Capcom warned Monster Hunter Wilds players not to cheat on its ranked leaderboards, so of course people are immediately and flagrantly doing just that

Alma, the handler from Monster Hunter Wilds, closes her eyes and looks a little disappointed. — (Image credit: Capcom)

Capcom had a stern finger to wag at prospective Monster Hunter Wilds players in preparation for its first title update—posting to X, a lengthy warning read: "Hunters, TU1 brings with it quest types where you can compete for the fastest time for both leaderboard position[s] and cosmetic pendant rewards.

"To ensure a fun and fair experience for our players, we will take action against accounts participating in fraudulent ranking activity, such as the use of cheating or external tools. Accounts deemed to be in breach of this may be suspended, or have restrictions placed on them, such as being unable to receive rewards from these quests."

(Image credit: @monsterhunter on X.)

So, obviously, people are immediately cheating.

I hopped in-game to confirm this myself, and less than 24 hours after the leaderboards opened, there's already hunters posting completion times of around 10 seconds—with one 'managing' a sub-10 second completion time on the Doshaguma of the Hollow challenge quest.

While some players are absolute madlads, and could certainly achieve record times with the correct execution, a sub-10 second completion time is basically impossible, especially considering some of these quests give you specific equipment. It's no coincidence that the top-ranking hunters are all also playing on PC, where cheats are easier to exploit.

Leaderboards in Monster Hunter Wilds with some cheating cheaters on it. — (Image credit: Capcom)

Here's one user on the game's subreddit who spied a completion time of… uh, zero seconds. Not even 0.00.01 seconds—in the same instant this hunter spawned into the world, their foe keeled over dead. Truly, they have access to some arcane arts lost to the annals of time.

Dawg are you fr? from r/MonsterHunter

While these fools are absolutely publicly asking for a ban in favour of temporary bragging rights, as one astute hunter points out on that thread, Capcom being reactive rather than establishing some kind of anti-cheat poisons the entire well:

"The first to be banned are the kids and dumb ones who don't care. The ones after will be the observers who will see the general average of times across the board and make sure they'll be just a smidge faster. They can just stand there and one shot the monster at the precise time."

It really is a shame, but it's entirely anticipated—unless you've got some sort of software-based anti-cheat, it's impossible to stop bad actors from giving themselves a thousand Artian relics so they can feel like a very special person with minimal effort.

Or, as it were, be on top of a leaderboard for a short amount of time before being banished to the shadow realm for nonsense. FF14, which has a similar hands-off, punishment-based approach, struggles with this kind of silliness in its world-first raiding scene all the time—and let me tell you, the people cheating aren't much smarter over there.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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