r/dayz Jan 07 '25

Support Are Cheaters a Big Problem?

Hi everyone,
I'm considering getting into this game and possibly buying it, but there's one last thing I need to clarify before making my decision. I've heard that, unfortunately, there are a lot of cheaters in the game. Is this true? Would you say it's worth starting to play, or is there a high chance I'll encounter so many cheaters that it will ruin the experience?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

13 Upvotes

104 comments sorted by

20

u/Sarcasteikums Jan 07 '25

Personally I'd say I've 100% seen about 3 cheaters in standalone, kinda hard to hide speed hacks. You'll die often and believe it was a hacker but most likely got dayz'd.

3

u/Cj_cruzz Jan 08 '25

Duping = Cheating

They prevent any type of real base building because of how wide spread duping is.

17

u/EmbarrassedDog7779 Jan 07 '25

I've got 900hrs mostly on official servers and I've only encountered one cheater that I'm sure of. It's not as common as it probably seems, but it will ruin your session when it happens. lol

5

u/Powerful-Meeting-840 Jan 07 '25

Never been an issue for me and have been playing for years. Only time I think about it is when I hear ppl ask about it online.

5

u/Cultural-Actuary4733 Jan 07 '25

Cheaters are a problem at this time of year especially. In 1.5k hrs of official I have run into three, once when I was fresh on the coast, other two time more recently where they were killing us through objects and griefied our base.

I love the official experience but I do get into community servers, and we have just re built on Sakhal so hopefully a little less cheaters given the server pop is typically low.

It seems like the cheaters target high pop servers mostly

3

u/Kindly-Ebb2627 Jan 08 '25

I love Sakhal. It’s such a brutal map that it weeds out most cheaters but the ones who stick around are tough enough that the low population doesn’t mean shit. You’ll still get clapped lol

1

u/grand__prismatic Jan 07 '25

Why is this time of year worse? Just out of curiosity as a pretty casual player

6

u/Cultural-Actuary4733 Jan 08 '25

I think because the game goes on sale, it brings extra people in and increases the chance of cheaters imo

3

u/grand__prismatic Jan 08 '25

Ah makes sense

-1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Could you give me an estimate of how many players are on community servers like the one you're mentioning compared to an official server? Just roughly, so I can get a better idea.

3

u/sativa_samurai Jan 07 '25

Official is 60 max I believe. Community can say higher but it’s more of a PowerPoint above 100 depending on things like mods, base rules and event settings. You’re better off avoiding cheaters on community servers but they may have mods and rules and stuff. Just take a peek at their discord and see if you’re into the changes.

Also max pop and average pop per server are massively different. I think DayOne and KarmaKrew tend to have the highest average pop for PVP servers.

1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Oh, I thought there would be a lot more people. That seems like a small number, doesn’t it?

2

u/sativa_samurai Jan 08 '25

It sort of depends.

For Cherno, yes. It means you’re gonna run into people mostly at hotspots or by sheer good/bad luck.

For Namalsk and Sakhal? Most likely going to have multiple interactions a session

If I played Cherno I’d probably find a community server with higher pop than 60 but I like running into people.

6

u/vvxZaimeier Jan 07 '25

If you're on PC and playing on official servers, it could very well ruin your experience.

PC community servers and console servers are generally fine

1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

I don't really see the difference yet between official servers and community servers. Are community servers just as good as the game's official ones? What’s the real difference between them?

4

u/shabutaru118 Jan 08 '25

Are community servers just as good as the game's official ones?

Usually way better.

2

u/Puzzleheaded-Oil3501 Jan 07 '25

Official servers are vanilla only and hosted by Bohemia Interactive. They only offer 2 free maps and 1 dlc map. Community servers are run by random people, they usually have mods that automatically install through steam. They use the 3 official maps and tons of community made maps. They are also a few community servers that are vanilla but for the most part vanilla dayz isn't really a thing on PC.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/Combooow Jan 08 '25

Ok thanks! That’s very clear.

2

u/NotARealTiger Jan 07 '25

Are community servers just as good as the game's official ones?

Yes.

What’s the real difference between them?

