Cheatonomics - How the video game cheat business became a multi-billion dollar industry
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A common question about the video games cheat business is, “How big is it?” Or “How much is it worth?” For a seemingly simple question, finding a satisfactory answer can be tricky.
Much of the work done on this to date massively underestimates its value because it only looks at certain aspects. For example, it focuses only on what cheat developers and vendors make from selling cheats. Or it only considers FPS games, rather than include the MMO’s and Mobile games that suffer their own forms of cheating.
Even more significantly, estimates usually ignore the adjacent side-industries that surround cheat development, such as boosting, account sales, spoofing and currency trading.
Only when these additional aspects are considered can we get close to an accurate valuation of the cheat industry, and only then will we fully appreciate what the games industry is up against, and critically what it might need to spend and do to counter it.
As we’ll show, a final irrefutable figure is unrealistic. Even if all the data was available, there would be debate as to what should be included - for example, should the profits of the payment providers or web hosting services the cheat industry relies upon, be included?
This is why we don't attempt to calculate a figure for the whole industry - i.e. across every game and region. Instead, we believe that by applying a tailored Economic Impact Model, we can provide a more realistic picture and better gauge the scale of the problem.
The baseline
The most prevalent revenue stream in the cheat business is the subscription fees for the cheats themselves, with prices generally ranging from $10 to $100 plus per month for a ‘traditional’ software wallhack or aimbot. With demand as high as it is, cheat developers and their vendors can make decent money, as was demonstrated by a recent paper published in 2024: ‘Anti-Cheat: Attacks and the Effectiveness of Client-Side Defences’. (1)
In this research, the authors analysed 80 cheat vendor websites and the prices of the individual cheats being sold for 11 FPS multiplayer games. Applying standard e-com conversion rates from Salesforce of between 0.7% and 4%, they were able to estimate the annual revenue across the 80 sites being between $12.8m and $73.2m.
This research was rightly praised in the industry for how it used the price of cheats for a game as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of the game’s anti-cheat (better anti-cheats lead to higher priced cheats) but it was never intended as a valuation of the cheat industry.
Whilst considerable, the authors themselves noted that the estimate was conservative - it covered only 80 cheat vendors and focused on the US and Europe, with the large cheat markets across APAC not included. Back in 2020 Tencent estimated that the cheat business in China alone was making $293m a year. (2)
If since 2020 the APAC cheat market has grown only as much as the lowest estimates for the games industry in that region - 10% - that would still mean it was worth $322.3m in 2024.
However, this is probably another massive underestimate. In 2021 a Chinese cheat developer known as Catfish was busted by the authorities working with Tencent. According to an article in Vice in 2021:
The police accused Catfish’s two salespeople, whom it identified only by the names He and Wang, of being part of the “world’s largest” video game cheating ring, which authorities refer to as “Chicken Drumstick.” The organization raked in $77 million from selling cheats, according to the cops. Wang owned luxury cars worth around $3 million—including a Ferrari and a Lamborghini—and a stash of Bitcoin worth around $4 million, despite the fact that his day job only paid him $462 a month, according to the police.
So, $322.3m feels on the low side! (3)
A question of bans
We believe one way of achieving a more accurate estimate of the cheat economy lies with the volume of bans issued by game publishers. Afterall, cheat vendors don’t release customer numbers, so (with some caveats we will discuss later) bans can act as a useful proxy.
Put simply, when a player is banned, we can assume they have paid at least one month’s subscription for the cheat that was detected. Using known cheat prices for a game, and the total number of bans during a period of time, we can calculate the approximate revenue cheat developers are making on that game.
One of the reasons this is possible is several AAA publishers release ban numbers on a fairly regular or ban wave specific, basis. It’s important to point out that publishers talking about ban numbers should not be viewed as a sign they have a bigger cheating problem than other titles. Instead, what it shows is they are taking the problem which the whole category faces, seriously, and they want their player base to know this.
