Keeping hackers and cheaters out of Rec Room is critical to making your experiences fun. That’s why we’ve retired EAC and handed the reins to Referee officially.
Using EAC gave us a protective blanket that covered a fair number of hacks, but also opened us up to all of the exploits that can be used against EAC. Now that we’re using Referee - our own, in-house detection system - we can customize it to address problems that are specific to Rec Room and make your experiences better than ever.
The reason we’re making this change now is because over the last month, Referee hit a major milestone: it’s now catching bad behavior as well as EAC ever did. This is our baseline - Referee will keep getting better.
Every week, we’ve been reviewing what’s working, what’s breaking, and what sneaky new tricks are slipping through. Some recent fixes - like the one we rolled out in February that’s already blocked 75,000+ hacking attempts, or putting checks in to legitimize gift boxes - have only been possible because of your help and the customizability of Referee.
Still, we know we’ve got more work to do. Your bug reports and forum posts are crucial in helping us recognize new threats and improving Referee. We evaluate the priority of all these issues, work towards potential solutions, and provide fixes ASAP using Referee’s capabilities.
What’s up next
Thanks to your reports, here are the issues we are in the process of working on:
- Preventing object spawns in public places like the Rec Center
- Detecting invisibility and flying hacks in real time
- Identifying and blocking alt accounts used to evade bans
- Stopping cheaters from spoofing permission levels
These fixes wouldn’t have been possible with EAC. But now, with Referee, we’re building the security system Rec Room needs and deserves. Our mission? To make Referee into the Actually Useful Security Guard it’s designed to be (seriously, our goal as a team is to never see that meme again). Until then, please keep the bug reports coming - they help more than you might think!