For Honor: 1500 honorless farmers temporary banned

It is part of human nature to try and find an easy way to trick something into our benefit. And that's what part of the For Honor community tried to do with it's progression system, at the expense of other players' fun. Some sneaky players have been AFK farming and managed to pick-up end-game rewards without struggling to much. They rigged their games to keep their character moving, in order to avoid being kicked for inactivity, receiving progress an rewards without playing at all. Ubisoft are now working on stopping this. They gave temporary bans to 1,500 of these AFK farmers and warnings to thousands others. Permanent bans may follow in the future if the problem persists.

Earlier this month, Ubisoft explained their intent with an official announcement:

“For those unfamiliar with the practice, players are able to go AFK (away from keyboard) and keep their in-game character moving throughout a match (ex. tying a rubber band on the control stick), garnering end-game rewards and progression without actually playing. The ‘farming’ aspect comes about when these players use this technique frequently to gain a large amount of these rewards.

“Because this kind of behavior negatively affects the player experience of others, it has become a top priority for us. As such, we will be sanctioning all the players who have been found to be using AFK Farming repeatedly.”

They started detecting and tracking AFK farmers soon after the announcement was published, and last week they issued a first round of warnings, and they have now moved onto punishment.

Around 1,500 people have been issued with 3-day temporary bans. Another 4,000 or so have received warnings that will become temporary bans too if they persist with their illegal practice. So far Ubisoft have only temporarily banned AFK farmers but they say permanent suspension is an option too, especially for people using third-party software.