One AAA publisher recently talked about banning between 35,000 players in a single month following the launch of a new title. With cheats for this game costing an average of $34 for one month’s subscription, that represents $1,190,000 revenue for the cheat developers in that one month. So, potentially $14,280,000 over a year.
Another publisher last year announced that over 5 months following the launch of a new edition in a franchise, they issued 220,000 bans. Based on similarly priced cheats (they share several of the same vendors) this would equate to $7,480,000 worth of cheats detected in 5 months. Potentially equivalent to $17,950,000 over 12 months.
These numbers pale into insignificance when compared with stats released by the team behind PUBG, who recently announced they permanently banned over 7,800,000 accounts in 2025 (4). And that’s just PC - PUBG mobile is not included.
Using our average prices (mean of $34 for one month’s subscription) again, these bans could represent $265,200,000 of revenue for the developers who supplied the cheats. The $77m the busted developer Catfish was reported by Chinese police to have made, seems entirely plausible now!
However, being back of envelope calculations, there are inevitably some gaps in these numbers, which mean these estimates could be too high or too low.
Firstly, these ban numbers don’t consider players prevented from entering the game due to suspicious, often cheat related behaviour (e.g. devices failing Secure Boot validation checks), players that get caught using cheats but not immediately banned, or those that despite the security team’s best efforts, go undetected. Nor do we know how many of the banned accounts had more than one cheat associated with them (or for that matter hardware spoofers).
On the other hand, we’ve not allowed for the fact that some of those players banned will be repeat offenders i.e. cheaters getting banned more than once in the same subscription period, and thus inflating our estimate for cheats sold. Similarly, not all cheats come at a price - some are free. The split between paid and free cheats is difficult to gauge in an illicit market so we need to be cautious.
It should also be noted that publishers don’t always implement bans on a monthly basis, but rather deploy ban waves, which can’t necessarily be mapped to monthly or annual estimates.
Finally, we’ve also not taken into account the fact some of these bans will be due to the much more expensive DMA and hardware cheats.
For these reasons further economic impact analysis is needed to reach a more confident estimate. However, before we do that, we should look at other game genres impacted by cheating - MMO’s and MOBA’s.
It’s not all about shooters
Whilst cheating in first person shooters such as CS2 makes more headlines, it’s not limited to them - MOBAs and MMOs such as League of Legends, Dota 2 and Old School Runescape also attract their fair share of cheat developers.
The highly competitive nature of many MOBAs makes them attractive to the cheat developers and the players seeking to increase their characters abilities by any means.
One-off ban waves of 40,000 - 60,000 are not unusual - Riot Games reportedly banned 47,000 League of Legends accounts over six weeks when they introduced their Vanguard anti-cheat system.
With their repetitive grinding mechanics, resource farming, and time-gated progression MMOs present the perfect conditions for botting. Furthermore, with bots able to earn much more money in a virtual world than humans, the ability to convert the in-game currency to real money creates powerful economic incentives for industrial-scale botting operations.
Unfortunately, the makers of MMOs seem more reluctant to discuss ban numbers than those for FPS titles.
However, there are some exceptions. For instance, Maplestory, which publishes weekly ban numbers, banned just over 44,000 accounts in 2025 - an average of 3,680 accounts every month.(5)
At a similar level, War Thunder banned an average of 4,300 accounts per month between January and November in 2025 (6)
The price of bots for these games varies from approx. $10 - $30 per month. Using $20 for Maplestory and $30 for War Thunder (reflecting their different bot ecosystems), these two titles are banning approximately $73,600 and $129,000 worth of bots each month respectively.
Another MMO that releases ban numbers is Old School Runescape which remains one of the most popular titles around. As reported by the BBC recently, it regularly has 175,000 concurrent players and in 2025 reached a record of 240,000 playing at one time. (7)
Inevitably large player numbers are accompanied by cheating and in February 2024 Jagex announced that they'd banned 6.9 million accounts in 2023 and at that point were banning an average of 67,000 every week. (8)
Trying to estimate what kind of money was being spent on all those on those bots is hard, as the pricing models for OSRS bots vary considerably across vendors.