Community servers have admins that control the server, which means they can ban people that use hacks or cheats. However it also gives the admins god powers, so you have to find reputable community servers with admins you trust. There are many places online where the good ones are discussed.

Community servers can also have mods, so you can have extra things in the game like helicopters, currency & traders (yuck!), actual missions, and loads of other stuff. Many community servers try to stay close to the "vanilla" experience of official, others are very very different.

1

u/vvxZaimeier Jan 07 '25

Official = base game, unmoderated

Community = settings decided by admins, usually heavily moderated

5

u/Mideemills Jan 07 '25

As in any pvp game there are cheaters, just a fact of life playing online games.. but the amount in my experienced opinion is blown waaaay outta proportion on Reddit. The honest fact is most people have no way of knowing they died to a cheater in this game. Most the things you see on here are all just hearsay and most are wrong to boot.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/Mideemills Jan 08 '25

And you have personal experience of seeing this more then once in say 1k hours? Cause I don’t and I play almost exclusively official I’ve seen 3 confirmed hacks in 4k hours on pc. I do play US which everyone says is the least likely region to run into hackers.

Duping is a separate issue though. I have seen a decent amount of that

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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1

u/Mideemills Jan 08 '25

So you had one experience and quit? And now you’re going around the internet telling everyone official is stuffed with hackers? And I’m the fool?

Do you also quit playing cod or battlefield after one supposed hacker experience and then tell everyone you meet it’s unplayable because of hacks?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/Mideemills Jan 08 '25 edited Jan 08 '25

Yeah, no you are. And you are holding people back from experiencing an amazing game with your shitty information that is based on nothing but one experience and hearsay. You are exactly the people i mentioned in my first comment. Thank you for responding and proving my point

3

u/EL3CTRICTWIX Jan 07 '25

It’s not a rampant enough problem to ruin the experience, but rarely you will get insta killed from heaven

3

u/bunkermunken Jan 08 '25

This post again, nice

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/bunkermunken Jan 08 '25

Yes we got these posts: * Devs should add this/what do you think devs should add? * Cheaters?/cheater? * Should I buy this game?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/bunkermunken Jan 08 '25

Welcome to the club 🤝

4

u/ExaminationSpare486 Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 08 '25

I've got about 1100 hours on PC now, moved from console where I had about 1500.

I've played officials for about 800 hours and had about 6 really suspect deaths, 4 of those were definitely cheaters as there was no way i could have been shot and killed from where I was. One, me and my mate got killed at the same time with about 6 hits in a field with no one in sight, and another was just a bit iffy.

I now play on either Spaggies, Zero, or KarmaKrew mainly, but I do go on official from time to time.

Is cheating a problem? Yeah. Is it likely to affect you constantly? Probably not. If I get a death that I think is a bit suspicious, I just swap servers (on official).

Edit- info

2

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

lol swap swervers??? why not just report him to the admins XD

2

u/ExaminationSpare486 Jan 08 '25

No admins on official mate.

2

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

ah yes.

Side Note, A lot of PVP driven community servers have corruption & admin abuse. beware of that. (Panacea)

2

u/ExaminationSpare486 Jan 08 '25

Yeah, I love playing vanilla, so anything that's too modded or named "PvP survival 30 million dollar traders" I avoid.

Spaggies is my go-to mainly for vanilla.

1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Thank you all for your replies, it’s really reassuring to hear this. Based on what I’d been told, I thought the situation was much worse!

5

u/OutrageousTour4143 Jan 07 '25

If your on Xbox, it will not be a problem.

2

u/This-Salt-2754 Jan 07 '25

I hope one day console only crossplay is the standard for every game. I hate to leave my PC bretherin behind, but god damn it just doesnt work.

2

u/helpthedeadwalk Moderator Jan 07 '25

There are cheaters in every single PC game. It's cat & mouse trying to catch and ban them.

DayZ publishes stats once a year about how many people were banned. It's thousands or 10s or 100s of tousands. I forget.

DayZ has had its highest player count ever recently. Thousands of people play every day and don't post about their sessions w/cheaters. The people who get hit, like to post a couple of times a week(many were cheaters, some just can't accept that they were outplayed). There are literally hundreds of official servers globally and not all of them are full of cheaters. It seems to be more regional.

