Cheating is bad in MMOs; we all know and accept this as a reality. Programs you don’t really know about being installed on your computer are also bad. So the good news is that Albion Online adding Easy Anti-Cheat to the game is that players are informed ahead of time and know that it will be installed along with the game’s latest update, with the program activating next week. Is its inclusion a good thing in general? The jury’s still out on that one.

[UPDATED] Easy Anti-Cheat is Coming with Patch 7

Hello all,

With today's maintenance, we will deploy Easy Anti-Cheat as part of the Albion Online client. With Nimue Patch 7 (currently set to be deployed during the week of 18 February), the program will be activated as a required part of the Albion Online client.

Here's a brief FAQ about this program and why we've implemented it:

What is Easy Anti-Cheat?

Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) is, as the name says, an anti-cheat program used by a large number of online games (Fortnite, Apex Legends, Rust, etc.), which offers automated prevention of the most egregious forms of in-game cheating.

For more on EAC and its use in Albion Online, click here: easy.ac/en-us/support/albion/

Why is EAC being added to the game?

Currently we are using primarily our own detection technology, as well as counting on reports by our players, the latter of which need to of course be verified by our Game Masters. This extra layer of cheat prevention will not only mean that there will be even fewer bots in the game, but also that manipulative software that's hidden better will be detected more easily.

What does this mean for me?

Easy Anti-Cheat will be automatically downloaded and installed along with Nimue Patch 7 on your computer (for PC / Mac / Linux users). No further installation or management of the program is necessary. Beginning with Patch 7, Albion Online will not be playable without Easy Anti-Cheat installed.

Developers claim that it shouldn’t affect performance and did not during internal testing, and it’s already used by other prominent online games to ensure that the most obvious hacking methods don’t work. Whether or not that will track with actual player experience remains to be seen, of course; at this point players will just need to wait until next week and hope for the best. So less cheating is definitely good, but the means of getting there are… well, let’s just say “rocky.”