Many offer free tiers to hook users in but also sell bots for flat monthly rates of $25 a month. They also offer premium pay-as-you-go models starting at 0.05 US cents an hour, which when running a gold operation running several accounts 24/7, can quickly add up to $50-$200 per account per month.
The need to take these factors into account to get to an estimate we can be confident in, brings us back to needing the same economic impact analysis we highlighted at the end of the section on FPS titles.
Doing the math
As mentioned earlier, it’s unrealistic to hope for a 100% accurate estimate of how much the cheat industry currently makes - there are just too many variables and unknowns, which isn't surprising when you consider the industry is so secretive and largely underground. Not to mention spread around the world.
However, not being ones to give up, we believe it is possible to calculate a more realistic estimation derived from publicly available ban data for a selection of games, player population estimates, and market pricing research, and applying a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation and PERT distributions.
This simulation works by running the same calculation thousands of times using different but realistic assumptions, rather than relying on a single guess. Each run represents a plausible version of reality, allowing us to see which outcomes are most likely and how wide the uncertainty really is.
PERT distributions are used when exact values aren’t known but reasonable ranges are - defining a minimum, a maximum, and a most-likely estimate based on evidence and experience.
Together, these methods let us model uncertainty directly and produce realistic ranges rather than attempting to produce a single estimate.
The cheat economy is uncertain, hidden, and constantly changing - and pretending otherwise would produce worse results, not better ones. This is why we used MCMC and PERT, because they allow us to model uncertainty directly, exploring thousands of plausible scenarios.
Our approach uses three independent estimation methods that are triangulated to produce final estimates:
1. Ban Rate Extrapolation: Works backwards from official ban statistics, accounting for ban rates and bot costs.
2. Player Base Prevalence: Estimates from total player population and academic prevalence studies.
3. Marketplace Volume Analysis: Extrapolates from observed marketplace activity (when data are available).
All estimates include uncertainty quantification via MCMC simulation:
● Simulations: 10,000 iterations
● Correlation: 30% assumed correlation between games (results are robust to correlation assumptions between 10% and 50%)
● Distributions: PERT distributions for expert estimates
We have focused our analysis on a selection of 15 games across different genres and present the results both individually as well as a combined estimate. The game titles have been redacted as some of the data is sensitive.
Running our model across 15 games in four categories produces the following results:
Category | Games Analyzed | Total Revenue | 95% credible interval per Game | Average Per Game |
FPS/Battle Royale | 6 | $2.17 billion | $215M - $583M | $362M |
Mobile | 3 | $857 million | $163M - $463M | $286M |
MMO | 5 | $492 million | $60M - $166M | $98M |
Simulation | 1 | $14 million | $7M - $28M | $14M |
All | 15 | $3.53 bilion | $139M - $383M | $235M |
FPS and Battle Royale games dominate the cheat economy, representing 61% of our total estimate. Mobile games contribute 24%, whilst MMOs account for 14%.
What does this tell us about the broader industry?
Our analysis covers only 15 games - a fraction of the thousands of titles that suffer from cheating. To understand how our figures relate to the total industry, consider what we have NOT included:
Missing game categories:
● Sports games - These have their own cheat and coin-selling ecosystems
● Racing games - Growing competitive scenes attract cheaters
● MOBAs - Massive player bases with significant cheating problems
● Survival games - Notorious for cheating issues
Geographic gaps:
● Our model focuses primarily on Western markets and global mobile titles
● As mentioned earlier, China alone was worth $293M in 2020 (Tencent estimate) and likely exceeds $350M today
● Korea, Southeast Asia, and Latin America have thriving cheat markets not fully captured
Platforms not analyzed:
● Console cheating (less prevalent but growing with crossplay)
● VR gaming (emerging market)
● Browser and casual games
What we can confidently claim
Based on our model of 15 major titles, we estimate the cheat subscription market for these games at $3.53 billion annually (95% CI: $2.08B - $5.75B). This is our defensible, data-driven estimate.