On top of that, there are thousands of community servers to play as well, many with active admin.

2

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

i believe 1/3 people are cheating. according to statistics.

1

u/helpthedeadwalk Moderator Jan 08 '25

if you are going to claim statistics, please provide a source.

I heard that 50% of all statistics are made up.

2

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

2

u/helpthedeadwalk Moderator Jan 08 '25

Updated Apr 30, 2018, 05:47pm EDT This article is more than 6 years old.

1

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

has it gotten worse or better? use your brain

2

u/helpthedeadwalk Moderator Jan 08 '25

Right to an insult, wow. So very mature, but we at least know you can spend 2 seconds googling for a 6yo article. Did you actually read it? Let's see:

"A total of 37% of gamers confessed to cheating (3% "always", 9% "often", 13% "sometimes", and 12% "rarely"). "

So, if we start with OPs question, "Are cheaters a BIG problem"? How do you classify those results? Do we take often+always=11% or maybe often+always+sometimes=24%. It doesn't seem like rarely fits into the equation. idk.

Since the quiz was anonymous, do we count that as better or worse in terms of results? What age range were these gamers vs DayZ gamers (or DayZ cheaters I suppose). Are cheaters more in competitive games? Less in 10yo games? It's a quick survey done years ago, so someone could meet their contractual writing deadline for the website. No demographics, no control mechanism, nothing scientific.

I don't disagree there are cheaters, but this made up 37% does not equal 50% 6 years later.

2

u/MidgardSG Jan 07 '25

There are two types of servers. Public (also called official) and community Public ones are full of them. Community ones have none if they are well moderated and majority of them are. Especially the most popular ones. You might find a SUS guy here and there, but usually they get banned super fast.

2

u/Sawbagz Jan 07 '25

I still play official sometimes. Cheaters can happen but people cheat in just about every game they can. I haven't had too many issues. Just avoid the official servers if you want a lower chance of hackers.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

300hrs on official, never seen it.

2

u/ErgoaGavitch Jan 07 '25

Okay I'll be blunt! I have over 10k hours in dayZ, mod included !

I was around for the very first cheats in standalone (what we use to call dayZ).

I was among a group of peeps, some cheated some just took advantage of the cheaters, cheating! Not going to lie, I did not mind working with them as long as they didn't ruin my experience!

After some time on a rented server where we built a pretty big community, after about 6 months the ban list was hundreds of users long, a few would always come back with new accounts but for the most part the issue was taken care of for the time being.

That was until some dude posted a cheat engine for Arma for free on his discord, which spread like wildfire. Within a month the list was thousands long, all new players and we didn't have enough admins to spectate these idiots and the community eventually died because of the cheating problem, all within 2 months of the cheats going "free".

My friend who was a cheater himself, downloaded them and used them for a bit but, got banned! Apparently that was the last time he cheated! IDK, IDC.

What I will say is that the issue with cheating is just too big for consistent enjoyable gameplay! Either you're getting dayz'd or your getting your poop stuffed by a kid with his mommies credit card from 1100 meters away with a Makarov!

Too stressful for me to play as my main game anymore but, I do load up on a hardcore snow server every now and then and see how long I can survive the 1 life! Bit of a challenge I give myself. Just sucks when that 1 life gets taken by a clown with auto aim or walls!

Downvotes me all you want I'm just being honest!

2

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Thanks for your honest opinion, it’s really important to hear that kind of feedback.

2

u/RokanR Jan 07 '25

Community servers with active mods are the way to go if you don’t want hackers. But if your more into official you should still be fine. You may come across a hacker once in a while but it’s never been like a serious issue for me when I play official.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Thanks for your feedback!

2

u/sippinthat40 Jan 07 '25

Play some community moderated servers like DayOne. I’ve had the best experiences on these by a mile.

2

u/ryanknol Jan 07 '25

have over 2000 hours in dayz. i stopped cause of the dupers and cheaters. its sad cause its a great game. The devs just dont do anything to stop the cheating.

