The Division dev upgrades to permanent bans for first-time cheaters

Ubisoft's not offering any second chances to cheaters in The Division anymore. After a wave of bans on over 30,000 accounts, 3,800 of which were permanent bans, the company announced today in a blog post that it would now permanently ban cheaters on first offense. 

Previously, players were given a 14-day ban on first offense, giving them the option to mend their ways after not being able to play the game for 2 weeks.

Now Ubisoft seems to be without mercy.

As stated on The Division blog, "Following this campaign of suspensions and bans, it also became clear that while huge progress has been made in terms of cheat detection, our 14 days suspension on first offense policy has not been dissuasive enough."

"Judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game, we have now decided to push our policy one step further: we will now start applying permanent bans on first offense."

Ubisoft's decision follows Blizzard's announcement that they would permanently ban all Overwatch cheaters on sight, suggesting an increased tolerance among large developers for applying permanent bans on first offense.

It's a policy that's not without some risks. Permanently banning any player means losing a customer, but Ubisoft clearly sees cheating players as a great enough risk to player retention to scour them from the game entirely. 

Ubisoft will implement these permanent with the next major wave of bans, and promises to announce when new bans are taking place.