The missing categories and regions listed above would add to this total, but we lack sufficient data to model them with the same rigor. Rather than speculate with multipliers, we present our 15-game analysis as a lower bound for the true industry size - the actual global market is almost certainly larger, but by how much remains uncertain.
Cheating as a Service
However, this is not the end of the story. Whilst these calculations certainly get us closer to the size of the industry for cheat development, they don't consider the value of the adjacent market for products and services cheaters rely on.
This includes a wide range of semi-legal services such as boosting, account selling, currency and item trading, and spoofers - all of which are linked to the use of cheats and bots and command substantial extra fees.
Accounts, boosting and currency are often sold through digital marketplaces such as Player Auctions, Eldorado, G2G, and even Ebay. Whilst not strictly illegal in most markets, use of these services nearly always breaks a game’s EULA. Yet demand is high so there is money to be made.
If we take Boosting Services where cheaters offer to raise other players' rankings for payment, fees charged range from $50-500+ depending on the rank increase desired. This is often found around the bigger FPS multiplayers, and major esports titles which command a premium. Prices depend on the experience of the booster with some full-time boosters reportedly earning $3K-$10K+ monthly.
Closely linked with boosting is account selling which often involves the sale of accounts that have been boosted and levelled up by more experienced ‘players’ often using cheats. Prices vary significantly from a few dollars all the way to $10,000+ for an account with rare skins.
To see the scale of these businesses you only need to look at how many accounts and boosting services these sites offer across various games - it’s quite common to see 30,000 - 40,000 accounts on offer for a game like Valorant in a single marketplace, alongside 16,000 boosters offering their services.
In-game currency and items are also sold in large quantities in these marketplaces - afterall they are the result of the MMO botting we spoke about earlier - with vendors and marketplaces competing for customers by offering in-game currency and items at ‘competitive’ rates and limited deals.
Spoofers are sold by both vendors of the cheats themselves, as well as HWID Spoofer specialists. They are sometimes included in the price of a cheat, but the better ones, usually sold through specialists, are often sold on a short subscription basis - 24hrs, 7 days, or 1 month - with prices varying depending on whether they are temporary or permanent spoofers, from $54 to $110 for a month’s access.
Unfortunately, using ban numbers isn’t going to help us reach an estimate for what these markets are worth - players don’t usually get banned for using a boosting service or buying a levelled-up account (although this impacts matchmaking and often leads to accusations of ruining other players’ game experience when someone is shown not to be as good as their character suggests).
Similarly, whilst using a spoofer can get you banned, specific ban volumes aren’t available.
So, we need an alternative approach, which takes us back to the academic paper we highlighted at the beginning of this briefing - ‘Anti-Cheat: Attacks and the Effectiveness of Client-Side Defences’. Just as the authors of that paper used Similar Web data with typical ecommerce sales rates to get to an estimate of what 80 cheat vendors were making, we can do the same for the biggest
marketplaces offering these adjacent services.
Estimating the Adjacent Services Market
Using the same methodology from the academic paper - applying Salesforce e-commerce conversion rates (0.7% to 4%) to marketplace traffic data - we analyzed 11 major gaming marketplaces including G2G, PlayerAuctions, and Eldorado.
What the traffic data reveals:
Applying SimilarWeb visitor data to standard e-commerce conversion rates, the visible Western marketplace revenue appeared modest - approximately $5-60 million annually across all categories (boosting, accounts, currency trading). This reflects only transactions through tracked Western websites.
However, this dramatically underestimates the true market. Our expanded research identified over 70 gaming marketplaces across 8 categories:
● MMO Currency/Gold: 18+ platforms (MmoGah, Overgear, SSEGold, IGGM, etc.)
