As spotted by members of the Battlefield 6 community online, reports from users of the Cronus Zen getting temporary bans for using the cheating hardware are circulating online, but the full scope of how effective the game is at banning users of this hardware remains unclear.
For those unaware, the Cronus Zen (and prior Cronus products) allow for the use of scripts and macros in games it’s used with, and is usable on consoles including the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. These macros can be harmless in single player games, sure (back when I was younger people used it as an arcade stick adapter for the Xbox 360, which was cool). However, in multiplayer games the device has become infamous due to the ability to enable additional aim assist, recoil reduction, automatic drop-shotting, and more. All of these specific macros and more are listed outright on the Cronus Zen website.
However, players are questioning the validity of these temporary bans due to an odd screenshot circulating online. Initially, the screenshot seems real enough, but closer inspection reveals suspect details. For example, in the bottom right corner of the screenshot, the A and B buttons (which you’d expect from a console ban page) look incorrect, with the A looking more like an H. Very odd.
Heading to the Cronus Zen Discord, discussions are kept largely from public channels and hidden inside those only registered Cronus Zen users can access, but even there brief discussions about bans can be found. It looks as though the impact of these bans are in doubt, with Cronus users stating as long as you don’t overuse these macros so as to be easily spotted by other players and cheat detection software, users won’t be banned.
The flip side of the coin is prior statements made by EA, which mention Cronus specifically. In an interview with Push Square, technical director on Battlefield 6 Christian Buhl stated: “Yeah, it’s unfortunate that cheating has become a problem within the console space, especially with Cronus Zen machines and everything. So we’ve partnered with PlayStation and both Microsoft in this regard to kind of do detection. We actually have our own level of macro detection and everything.
“So if players are doing rapid with Javelin on the PC side. That’s why we’ve enabled Secure Boot to help us combat the never-ending cheater problem. And we are aware of the console cheater issue, and we’re going to be taking cheating very, very seriously here.”
We know that EA intends to strike at Cronus users in Battlefield 6, but without a public statement from either EA / Battlefield Studios or Cronus itself, it’s hard to ascertain the scale of the impact on Cronus users. Cronus users have likely been put on notice though, as the war on cheaters rages on.
