Easy Anti-Cheat

Epic's developer documentation splits the service into two layers. Cheat prevention is described as designed to "passively prevent common cheating techniques such as reading and writing the game process memory using straightforward methods." Cheat detection is described as work "to identify accounts using more specialized methods to manipulate the game so that you can then apply sanctions to them."

The mechanisms Epic states publicly include:

• Heuristics, gameplay analysis and player reports. Epic says EAC "detects sophisticated and evolving cheats using heuristics, gameplay analysis, and player report signals". Reporting is a required input: the docs say "It is critical to implement the Reports Interface to allow players to submit reports when they believe another player in the same game session is cheating."
• Game file integrity. The SDK ships an Anti-Cheat Integrity Tool, a command line tool "designed to be easily added at the end of your build process" that generates "A signed list (catalog) of hashes for game files". Epic says that "At runtime, the anti-cheat service loads this signed catalog and confirms the content files match as they are accessed."
• Boot and hardware state. "Games using EAC may impose additional security requirements on players which are controlled by the developer," and Epic's support articles describe Secure Boot, a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and IOMMU among them. Epic says some cheats "attempt to insert themselves into the boot process," and that others "are implemented with hardware cards that use Direct Memory Access (DMA) to make game memory available to a second PC which runs cheat software."
• Conflicting software. EAC "blocks software that interacts with games in ways that look identical to cheating techniques." Epic says this most often affects hardware monitoring or control software "that use outdated kernel drivers to access system resources."
• Behavior models. Under a paid agreement, Epic analysts "can develop game specific detection models that help flag aim-assisting cheats."

Epic does not publish detection specifics, and withholds detection evidence from developers, stating: "To avoid disclosing detection details to cheat developers, the raw data that led to a cheat detection is not available."

Per game, decided by that game's publisher. EAC detections arrive as pending sanctions that the studio activates for its own title, and sanctions can be temporary or permanent. Epic collects hardware identifiers to prevent ban evasion, and sells studios tooling for repeat cheaters who make new accounts on the same machine.

A detection is not automatically a ban. Epic's support articles say that when EAC flags an account, "the game publisher may subsequently decide to suspend or ban the account from playing again," and the developer docs confirm detections appear as pending sanctions in the Developer Portal that the studio "must review and decide whether to activate each of these sanctions in your game according to your own best judgement." Sanctions are defined per product, can last "a specific number of days" or be permanent, and include "A ban from joining a session to play your game," so the normal scope is the individual title rather than every EAC game. Epic does collect "hardware identifiers to prevent ban evasion," and sells studios tooling to manage "recurring cheaters who create new accounts on the same machine."

Appeals exist. Epic hosts an appeal form at easy.ac that takes a sanction reference ID and states that "Should your appeal be accepted, the ban will automatically be reverted." Epic says "The EAC team investigates each claim of false cheat detections to guarantee the accuracy of each decision." Fortnite players are instead told to submit a ticket at epicgames.com/help; "For all other games, please reference that game's support channel before submitting an appeal here." Timelines are not fixed, and Epic will not disclose which cheat was detected.