● Sports Currency: 7 major platforms (M8X/FIFACOIN, SuperCoinsy, myDGN)
● CS2 Skin Trading: 10+ platforms (Tradeit.gg with 60M+ trades, CSFloat, DMarket)
● Account Marketplaces: 6+ platforms (iGVault, PlayerUp, ZeusX)
● Boosting Services: 6+ dedicated platforms (GGBoost with 500+ boosters, Turboboost)
● Mobile Top-Up (SEA): 6+ platforms (SEAGM, LootBar, Kaleoz)
● APAC Platforms: The critical missing piece
The APAC Market - A Critical Finding:
The most significant gap in previous estimates is the APAC market. China's 5173.com alone reported $1.5 billion in GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) in 2019 (verified via Tracxn/Crunchbase), with 40 million registered users and 160,000 daily completed transactions. This single platform exceeds most estimates for the entire global adjacent services market.
Additional major APAC platforms include 7881.com, TaoBao gaming sections, and Indonesia's Itemku (acquired by Bukalapak). Combined with growth since 2019, the APAC adjacent services market alone likely exceeds $2-4 billion annually.
The HWID Spoofer Market:
The largest quantifiable adjacent market is HWID spoofers - software that masks hardware identifiers so banned players can return. Using our ban data:
● With millions of annual bans across major titles
● These have a significant rebuy rate among serious cheaters but given the lack of data we have applied a conservative 15-30% rebuy rate
● Spoofer prices of $54-110 per month
We estimate this market at $48-$150 million annually.
Category | Low | Mid | High |
APAC Markets (5173, TaoBao, etc.) | $2.0B | $3.0B | $4.0B |
Western Currency/Gold Trading | $500M | $750M | $1.0B |
Skin Trading | $500M | $1.0B | $2.0B |
Boosting Services | $300M | $500M | $750M |
Account Marketplaces | $200M | $400M | $600M |
Mobile Top-Up (SEA) | $300M | $500M | $800M |
HWID Spoofers | $48M | $100M | $150M |
Hidden Channels (Discord, Telegram) | $500M | $1.0B | $2.0B |
Total | $3.0B | $5.0B | $8.0B |
Revised Adjacent Services Estimate
Combining all categories - APAC platforms, Western marketplaces, CS2 skin trading, boosting services, account sales, mobile top-up, and HWID spoofers - we estimate the total adjacent services market at $3 billion to $8 billion annually, with a median estimate of approximately $5 billion.
This is substantially higher than earlier estimates that focused only on Western marketplaces. The key insight is that 5173.com alone ($1.5B GMV in 2019) exceeds what most previous research attributed to the entire global adjacent services market.
Note: Intervals are asymmetric because underlying revenue distributions have positive skew (values cannot be negative but can significantly exceed estimates)
Conclusions
In this briefing our aim has been to show how the cheat industry is worth considerably more than generally thought, and as a result game publishers and their security teams need to double down on their efforts to protect their games and players.
Firstly, by looking at the volume of player accounts that get banned and the cost of cheats and bots, our model estimates that cheat developers are earning approximately $3.5 billion per year from the 15 games we analyzed, with a 95% confidence range of $2.1 billion to $5.8 billion. This represents a lower bound, as it excludes many game categories and regions.
Next, we have highlighted how there are significant businesses operating as part of the cheat industry, but beyond the development of the cheats and bots themselves. By analyzing over 70 gaming marketplaces across APAC, Western, and hidden channels, we estimate revenues in this adjacent services space at $3 billion to $8 billion annually, with a median of approximately $5 billion. The APAC market - anchored by platforms like 5173.com with $1.5B GMV - represents the majority of this figure.
Combined this means we are facing an industry that is making approximately $8.5 billion, with a range of $5.1 billion to $13.8 billion each year - and likely more when accounting for games and regions we could not model.
