Among Us: Cheaters beware, anti-cheat is coming
It should come as no surprise, but Among Us is already having problems with cheaters. Players with seemingly nothing better to do are using cheat software which breaks the fundamental rules of the game. Fortunately, the developers have been hard at work producing an anti-cheat system to hopefully deal with this issue.
Cheating in Among Us
Among Us has always had one type of cheating, the kind that is much harder to detect and only really enforceable through controlling the playgroups. This, of course, refers to the way that players can communicate information they aren’t supposed to, such as texting a friend in the same game who the imposter is after they kill you.
While this type of cheating will naturally be harder for the developers to do anything about, it is much easier for playgroups to address on a personal level. If anyone does this, it is simple enough for a controlled playgroup to simply remove that player, or refuse to play with them in the future.
In public games, this is a little bit harder to address, but if you happen to have a good playgroup then you could make an effort to ask that players remain for the games in order to avoid the risk that someone trying to cheat this way could get in.
Nevertheless, a report function for suspected cheaters might be beneficial, if it can be done in such a way that it is hard to abuse.
Of course, anti-cheat is meant to address the other way that people cheat in Among Us. Players who run programs meant to give them an undue advantage, setting their kill cooldown to zero, outright reveal who the imposters are, change settings related to vision, and so on must be addressed by the developers.
Why cheat in Among Us
Among Us is a game that shouldn’t have needed an anti-cheat program, but nevertheless, here we are. The reason is simple, what purpose is there to cheat when there is almost nothing on the line? The reward for winning a game of Among Us is another game of Among Us, and the reward for losing is just the same. The only result of cheating is to ruin the game for everyone, the cheater included.
Of course, there will always be people for whom that is enough. People whose goals never seem to rise beyond hurting other people, in whatever little way they can, will always function as an unfortunate plague on any community.
While I would strongly implore that any consistent playgroup remove and prevent cheaters from playing with them, this will be nearly impossible on public games, and it is there that developers must step in.
If you want to play this game without cheaters, you should definitely consider gathering friends on discord to play the game together. Once you have a group that can play the game together the way you want, it becomes much easier for everyone to enjoy the game in a much better environment.