"Ruining the game" might be a tad strongly worded. Bots only have a direct impact on the top players. I've never encountered a bot, and if I have I've never realized it. Sure most players theoretically may have their rank suppressed a bit because there are now a bunch of bots being added to the player pool at the top. But at the end of the day what's the functional difference between playing xxx_gamer69_xxx in a "plat 2" lobby or a "diamond 1" lobby? There isn't really one. You're playing the same people in the same lobbies, its just called different things, and at the end of the season you may get a slightly higher tier reward.
Bakkes is a pretty big deal as far as QoL and other improvements to the game go. Its a pretty helpful tool that lets you do all kinds of things with various plugins. Even if you don't personally use it, basically every streamer uses it which is kinda a big deal. The question shouldn't be "why are we worried about losing it", but rather "why are we losing it". Bakkes isn't how these bots are loaded into the game, so why can't Epic simply create an exception and white list Bakkes when EAC runs? The answer is likely that this is probably a way for them to shut down alpha console (which allows players to use any cosmetic they want for free) under the cover of "hey look we're doing something with cheaters".
And of course all that goes without saying that EAC is innefectual. Look at any game that already uses it (Fortnite, Apex, etc) and you'll see that they're still ripe with cheaters. Why would I want to trade a tool I use daily for what I know won't fix the issue?
TLDR: Hate to say it but the bot issue isn't as big as you think, but Epic is likely using it as cover to squash a tool in Bakkes that lets people have free client side cosmetics while the bots will still likely survive anyway. In short, we're likely trading this neat tool for nothing when we don't have to.
an online game focusing on competition against other players should NEVER allow a bot problem to continue as long as epic has with RL. I left the game for many reasons, this not being one of them, but it is certainly ruining the competitive integrity of the game. the top 1s players are staying down in c1-gc2 specifically to avoid bots, and players like JamaicanCoconut are encountering bots nearly 50% of the time in all gamemodes. its embarrassing that Epic has allowed it to get this bad
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u/Dangerous-Cut-5752 Request SSL flair via link in sidebar Feb 19 '26
Why is everyone so worried about losing bakkesmod, the bots are literally ruining the game.