To put these figures in context: our median estimate of $8.5 billion towers over Twitch’s annual revenue ($1.8bn in 2024) and is bigger than that of the whole of esports (projected to be $5.1bn in 2026 - including betting!) (9). At the high end of our range ($13.8 billion), the cheating and adjacent services industry are double what the entire UK spends on gaming each year (£5.4 billion / ~$6.8B USD). (10)
This is much higher than any previous investigations have found but it’s still only part of the picture.
In our research for this briefing, we’ve only looked at certain genres and formats. For example, we have not considered sports franchises or casual mobile titles, both of which have global footprints and a growing demand for cheats and exploits.
Nor have we included platforms like Roblox and Minecraft, which despite (or indeed because of) their younger fan bases, offer significant opportunities to cheat developers and account sellers.
What This Means for the Industry
The scale of this underground economy - potentially exceeding $13.8 billion annually - represents a significant threat to the games industry that demands a coordinated response.
For game publishers, these numbers make a compelling business case for increased investment in anti-cheat technology. When a single developer like Catfish can make $77 million selling PUBG cheats, and a single marketplace like 5173.com can process $1.5 billion in GMV, the resources available to cheat developers and adjacent service providers are substantial and growing.
For players, these figures explain why cheating remains such a persistent problem despite publisher efforts. The economic incentives driving the cheat industry mean there will always be developers willing to find new ways around detection systems.
As games become more competitive and more monetized, the incentives for cheating will only increase. The industry faces a choice: continue the current arms race with incremental improvements, or fundamentally rethink how games are designed, secured and monetized.
One thing is certain - ignoring an illicit multi-billion dollar industry operating in plain sight is not a sustainable strategy.
References:
Caveats and limitations:
The following parameters have the largest impact (>20%) on estimates and represent the primary sources of uncertainty:
● Bot Cost ($/month)
● Bot Lifespan (months)
● Detection Rate
● Paid User Share (%)
● Bot Prevalence (%)
● Monthly Active Users
For the estimates to be accurate, the following assumptions must hold:
● Ban rates: Anti-cheat systems detect 15-40% of bots/cheats
● Paid share: 30-70% of bot/cheat users pay for software (vs. free alternatives)
● Bot lifespan: Average bot operates 1-6 months before detection
● Prevalence: 2-10% of players in MMORPGs use bots; 1-5% in FPS games
Ban rates are estimated as these are confidential for the game publishers. Our estimates (15-40% for most games) are based on academic research and industry analysis, but actual rates are unknown. Paid user share is estimated: We estimate that 30-70% of bot/cheat users pay for software (vs. using free alternatives) based on known sales data from bots at the lower end and at the upper end . This significantly affects estimates but is not directly observable. Bot prevalence varies: Prevalence changes by region, time of year, and game content patches. Estimates represent rough averages and may not reflect current conditions.
Order-of-magnitude precision: Given the cumulative uncertainty from ban rates, paid user share, and missing ban data, the industry total should be interpreted as an order-of-magnitude estimate only. The true value could reasonably be 50% lower or 100% higher than reported. This order-of-magnitude caveat applies specifically to our estimate of $3.53B for the 15 games modeled, not to any claim about the entire global cheat industry
Citation List: Gaming Cheat & Bot Economy Model
Analysis Date: December 2025 Model Version: Economic Impact Model v1.0
Official Publisher Sources
Jagex (Old School RuneScape)
● Jagex Official - Bots, Bans and Appeals [https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/bots-bans-and-appeals-an-update?oldschool=1](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/bots-bans-and-appeals-an-update?oldschool=1) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: HIGH Key Data: 6.9M bans in 2023. 67K/week average in 2024. 0.36% false positive rate.[https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/bots-bans-and-appeals-an-update?oldschool=1](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/bots-bans-and-appeals-an-update?oldschool=1)
Riot Games (Valorant)
● Riot Games - Anti-Cheat Update Winter 2023 [ANTI-CHEAT UPDATE // WINTER 2023](https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/anti-cheat-update-winter-2023/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: HIGH Key Data: <1% of ranked games have cheaters. Vanguard kernel-level anti-cheat statistics.
