One of the problems with open-world multiplayer games with PvP elements, is that some people want to get ahead of everyone else. That problem has now hit the newly popular free to play pirate romp title, Sea of Thieves, with hackers invading the platform with all sorts of cheats.
We can debate the merits of hacking all day -- the fact that it ruins the experience for other players, that it turns fun explorative titles into a numbers game for the cheaters themselves, etc. -- but regardless, people do it. Cheaters exist and now they exist in surprising numbers in Sea of Thieves. Windows Central reports that a number of hacks already exist, giving cheats the ability to see the location of everything in the game -- including chests, enemies and other players -- aimbots to make pistol and cannon shots perfect and more.
What's surprising about this cheating system though, is that it's working within a Microsoft Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app. The whole point of the Microsoft Store and its attached UWP platform is that applications there are contained in a sandbox making file modification impossible -- in theory. Clearly that's not worked out in this case and it shows that Microsoft's closed ecosystem is not the one solution that will fix cheating on Windows PCs -- hopefully that will prevent it from pushing too hard in that respect in the future.
Undoubtedly these hackers will eventually be found out and especially on console platforms like the Xbox One, the accounts will be banned etc. But that's no good for gamers now who are facing off against superpowered pirates.
Have you come across any hackers in Sea of Thieves so far?
