Following recent complaints from speedrunners in the gaming community, The Sandbox (TSB) is finally considering KYC rules to curb cheaters.
The cheating incident occurred at one of the speedrun contests organized by Metalympics, an official partner of TSB.
According to Metalympics, TSB failed to examine bug reports and evidence of cheating submitted by the community. As a result, The Sandbox team ended up awarding one of the cheaters with $1000SAND (about $1889) in prize money. However, this may soon change, as The Sandbox is looking into KYC to crack down on cheaters.
We take cheating very seriously. We are looking at more radical solutions, such as to receive prizes, all participants will need to submit their KYC.
— Sebastien 🏞 (@borgetsebastien) May 8, 2022
Background on speedrunner complaints
For those who don’t know, speedrun is a playthrough of a video game with the goal of finishing it as quickly as possible. In fact, speedrun is quite common in The Sandbox games. Several external parties, such as Metalympics, regularly organize speedrun contests for TSB players. As such, many of these contests offered huge cash prizes, sometimes in excess of $15,000SAND, to eligible winners.
But it’s clear that there were no adequate anti-bot measures in place to detect cheaters in The Sandbox games. At least, that’s according to Twitter user @Lugicc, who wrote that one of the players who used Cheat Engine with 100% evidence against him ended up winning second place in Metalympics Originals #3. And if that wasn’t outrageous enough, The Sandbox team rewarded the cheater with $1000SAND in prize money as well.
Now, The Sandbox is considering control rules to curb cheaters
Given the number of disgruntled voices in the community, The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien commented that the team will soon come up with more radical solutions. For example, it is possible that in the future participants of The Sandbox will have to submit their personal information before receiving rewards, in order to deal with cheaters.
But will this help solve the problem? Most TSB fans believe it will.
What about the winners of previous The Sandbox games?
Incidentally, the Metalympics incident has also raised more questions. If cheaters can win in the Metalympics so easily, wouldn’t it be easy for them to win in other TSB games in the past? For example, winning multiple spots in the Season Alpha 1 and 2 sweepstakes.
With so many big brands entering The Sandbox lately, it’s time for the TSB team to build a level playing field for all their players.