PUBG Bans: What Gets You Banned and How Many Each Week

KRAFTON banned 34,271 PUBG: Battlegrounds accounts in the week of 12 to 18 October 2026, and 20,929 of them were for cheating. Those are KRAFTON's own numbers, from the chart in its weekly bans notice, and that week wasn't an outlier. Across the 11 weeks from 3 August, the weekly total ran from 21,119 to 65,453.

This is what gets an account banned in PUBG and for how long, built from KRAFTON's Rules of Conduct, its 2026 anti-cheat dev letters, PUBG Support's ban articles and those 11 weekly notices. If your account was banned while someone else had it, that's a separate process with its own unban rules, and the secondary password guide covers it.

How many accounts PUBG bans a week

Each weekly notice covers a Monday-to-Sunday "Investigation Period," and KRAFTON posted all 11 of these on a Wednesday. Each carries a chart splitting the week's account bans into four categories, next to a count of banned devices. Here are the last 11, read off those charts:

In all 11 charts, the four categories add up exactly to the headline figure. What the table shows:

• Cheating is most of it, and most of the swing. It's 291,733 of 418,400 bans, about 70%, and it ranged from 12,012 to 55,906 a week. None of the other three categories moved by more than about 4,000 between its lowest and highest week.
• Teaming bans went from a few hundred to about 4,000. They were 438 and 177 in the first two August weeks, and between 3,840 and 4,028 in each of the last five. KRAFTON's notices don't say why.
• Team killing drifted down and "Abusing" drifted up. Team-kill bans fell from 5,492 in the first week to 3,657 in the latest; Abusing rose from 3,617 to 5,657. The chart never defines Abusing.
• The average week is about 38,000 accounts, 26,500 of them for cheating.

Each notice also links a PDF that KRAFTON calls "the full list of permanently banned account," with the first three letters of every nickname replaced by asterisks. It isn't the full list of bans. Counting the masked nicknames in all 11 PDFs, each week's count matches that week's Cheating figure exactly (the 28 September to 4 October file also carries three "#N/A" rows), so teaming, team-kill and abusing bans aren't in it. The masking also makes it a poor way to check on one player: the 12 to 18 October list has 20,929 entries but only 20,521 different masked names, because once the first three letters go, different nicknames end the same way.

The right-hand chart is the hardware side: devices banned, plus a bar labelled "Accounts affected." KRAFTON doesn't say whether those accounts sit inside the account-ban total or on top of it.

What each offence can cost you

The Rules of Conduct carry a "Penalty Criteria Table For Misconduct" giving the maximum penalty for each offence, and PUBG Support's ban explainer repeats it. On pubg.com the Rules text is the same for Steam, Epic Games, PlayStation and Xbox.

Thirteen of the 18 rows top out at a permanent ban. Four stop at 30 days, and one, the investigation row, at 3 days. The rules around the table matter as much as the table:

• The maximum isn't a fixed sentence. "Depending on the seriousness of the misconduct, the imposed penalty may become more or less severe, up to and including legal action taken against a player."
• Your rank can go too. A violator listed in Ranked "may be temporarily or permanently removed from the rank," which is worth knowing before you grind the Ranked ladder.
• The hardware can be banned, not just the account. KRAFTON "may restrict users from running the game if misconduct was found from a specific hardware device." If several accounts were made on one device or IP to misbehave, every account tied to it can be permanently banned, "even if accessed on a different PC/console."
• What you earned can go. Currency, items and character data obtained through misconduct can be removed, and in serious cases the account's entire character data.
• Asking won't shorten it. PUBG Support says restrictions "cannot be lifted and applied period cannot be reduced even if you contact our support multiple times," and its ban message article says it doesn't give exact ban reasons "due to security reasons."

Cheating on PC: programs, macros and DMA

The Rules name the hardware outright. Unauthorized programs or devices "that promote unfair game play using specific mouse, Direct Access Memory ('DMA') board or other hardware device" can bring "permanent game ban and restrictions of using the Service on your hardware devices." Developing, advertising, trading or distributing them can add legal action.

