Players are orchestrating mass reporting in New World, in order to temporarily ban players to win war events more easily.

Some players are mass reporting players of rival companies (guilds) before limited-time War events begin, getting them banned for 24 hours. This prevents the opposing company from having enough active players to participate, and making it easier for their own to succeed.

Our own Frank Streva reports that high level companies have seen half of their players banned at any given time. Similar reports have been found on social media and the game’s official forums, with one player saying half their 100-strong company were banned.

PC Gamer reports that moderators and customer support for the game are giving conflicting messages. Some have claimed that the 24 hour ban system is automatic when many reports come in a short period of time [1, 2], while others state reports are reviewed by real people [1, 2].

Community Manager NW_Mugsy explained that the game uses Easy Anti Cheat to detect cheating players, and it may be some moderators confused the bots handling that for the report processing.

“I want to apologize for Moderator_z, I am not sure why they believe we are using bots to moderate but we will investigate this disconnect.

We are using EAC for folks detected to be cheating, maybe they were confused on the differences between that and how in-game Code of Conduct reports are processed.

I will work with them and their team to make sure they aren’t providing conflicting information in the future.”

Nonetheless, some doubted the sheer number of bans could have had their numerous reports reviewed by human beings; at least not to a degree where the report processing staff size would not be excessive.

Amazon had previously patented technology to group online players based on their preferences and behaviors; including “toxic” players. While it is unlikely this technology is at work here, should any AI be involved in the report processing system, it may need to be adjusted. A difficult process, as it will also need to consider when a player truly has broken the rules on the eve of war.

New World is now available on Windows PC via Steam. In case you missed it, you can find our preview here, and can expect our review soon.