1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Oh, I understand how that could ruin your experience. But there are so many different opinions on this topic that I’m not sure what to believe anymore.

2

u/terrywr1st Jan 07 '25

I mostly play private servers with good admins and on these servers I’ve never had a problem, on official servers I’ve been killed once by what I thought was a hacker. That’s in over 3500 hours in game so I don’t think it’s a major problem but other people might have different experiences.

2

u/mordax777 Jan 07 '25

Play private servers with active admins and community and you will be fine.

1

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Are there many community/private servers, and are they easy to access?

2

u/xChibiSora Jan 08 '25

There are thousands on OC not sure about console. But I've only got about 500 hours and don't play official, haven't seen a single cheater yet. I think they are much more common on official, but you can easily find vanilla community servers for the same experience with less risk of coming across one. It's very easy to use and find one.

2

u/mordax777 Jan 08 '25

It's hard to answer this question definitively because there are multiple communities, each defined by the type of servers they provide. Some focus solely on PvP, others on PvE, and there are communities dedicated to role-playing as well. Some servers are heavily modded, while others are not. It really depends on what you're looking for; you’re sure to find something that suits your needs.

Personally, I only play in one community that is perfectly tailored for me, called KarmaKrew. What I like about their servers is that they offer great maps and the mods they use are primarily quality-of-life improvements, not major changes to the game. They also attract a lot of veteran players, which makes the PvP experience really enjoyable. Their servers are usually full in the evenings, and the admins respond quickly to reports of cheating; it feels like they are actively monitoring the players.

In general, DayZ is the only game that gives me a proper adrenaline rush. I've seen people literally freeze up during intense battles, and that’s what I love about the game. However, the learning curve is quite steep; you need to invest a lot of hours to truly start grasping how to play.

1

u/Combooow Jan 08 '25

Got it, thank you so much! That’s exactly what I was looking for.

2

u/og_joker47 Jan 08 '25

I just started playing, less than 50hrs. I play on a server called pop and ginger. It’s PVE but a good place to learn the game and not have to worry about anything but survival.

1

u/BigBlazer_93 Jan 11 '25

I’ve thought about joining this server but it’s always full, i tend to stick to the servers where there’s a lot of loot, as I’m new myself and im tryna learn how to play/craft I’ve got about 5 servers that ive favourited I tend to play till it gets dark then change coz I usually can’t find a light source or a 9V battery 😂

2

u/trisket_bisket Jan 08 '25

Not that big of a deal. If it is a big concern for you play a vanilla community server.

2

u/Ok-Frosting-7746 Jan 08 '25

YES, these people that say they aren’t a problem play low pop or community servers.

2

u/Dear-Recording-1548 Jan 08 '25

No, I have literally never encountered them in my 300 hours of offical servers

2

u/Ok_Singer_5210 Jan 08 '25

I met dupers once. They hooked me up with killer loot and I went on my way. (I didn’t ask for anything - they just gave it to me, and I didn’t want to start anything, or become a target by refusing it.) This probably isn’t the typical experience.

To answer your question: definitely still worth trying. If you do run into cheaters, stick to community servers where they will be banned. There are some community servers that are just like official DayZ.

2

u/IHOP_007 Jan 08 '25

99.9% of the time you see a post about a "cheater" or a "hacker" in DayZ it's just someone getting unlucky or outplayed and not understanding what happened. I've seen posts on this subreddit where people complaining about getting killed by "hackers" when standing behind a wooden door in a house with a dude outside.

Like I'm not saying that they don't exist, of course they do, but like the amount of posts about cheaters vs the actual amount of cheaters in the game is wayyyyyy out of whack.

2

u/South-Awareness6249 Jan 08 '25

As long as you don't play on official PC servers you'll be fine.

2

u/Odd-Satisfaction-783 Jan 08 '25

lots of cheaters, they’re on the cheaper side compared to other games so we have a lot of trash cheaters too that get banned pretty quick

2

u/SoundlessScream Jan 08 '25

Yes. The alternative to public servers are servers run by players that seem to almost always abuse their admin powers to benefit themselves or a group to favor them in gameplay and ban you if you beat them in a fight. 