The line sits a long way short of an aimbot. Between the Rules, the 2026 dev letters and PUBG Support, KRAFTON lists:

• Recoil macros and scripts. The April 2026 dev letter puts "macro mouse and related scripts designed to artificially reduce or eliminate weapon recoil" under focused detection, with new detection "gradually deployed to the live service." If a flat spray is the appeal, the recoil control guide is the route that keeps the account.
• Third-party tools, whatever they're called. The June 2026 dev letter: "displaying information the game doesn't provide, altering the UI without authorization, or abnormally accessing the game client or its processes to collect data are all subject to penalties," including suspension "without prior warning."
• Client edits. The Rules give "ini" file modification as an example of changing the game client, which carries up to a permanent ban.
• Programs that aren't cheats, or aren't for PUBG. PUBG Support's ban message article lists "Programs that alter the game in any way (even if it is not for cheating)," programs that monitor or obtain information from the game, and "Cheats, macros, etc. for other games and not for PUBG" as violations that can bring a permanent restriction.
• Software paired with hardware. KRAFTON's February 2026 action plan flagged "illegally manufactured software in combination with unauthorized input devices," and reported over 10,000 accounts banned, past records included, under its new detection for illegal input devices and software.

DMA is the one KRAFTON calls its "top priority." The 2026 anti-cheat roadmap charts permanent bans for DMA cheating at 73,899 in 2024 and 267,227 in 2025, more than three and a half times as many. The roadmap's text rounds the 2025 figure down to "approximately 260,000."

Console: Cronus, XIM and lag abuse are permanent now

Console policy tightened in four steps through the first half of 2026:

The 30 June notice sets the scope: "mouse and keyboard signal converters (e.g., Cronus, XIM, Mix Master) and unauthorized devices that grant an unfair gameplay advantage." The June letter names recoil control as one of those advantages. KRAFTON's April advice was plain: "we strongly recommend using only official controllers."

So once KRAFTON confirms a keyboard-and-mouse converter on a console account, it's no longer a timeout. It's the account. The February letter shows KRAFTON will go back through old records, but the 30 June notice doesn't say whether the permanent tier reaches anything before that date. PC and console don't share matches, as the crossplay breakdown covers, so these rules are about who you meet in the console pool.

Not cheating, still bannable

The Rules' misconduct list runs well past cheat software. These are the ones an ordinary player can walk into:

• Teaming. "Intentional teaming up between players or other teams in ways that the Game does not presuppose in each game mode" carries up to a permanent ban, and the rule reaches further: if you benefited from teaming with someone who uses unauthorized programs or devices, "measures may be taken against you, as you are considered a member of an abnormal team." Squadding up with a friend you know cheats puts your own account at risk. Teaming is also the category that grew fastest in the weekly charts.
• Team killing. Penalties apply when it's "determined to be intentional and reoccurring," so one badly placed grenade isn't the target. Team kills still drew between 3,657 and 5,492 bans a week.
• AFK. Up to a permanent ban, and anyone who idles repeatedly "to earn points or other account related progression or rewards" loses all account progression and items.
• Boosting and extra accounts. Playing for someone else in exchange for money or goods, or making unfair gains through multiple accounts, can get "your character information being reset, including any BP and items."
• Abnormal gameplay. Thirty days at most in the table, but Update 43.1 added another cost: "Matches flagged for abnormal play will not grant in-game rewards or count toward progression," per the 43.1 patch notes.
• Bug abuse. The Rules define it as "acquiring game currency and virtual items by exploiting bugs and glitches," and the major version carries up to a permanent ban.
• Cheat ads over voice chat. Since 11 February, a player caught advertising illegal software through in-game voice chat is "immediately removed from the session" and penalised. KRAFTON reported over 1,000 bans for it when it announced the feature.
• Selling accounts and cash deals. Trading or selling accounts without KRAFTON's written approval is on the list, and attempting cash transactions, including through nicknames or custom game mode names, carries up to a permanent ban.

Custom games have their own clause. By joining one you accept the host's custom settings, and "certain provisions" of the Rules may not apply "where specific deviations are expressly enabled through the game system." Abusive or disruptive behaviour can still be penalised there.

