Does Bloodhunt have spyware? Anti-cheat in Vampire The Masquerade’s battle royale

Bloodhunt one vampire kills another with a katanaSharkmob

As with any battle royale, Vampire The Masquerade’s Bloodhunt suffers at the hand of cheaters, but what exactly is the game’s anti-cheat and what’s all the talk about spyware? 

Sharkmob’s innovative take on the battle royale fuses tried and tested mechanics with the Vampire The Masquerade universe to create Bloodhunt.

Just like any other battle royale, though, the game has been plagued by hordes of cheaters from the get-go. While ravaging poor mortals on the streets of Prague has never been more fun, when cheaters are constantly the ones tearing you apart it can get a little frustrating.

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Bloodhunt’s anti-cheat has come under fire for being too lax, but here’s everything you need to know about Sharkmob’s plans to stamp out rule-breakers once and for all.


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Vampire jumps on a human from aboveSharkmob
Death from above has never been more frustrating.

Bloodhunt’s anti-cheat

While the devs are still in the learning phase when it comes to dealing with cheaters, subsequent Twitter updates have proven that the team is on the ball and looking to drive a stake through cheating issues.

A September 15 Steam update states “as part of Early Access we are in a form of ‘learning mode,’ where our systems and developers are watching and waiting to see what kind of cheats are deployed. Once we have a big enough data set of regular gameplay vs cheating we will be able to auto-detect offenders much easier and hopefully prevent some cheats altogether.”

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Urging players to report any cheaters they see via the request section on the website, efforts have already proven fruitful. On September 27 the devs confirmed that “we just pushed out 2 fixes to improve our anti-cheat. The first one removes the heal hack, and the second one is related to another common hack.”

As the ban katana grows ever sharper, hopefully we’ll see less cheater in our games. After all, the streets of Prague are already pretty dangerous as they are!

Bloodhunt one vampire looks at camera as the others fight in the backgroundSharkmob
It turns out that dealing with cheaters isn’t quite as easy as eating Prague’s unfortunate population.

Does Bloodhunt have spyware?

In short, no. Bloodhunt does not have spyware. The original issue with the anti-cheat software was attributed to two specific bugs, which have now largely been dealt with.

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When the game initially debuted in Early Access, players quickly noticed that the game’s anti-cheat remained active when they closed the game. With users concerned that this was some sort of spyware, the devs quickly issued a statement.

A post from 8 September notes “we have identified two bugs with our anti-cheat software. The issues are related to the anti-cheat sometimes still running after the game client has exited and a few files still being left after the game has been uninstalled. We are working hard to resolve this and hope to have it fixed as soon as we can.”

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A fix for this rolled out on 15 September, and players who have uninstalled the game but still have the anti-cheat can remove it using this script.


So that’s everything you need to know about Bloodhunt’s anti-cheat system. Hopefully it sets your mind at ease! Looking to tear your enemies asunder? We’ve got several guides right here:

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