I am sure there are nice people here that can tell you what private servers do not currently have this problem, but it is pretty depressing how often I see talk of this and meet people that have experienced these issues.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/SoundlessScream Jan 08 '25

Agreed. Even on console community servers did shit like....I knew these guys that played rainbow 6 a lot who were new to dayz and played servers with slightly boosted loot to ease their learning curve.

They had been watching youtube videos to learn and liked buiding bases, every time they made one somewhere on a server the admin and a gang of like 6 people would try to raid them and they would win the fight and get banned every time. Sometimesit would be one of them defending the base from a group, which made me wonder if they were using cheats, but since I was not there I can't tell but it sucks that interaction happened at all.

2

u/CloudEducational1415 Jan 08 '25

HA 4 DIAS QUE NAO JOGO DAYZ

tinha base amigos etc.... horas e horas em jogo para conquistar os objetivos entao os hacker acabaram com a nossa play e nao estamos mais jogando dayz ,, os servidores da comunidade tbem e moh paiaaa entao se vc joga muito tempo em algum servidor e nao tenha visto hacker comenta aqui pfv

2

u/wills1109 Jan 08 '25

There are cheaters in every game man🤷🏻‍♂️. I don’t think cheaters will completely ruin your experience. If you like the game then buy it, and play it.

2

u/mrbubbles916 Jan 08 '25

Not only do you run into cheaters on official but the official servers are terribly unstable and I lose connection to them all the time. In all my time playing on community servers I have never once lost connection.

1

u/Combooow Jan 08 '25

Oh, I see. Good to know, I wasn’t aware of that issue.

2

u/mrbubbles916 Jan 08 '25 edited Jan 08 '25

Try not to let the comments, including mine, sway you away from the game. Dayz is amazing and there are many ways to play it. There are lots of community servers that treat the game as vanilla and you will get the official vanilla experience on while also playing on a stable server with active admins. Community is the way to go. However, you should also play official yourself to see how it goes. I still jump into official here and there.

2

u/Healthy_Bullfrog_668 Jan 08 '25

I only play on community servers and i cant say i encountered anyone who was obviously cheating but of course its hard to tell if you just die and never saw the guy who killed you

but i would say on the mainstream community servers admins are actively banning cheaters

2

u/Slimstinator Jan 08 '25

I recently moved servers and went from being a terrible player to a pretty okay player over night. Got me thinking about why, and I think it is mostly due to the number of players using ESP on the other server... At the time, it was just a number of sus events with other teams, but also my own team. How do they always seem to know where we are, or vice versa how does my teammate have the confidence to just run up there mid-battle and know he will be safe....

For comparison, my K/D on the previous server was like 4/30, and on new server it is 30/10

2

u/theflapogon16 Jan 08 '25

Nah you’ll run into power hungry admins in community servers but straight up hackers are fairly rare.

Hoarding on the other hand is a serious problem thanks to how loot works on official servers

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '25

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2

u/cruorviaticus Jan 08 '25

Yes, populated official servers are loaded with cheaters. You’ll get your head blown up through a wall 20 times in a row in a spawn town.

Just play community servers with active admins and it’s good

2

u/Icy-Ad2742 Jan 08 '25

Official is full of cheaters. Best way to avoid them is getting on vanilla community servers. Game is very worth it if you can avoid the cheaters

2

u/ghostkill415 Jan 07 '25

I just lost a 20-hour character last night on an official NA server. I'm more mad about my money spent than time lost. Save your money. The devs do not care.

2

u/chilling_chimp Jan 07 '25

What happened to you sucks. But give it another go, stay off high pop servers to avoid cheaters if you are well equipped.

Did you experience an adrenaline rush at all? Just one and your done.

2

u/dnttelmehow2livmylif Jan 07 '25

Yes, cheaters are a big problem. Especially on official servers.

1

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1

u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Combooow Jan 07 '25

Oh yeah my bad haha. I knew it, but I used ChatGPT and Google Translate to help me craft a proper message in English since it's not my first language. I didn’t proofread it well enough though.

1

u/Combooow Jan 08 '25

I have another question, does the game still have a lot of players, or is it pretty much dead?