new accounts and sharing with themselves, so we’ve unfortunately had to disable that for now.

It should massively help with the cheating issues though!

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) August 25, 2020

A silver lining to all of the Fall Guys cheating has been players working together to sabotage unscrupulous individuals. But Fall Guys is a hard game for people to win, and players should be able to spend their time playing the game not serving vigilante justice. The fact that Mediatonic is working hard to remove cheaters from the game may help players get that elusive victory.

It’s not unusual for Chinese companies to take popular platform games like PUBG and make separate mobile versions. Fall Guys in particular seemed destined for smartphones, as the controls are relatively simple and the sessions short — ideal for gaming on the move.

In fact, rumors of a mobile version popped up recently, complete with gameplay, but Mediatonic squashed it with an amusing tweet. “a) They’re literally playing a video and pretending to play it b) There’s literally a mouse cursor on the screen,” the company noted. At the same time, Mediatonic has said that “we’d love to bring the game to other platforms” down the road. It has yet to confirm the news, however, and there’s no word yet on when a mobile version of Fall Guys might arrive in China or elsewhere.

We’re about to drop a new level into rotation!!!

Jump Showdown – A fan-favourite from the beta!

We’ll be adding it in our first update TOMORROW!

Patch-notes in the thread

More new levels will be coming soon – along with new features & costumes pic.twitter.com/zQ4hOI70MP

— Fall Guys (@FallGuysGame) August 11, 2020

Since this is going into the Fall Guys final-round rotation (sorry), there should be less likelihood of you getting the frustrating Royal Fumble as the finale. Mediatonic is also lowering the weighting for that level, so it’ll appear as the final round a bit less often.

The patch includes a bug fix for the final-round stage Fall Mountain too. Players were sometimes unable to grab the crown to win the match, but that should soon be a less-frequent issue. In addition, Block Party will have more collisions to prevent players from bypassing the blocks. Until now, perching on the side wall and watching everyone else scramble to survive has been a viable strategy, but perhaps that won’t be the case anymore.

Among the other bug fixes are ones for “physics behaving erratically at high framerate on levels like Tip Toe,” display issues for player names with special characters and controller detection on PC. Mediatonic, which also said it’s getting better at catching cheaters, promises there’ll be even more levels soon, along with additional features and costumes.

If you want a battle royale-like experience but want something more family-friendly than Call of Duty or Fortnite, you won’t have to wait much longer. Mediatonic and Devolver have announced that Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout will be available on PS4 and Steam on August 4th. It’s not quite as ambitious as originally intended, with ‘only’ 60 players per round instead of 100, but it still appears every bit as frantic.

The title revolves around a collection of mini-games where only one player can emerge victorious, such as obstacle courses with falling fruit. While it’s relatively non-violent (unless you count being smacked by fruit as violent), much of the tension of a battle royale game remains — you’re still fighting to be the last one standing. In that sense, this might be viable for anyone who wants a large-scale party game but still has a vicious competitive streak.

The plan is to support around 30 mini games and up to 100 players at once, eliminating those at the bottom of the heap after each round. Mediatonic may even throw in some Twitch integration down the line, allowing viewers to select items and courses, or join games en masse with their favorite streamers.

Fall Guys is slated to hit PC and PlayStation 4 in 2020. It’s a special game for Mediatonic, as the British studio makes the bulk of its money building licensed products, such as Gears Pop!, Fantastic Beasts: Cases from the Wizarding World and Fable Fortune. It’s also the studio behind the high-definition remake of Hatoful Boyfriend, the best pigeon-dating simulator in existence.