Reporting a cheater, and what happens next

KRAFTON's weekly notices set the order: "report illegal software and misconduct through in-game reports first," then contact PUBG Support if you need more. Support's cheater report article asks for the date, the character name, the violation type and screenshots or video. Its cheaters and hackers article, last edited in 2020, caps attached video at 20 MB and says an in-game report gets a notification about the investigation's result within 15 days.

Don't count on that notification. Another article in the same help centre, last edited in 2017, says KRAFTON "cannot provide information on whether the player has been banned or not," so its own help pages disagree.

By KRAFTON's account, a report on its own isn't enough for a ban. According to PUBG Support, the anti-cheat team checks the evidence first, and "if evidence suggest that there are no conclusive proof of violations of our gameplay policy, no restrictions will be placed." The same article says that holds whether other players report you "mistakenly or deliberately."

One Update 43.2 detail helps here. Custom Match hosts can now hide nicknames, so other players show up as "Unknown #000," but per the 43.2 patch notes, "actual nicknames can still be seen in Death Cam and the Report screen." A hidden name doesn't make a cheater unreportable.

False bans and appeals

KRAFTON's three 2026 anti-cheat dev letters and its 2026 anti-cheat roadmap all talk about wrong bans as well as cheaters:

• February: the action plan admitted "certain legitimate gameplay patterns may be incorrectly flagged as suspicious behavior" and said the first false-ban fixes would go live in March.
• March: the roadmap set "greater precision" in screening for the first half of the year and an improved "false ban review process" for the second.
• April: extra validation on the AI-based detection system brought "a reduction of over 40% in ban appeals," and a protection system now runs "across the entire sanction decision process."
• June: KRAFTON promised "a series of new system improvements after July" to protect legitimate players. The account-theft unban change it announced alongside them took effect on 22 July, but no anti-cheat dev letter has followed on pubg.com as of 23 October, and none of KRAFTON's notices since has described those system improvements.

For bans that were earned, Support's early-unban article is blunt: KRAFTON "cannot reduce or remove any restrictions placed on accounts that have violated those terms and services." Account theft is the exception, and how many unbans you get there depends on whether you had a secondary password set.

What KRAFTON hasn't published

These are gaps in KRAFTON's own documents as of 23 October 2026:

• What "Abusing" covers. The weekly charts never define it, and it's not a heading in the Rules' penalty table.
• Which platform the bans came from. The notices are tagged for both PC and console, with no split.
• Why teaming bans rose from 177 to about 4,000 a week. The notices chart the number but give no reason, and the Update 43.1 and 43.2 patch notes don't mention teaming.
• How device bans relate to account bans. "Accounts affected" is a separate bar, and the notices don't say whether those accounts are counted in the headline total.
• The "final attempt." The Rules say a permanent ban applies once "your violation goes over the final attempt listed in the table," but the table lists maximum periods, not attempts.
• What the 3-day "investigate" row means in practice.
• Whether the 30 June console policy reaches back. The February crackdown applied to past records; the June notice doesn't say.
• What the post-July protections for legitimate players are.

Quick Action Checklist

• Don't run recoil macros, mouse scripts, overlays that show information the game doesn't, or ini edits; KRAFTON treats each of them as bannable
• On console, use an official controller: converters such as Cronus, XIM and Mix Master have meant a permanent ban since 30 June 2026, 05:00 UTC
• Don't team with other players or squads outside what the mode allows, and don't squad with someone you know cheats; the Rules can treat you as "a member of an abnormal team"
• Accidental team kills aren't the target; intentional, repeated ones can be permanent
• Don't idle to farm progression; repeated AFK farming costs all account progression and items
• Report cheaters in-game first, and keep a clip of 20 MB or less (or a link) ready if you go to PUBG Support
• In a custom match with hidden nicknames, real names still show in Death Cam and on the Report screen
• Misconduct can get a device blocked from running the game, and alt accounts made on it for misconduct banned along with yours
• Don't expect Support to shorten a ban for real misconduct; it says it won't
• Read the Wednesday weekly bans notice for the numbers; its PDF lists cheating bans only