Amazon Games / Smilegate (Lost Ark)
● Amazon Games - Ban Wave Updates [Team Update - Recent Ban Waves - News | Lost Ark - Free to Play MMO Action RPG](https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/news/articles/team-update-ban-waves) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: HIGH Key Data: 1M+ bot accounts banned. Major ban wave announcements.
Square Enix (Final Fantasy XIV)
● Square Enix - RMT Enforcement [News | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: HIGH Key Data: Monthly RMT enforcement reports. ~3-10K accounts/month typically.
Garena (Free Fire)
● Garena Free Fire Anti-Hack FAQ [Garena Free Fire](https://ff.garena.com/) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: HIGH Key Data: 30M cheaters banned in 2020. 69% automatic detection rate. 1.3M in single operation.
Tencent / Krafton (PUBG Mobile)
● Tencent PUBG Mobile Anti-Cheat Updates [https://www.pubgmobile.com/en-US/news](https://www.pubgmobile.com/en-US/news) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: MEDIUM Key Data: 459K permanent bans Sep 2022, 170K in one week. 10-year HWID/IP bans.
Activision (Call of Duty Mobile)
● Activision RICOCHET Anti-Cheat Updates [Call of Duty®: Blog](https://www.callofduty.com/blog/) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Official Confidence: MEDIUM Key Data: 97% banned within 30 min. 228K+ franchise bans since Black Ops 6. 26K single-day record.
Press & Gaming Media Sources
PC Gamer
● PCGamer - Ban Wave Coverage (World of Warcraft) [https://www.pcgamer.com](https://www.pcgamer.com/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: MEDIUM
● PC Gamer - 7 Million Bots Banned (Old School RuneScape) [https://www.pcgamer.com/old-school-runescape-players-revolt/](https://www.pcgamer.com/old-school-runescape-players-revolt/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: HIGH
GINX Esports TV
● GINX - 3.6M Bans in 4 Years (Valorant) [Valorant Vanguard Has Banned Over 3.6 Million Cheaters In Past 4 Years - GINX TV](https://www.ginx.tv/en/valorant/vanguard-banned-3-6-million-cheaters-past-4-years) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: HIGH Key Data: 3.6M bans over 4 years. ~900K/year. 100K in 20 days during holiday 2024-25.
● [esports.gg](http://esports.gg/) - CS2 Ban Wave [CS2 VAC ban wave shakes community » Esports](https://esports.gg/news/counter-strike-2/ban-wave-cs2/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: MEDIUM
GameSpot
● GameSpot - 1M Bots Banned (Lost Ark) [Over 1 Million Lost Ark Bot Accounts Have Been Banned - GameSpot](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/over-1-million-lost-ark-bot-accounts-have-been-banned/1100-6501306/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: HIGH
ESTNN
● ESTNN - 10K Bans Feb 2024 (Final Fantasy XIV) [Square Enix Terminates 10,000 FFXIV Accounts Due to RMT](https://estnn.com/ffxiv-rmt/) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: HIGH
Esports Insider
● Esports Insider - $175K Lawsuit (Fortnite) [Fortnite sues cheater for $175,000 and issues lifetime ban](https://esportsinsider.com/2025/06/fortnite-cheater-fined-lifetime-ban) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: Legal/Press Confidence: HIGH
GosuGamers
● GosuGamers - PUBG Mobile Ban Reports [PUBG Mobile Live Score, News, Matches, Rankings, and Tournaments | GosuGamers](https://www.gosugamers.net/pubg-mobile) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: MEDIUM
AFK Gaming
● AFK Gaming - Free Fire Ban Statistics [AFK Gaming](https://afkgaming.com/) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: HIGH
Charlie Intel
● Charlie Intel - CoD Ban Statistics [CharlieINTEL](https://charlieintel.com/) Accessed: December 15, 2024 Source Type: Press Confidence: MEDIUM
Third-Party Data & API Sources
ConVars
● ConVars CS2 Ban Tracker [https://convars.com/csgostats/en/bans](https://convars.com/csgostats/en/bans) Accessed: December 13, 2024 Source Type: API Data Confidence: MEDIUM Note: Third-party VAC ban tracking. Valve does not publish official statistics.
