News has recently surfaced that 10 people have been arrested in China for developing and distributing AI cheating tools for the popular VALORANT game. It is important to note that, in China, cheating in online games is a serious crime.
Chinese police detain 10 people
The arrests of these 10 people in China mark the first police action against video game cheating in the country. The arrests follow a major joint investigation between local law enforcement and Tencent. In addition, following the investigation, police confiscated equipment and materials used by these individuals.
Anti-cheating investigation in China
According to the official statement of Yujiang Public Security published on Weibo, the 10 criminals were detained due to successful raids in several provinces in China. The statement also revealed that the police received information about the AI cheating tool in mid-August. Since then, they planned the operation in collaboration with Tencent until they finally tracked down the developers of this cheating program at VALORANT.
In the raid by the Chinese police, two people were arrested, who were in charge of developing the program. Eight other people who were accomplices to this crime were also arrested. In addition, 17 laptops were confiscated in the raid, which were used to circumvent VALORANT’s anti-cheating defenses. Eight other cell phones used by this criminal gang were also confiscated.
The Chinese police reveal in their official statement the following:
“This is not only the first criminal case in the country to take action against the production and sale of AI add-ons for video games, but also an important achievement to protect the competitive experience of all VALORANT players.”
Profits from AI tool sales
According to data revealed by a news portal related to VALORANT, the developers of this AI tool, it earned revenues of approximately $4 million. On the other hand, it was also revealed that nearly 40,000 VALORANT accounts were discovered for using the software to cheat. Each of these accounts was banned after the arrest took place.
As we mentioned before, in China and other Asian countries, cheating in video games is considered a serious crime and is legally punishable. In 2018, many Chinese developers of Cheats for PUBG were arrested. Also, the same year, a group of Overwatch hackers from South Korea received a significant jail sentence.
Now, at the moment, it is not known what kind of sentence the 10 people arrested for the development of this cheat tool in VALORANT will receive.