Outriders players will not want to be the bad guys at People Can Fly. In a recent development update ahead of next week's launch, the studio revealed that cheating in Outriders will not only result in a stiff penalty in matchmaking, but also a "discreet but visible" watermark. Basically a brand rather than a ban.

"Since this has been a hotly debated topic since the launch of the demo, we wanted to provide some perspective on it as well as outline our policy on cheating and hacking going forward," the post reads. During the demo period, People Can Fly identified approximately 200 cheaters out of a total player base of 2 million. This is only 0.01% of the total player base, and the developers are confident that this percentage "will not increase much" at Outriders' launch.

However, for those looking to cheat their way to the best loot in this cooperative game, People Can Fly has implemented matchmaking restrictions for branded cheaters. They will be allowed to play alone, but will not be able to matchmaking with "legitimate" players. This is similar to the cheat hell that some competitive games apply as punishment.

Outriders' "People Can Fly" defines what constitutes cheating thus:

Even though "Outriders" is a purely cooperative game with no adversarial mode or microtransactions whatsoever, People Can Fly does not not miss anything. It is interesting that the studio has found a way to discourage malicious shenanigans without banning accounts altogether. You are effectively just modifying the game for yourself, but I can see why a god-like squad leader who kills everything with one blow would not be fun to play with. I had a similar experience with the original "Borderlands". Some rogue joined my game, dropped a crazy modified laser rifle that did a billion damage and left my life forever. The laser rifle totally broke the game, but it was fun anyway. (If there are any laser rifle angels out there, look me up on Outriders.)

As for the permanent brand of shame, it seems to be aimed at enterprising YouTuber/Reddit posters who would otherwise fool people into thinking that their sick technomancer builds were earned with blood, sweat, and bullets.

"We can see all of you. Yes, even those who have given themselves 600 legendary weapons."

People Can Fly also warned beta cheaters who want to make up before the full game launches." To try it out "If you cheated during the demo but want to enter the full game without being branded, you must delete all of your characters and items from your entire account to get a clean slate.

That sounds fair enough; Outriders will launch brand-free for us legitimate players on April 1. The game will be available on day one on the console Game Pass, but unfortunately not on PC.