Lootborne Cheating and Anti-Cheat: What the Devs Promised

Cheating is the most-discussed problem in Lootborne, and the developer has responded with something more detailed than most small studios manage: a written policy on the store page covering detection, sanctions, appeals and what the anti-cheat deliberately does not do.

Both halves of that are true at once. The policy is specific. The complaints have not stopped.

What the developer promises, in writing

The official policy section is short enough to quote in full detail. It commits to the following:

Server-side detection with human review. No automatic ban fires from a single flag.
No scanning of your PC. The developer states it never monitors or scans other applications or processes on your computer, for cheat detection or for anything else.
Progressive sanctions. Enforcement may restrict leaderboard access, trading or matchmaking. It escalates rather than jumping to removal.
No VAC or game-level bans. The developer states it never requests a Steam-level ban.
Transparent changes. Balance and economy changes always appear in patch notes and are never applied silently.
A real appeals process. Appeals go to the support address, are acknowledged within 72 hours and resolved within 14 days. If the flag was wrong, affected progress is restored and compensated.
Two reporting channels. Cheaters can be reported through the official Discord or by email.

The policy is unusually candid about the trade-off. Human review means slower enforcement, in exchange for fewer false positives.

What players are actually reporting

The complaints are easy to find and hard to dismiss as a handful of voices.

The Steam discussion board has a dedicated sub-forum for reporting cheaters.
Two developer posts are pinned at the top of the general board, one of them titled “A few important notes on PvP and cheaters”.
Threads ask directly whether the game relies on players reporting cheaters themselves.
Negative reviews raise the topic repeatedly, some in blunt terms, and one reviewer complains that a market was advertised before cheating was under control.

Why the topic has so much energy is structural rather than emotional. PvP pays Bloodmarks, so a cheating opponent takes currency and ladder position away from you. In PvE a cheater is mostly irrelevant, which is why the PvP page treats fair play as a core mechanic rather than a side issue.

Nobody has published enforcement numbers

What is missing is any measurement. There is no published ban count, no appeal success rate and no statement of how many reports are processed per week.

That gap cuts both ways. It means players cannot tell whether enforcement is working, and it also means nobody can honestly claim it is not. The policy is a promise about process, not a statement of results.

How to report a cheater properly

Capture the identifying detail. The victory card names both players, so the handle and the approximate time are both available on screen.
Use an official channel. The developer names Discord and the support email. A public thread is not a report.
Describe the behaviour, not the person. “Turn order was consistent with impossible speed at this timestamp” is actionable. Insults are not.
Do not name and shame. The policy includes a real appeals process and it assumes some flags are wrong.

If you think you were flagged by mistake

The developer’s stated process gives you something concrete to hold:

Send an appeal through the support address at any time.
Expect an acknowledgement within 72 hours.
Expect resolution within 14 days, with the developer citing the size of the team.
If the flag was wrong, affected content is restored and compensation is added on top.

Keep your own evidence before appealing. The victory and battle log panels both produce the kind of record that helps.

Why the offline mode matters here

PvE is fully playable offline. That is worth remembering when reading cheating complaints, because it means the single-player loop is not affected by anyone else’s behaviour.

Only PvP, the Steam Market and the leaderboards connect to other players. If you want the gear-and-synergy game without the competitive risk, that route exists and it is fully functional.

Async PvP for how duels, ladders and the four PvP bosses work.
Is it worth it? for whether the cheating situation should stop you buying.

Sources and limits

The anti-cheat and ban policy, the reporting channels, the appeal timeframes and the offline rules come from the official Steam store page, as of 23 September 2026. Player reports are drawn from public Steam discussion titles and review text as of the same date and are explicitly a non-representative sample. This page does not verify any individual accusation.