In a move intended to help stem a wave of cheating in the online portions of The Division, Ubisoft says it is rescinding its policy of issuing 14-day suspensions when a player is first detected using a cheat engine. Now, those players will be permanently banned when found.

The new policy comes after The Division team said it became clear to them that the 14-day suspension policy currently in place "has not been dissuasive enough... judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game." That 14-day suspension policy was itself an increase from the previous three-day suspensions that were given out for first offenses until late April.

Those temporary suspensions certainly didn't seem to be discouraging cheaters very much, according to widespread reports of cheating and exploit use in the game. "The message is out," one player wrote on The Division forums in April. "Cheat all you want, it will take forever to catch you apparently, and you get to keep all the exp/money/items you gained and then after a three-day suspension you get to laugh, come back in, and reap your reward. Then just don't cheat anymore."

The new stricter enforcement comes amid reports and criticism that The Division's online infrastructure, which seems to put an inordinate amount of trust in data coming from the client-side application, would need a "complete rewrite" to be functionally secure. The Division team addressed these complaints in a recent podcast and in today's enforcement announcement:

While some of the game decisions are made client-side, there are constant server checks in place. This ensures that even in the situation where a player would be able to modify his client data, the servers can detect it. The array of these checks has constantly improved since the launch of the game which allowed us to catch a great amount of cheaters. Of course, this doesn’t mean that cheating is a thing of the past and we stand ready to react quickly, should new cheats be developed.

That message doesn't do much to directly address the core complaints of those who think the game's client-server architecture model is fundamentally broken. Still, The Division team says improved cheat detection has led to "actions" taken against 30,000 player accounts and 3,800 permanent bans. That number seems set to increase quickly given the new policy of banning cheaters on their first offense.

Last month, before the launch of, Blizzard publicized a similar "zero tolerance" policy for cheat enforcement in that game: "If a player is found to be cheating—or using hacks, bots, or third-party software that provides any sort of unfair advantage—that player will be permanently banned from the game. Full stop," the company said. That policy has already led to thousands of bans, which some reports suggest have become increasingly difficult to get around, even using a nearly fully wiped computer.

Many other online shooters still offer lighter offenses for first-time cheaters, though. Destiny often gives first-time offenders temporary "restrictions" that can last a few weeks. Call of Duty gives players temporary bans for their first two offenses. And Rockstar famously put those found cheating at Max Payne 3 into a "Cheaters Pool" where they could only play against others using unfair exploits.