Bot/Cheat Market Pricing Sources (Implicit)
The following pricing data was derived from market research of publicly accessible bot and cheat providers:
MMO Bots
ProviderGamePrice RangeNotesWRobotWoW$15-30/monthRotation and farming botsTRiBotOSRS$9.99/month VIPPremium scripts additionalOSBotOSRSFree + Premium~25% VIP (paid) usersDreamBotOSRSFree + PremiumRuneMateOSRS$0.10/hourUsage-based modelMiqobotFFXIV$8-15/monthDominant FFXIV bot
FPS/BR Cheats
TypePrice RangeNotesPublic cheats$10-40/monthHigher detection riskPrivate cheats$50-200/monthLower detection, limited usersExclusive/VIP$100-300/monthInvite-only, longest lifespanHWID Spoofers$10-30/monthRequired after hardware bans
Mobile Cheats
TypePrice RangeNotesBasic APK mods$3-15/monthHigh detection ratePremium undetected$15-60/monthVaries by game anti-cheat
Methodology & Model Documentation
Monte Carlo Simulation Parameters
● Simulations: 10,000 iterations per game
● Correlation between games: 0.3 (moderate correlation assumed)
● credible intervals: 95% (These are Bayesian credible intervals representing the posterior probability that the true value lies within the stated range)
Key Model Assumptions
Paid Share Estimates:
The proportion of cheaters using paid (vs free) tools is a critical model parameter with limited empirical data:
● OSBot Data (OSRS): ~25% VIP (paid) members - the only concrete public data point
● Persistence Adjustment: Free users banned quickly (days); paid users persist (months)
● Economic Weighting: Model weights by bot-hours, not account counts
Category-level assumptions:
CategoryPaid Share RangeRationaleMMO/RMT50-90%Botting as business expense for gold farmersFPS/BR (PC)70-95%Free cheats banned too fast to matter economicallyMobile40-70%APK mods more accessible, but paid persists longer
Detection Rate Estimates:
Ban rates are estimated from:
● Official statements (where available)
● Ban wave frequency
● Cheat lifespan observations
● Academic research on anti-cheat effectiveness
Data Quality Summary by Game:
GameBan DataDetection RateBot CostPaid ShareOverallWorld of WarcraftOfficialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedGoodOld School RuneScapeOfficialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedGoodValorantOfficialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedGoodCounter-Strike 2NoneEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedPoorLost ArkPartialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedModerateFinal Fantasy XIVOfficialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedGoodFortniteNoneEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedPoorPUBG MobilePartialEstimatedMarket DataEstimatedModerateFree FireOfficialOfficial (69%)Market DataEstimatedGoodCall of Duty MobilePartialOfficial (97%)Market DataEstimatedModerate
Limitations & Caveats:
● Underground Market: This is an underground economy that does not publish financials. All estimates carry significant uncertainty.
● Selection Bias: Only 10 games analyzed. Major titles excluded: League of Legends, Apex Legends, PUBG (PC), Roblox, Minecraft, and many others.
● Paid Share Uncertainty: The proportion of paid vs free cheat users is the most uncertain parameter. Only one concrete data point exists (OSBot ~25% VIP).
● Regional Variation: Cheating prevalence varies significantly by region (e.g., Brazil, SEA, Middle East often higher). The model uses global averages.
● Temporal Changes: Anti-cheat effectiveness and cheat market dynamics change over time. Data reflects 2023-2024 observations.
● No Direct Sales Data: No cheat provider publishes revenue. Estimates are derived from user counts, pricing, and market research.