Splatoon is a series of third-person shooters developed and published by Nintendo. The game initially made its debut on the Nintendo Wii U back in 2015, becoming an instant hit amongst casual and veteran players. As one of the first titles to be confirmed for the Wii U's successor, the Nintendo Switch,
Splatoon 2 was shown in Nintendo's handheld hybrid first look—which would later become a launch title for the console.
Splatoon 2, much like its prequel, was a success during the early days of the Nintendo Switch and continues to reel in new players. The problem is when some of these players don't play fair at all, especially when they try to get out of their way to win matches by cheating—or much worse, by hacking the games.
Splatoon had its fair share of hackers that made the experience for other players a rather unpleasant one and
Splatoon 2 is currently going through the same thing.
In an interesting turn of events, a commited
Splatoon 2 player has decided to take matters into his/her own hands by actually hacking the game's Leaderboards in order to send a message to Nintendo—by modifying the ranking the player got in four different matches, each with a word that read "
Please.Add.Anti.Cheat".
On a thread on Reddit, the user that hacked the Leaderboards took credit for it and explained the reasoning behind it—by providing proof that he/she was indeed the one that did it. PleaseAddAntiCheat, how the hacker named themself on Reddit, mentioned that he loves
Splatoon 2 because it provides a healthy and competitive environment for players—which are some of the reasons players, in general, like the game—but also adding that this may not be true for long as there are people making it hard for players to enjoy the game.
"I've never personally played the first Splatoon, but I heard how bad it was, being overrun by cheaters who tamper with the game and impose unfair advantages on others. I, at first, was relieved that the Switch had a decently strong system security. Perhaps that's what the development team thought as well. Yet it doesn't justify removing all the security measures from the first game, and leave the game and its players completely defenseless to ill-purposed griefers who mod their game to victory. I figured that someone needs to deliver a message to Nintendo. And a loud one", explained the hacker on the Reddit thread, surprisingly getting the community's full support.
The fact that this person was able to hack the leaderboards and cheat their way to victory should send a very clear message to Nintendo, who should definitely try to add this anti cheat to the games. Hackers ruin the experience for a lot of players by making games unplayable and frustrating, just ask any Mario Kart online players from the previous generations and they will all agree—so it is nice to see one of these hackers actually hack the game to send Nintendo a message hoping to stop hacking in their games. Let's just hope Nintendo does something about it before it gets uglier, given that some other hackers may take this opportunity to hack the game even more.