This is our first Seasonal Integrity Report detailing the enforcement actions taken to detect and block cheating, smurfing, and account abuse during Season 7 (November 19, 2025, to April 21, 2026), alongside the Integrity updates that went live on April 22 for Season 8.
Season 7 smurfing bans increased by 42% and cheating bans by 14% compared to Season 6, driven by new detection techniques. The data below also includes our first enforcement results from automated selfie re-checks and the expansion of our Advanced Windows Security Settings requirement rollout, which helps block the communication channels used by DMA hardware. For Season 8, we are expanding selfie re-checks and requiring an active Anti-Cheat connection for all identity verifications to disrupt account selling.
Last week, we banned 23,680 smurf accounts to return Elo before Season 8’s placement matches began. We are issuing additional selfie re-check waves in the coming weeks to accounts flagged since the previous cycle. The FACEIT Anti-Cheat client must now be active to complete identity verification. This directly links ID verification to a specific device, combating account sharing and reselling.
Since November 2025, we’ve issued 76,750 automated selfie re-checks to accounts flagged for suspicious activity, based on behavioural signals linked to account sharing, sales, and trading.
When an account is flagged, the user must verify their identity again through a selfie re-check, which matches their original verification data via Daon to confirm it’s the same person, as we don’t store the biometric data. Accounts that do not complete the re-check within the required window are suspended. Accounts that attempt to verify with a different identity from the one originally submitted are permanently blocked.
61.76% of flagged accounts passed their selfie re-check, and the remaining 38.24% (29,346 accounts) were suspended and removed from matchmaking. The majority of failures were linked to accounts where the person playing was not the person who originally verified.
We will shortly issue a new selfie re-check wave to accounts flagged through updated detection signals and community reports. Based on previous waves, we expect approximately 40% to fail and be blocked. If you are a legitimate player, are part of this wave, and encounter any issues, please refer to our Selfie Re-check FAQ or the Selfie Re-check Guide.
Previously, identity verification was not tied to a specific device. This gap was exploited by people outside the platform, creating, verifying and then selling their accounts. Face re-checks helped mitigate this issue, but did not fully close the vulnerability.
Starting this week, players must log into the FACEIT Anti-Cheat client to complete verification. This directly links verification to the system used for play. It gives us a consistent link between verification and gameplay, improving our ability to detect and act on shared or resold accounts.
Since the start of Season 7 on November 17 2025, all high-ranked players have been subject to a new integrity review process. This consists of escalating steps, including identity verification, selfie re-checks, fraud checks on submitted ID details, checking for smurf accounts, and additional online or in-person verification sessions. Players who fail any step are removed from FACEIT.
The following players were caught and banned during Season 7:
For those unfamiliar, IOMMU is a hardware-level protection, and VBS is a Windows security feature. They help protect your PC’s operating system from hardware-level (DMA) attacks, much like antivirus software protects against software threats. On FACEIT, we use these settings to create an isolated environment that makes advanced cheating harder to execute.
Our enforcement journey with IOMMU began with a limited rollout in April 2025. By August, we made it mandatory for all players above 3,000+ Elo. Following our last Integrity communication in October 2025, we rolled out this requirement to 60% of our community. Since then, we have gradually expanded, and today the coverage has reached 88%.
Each expansion wave increases the number of matches played with all players under these stricter protections, while also helping support waves of players in enabling these settings based on their wide variety of PC configurations.
A key part of our rollout of protections has been the community’s willingness to engage with and support these measures, and we sincerely thank you for your support. Reaching these enforcement milestones wasn’t one easy technical switch. Many of you had to navigate BIOS menus, troubleshoot edge-case hardware behavior, and update drivers or firmware to become compatible. Your patience and commitment to fair play have directly enabled us to raise the baseline protection of FACEIT matches.
Our objective remains to increase the rollout of IOMMU/VBS to all FACEIT players, but we are gradually pacing this as there is a small set of Windows configurations where IOMMU and VBS cannot be enabled without causing crashes or other issues due to factors like:
A step-by-step rollout gives affected players time to resolve edge cases and gives us time to validate compatibility and support players before moving to full enforcement. We do not take the prospect of preventing a player from competing lightly, and we are working to ensure as many players as possible can make the transition smoothly.
Note: If your setup is currently impacted, please review our FAQ for guidance, or reach out to Support to identify common misconfiguration causes. If you are not familiar or comfortable navigating your computer's BIOS, contact a qualified professional for help. Incorrect BIOS changes can cause startup or hardware issues.
The results from Season 7 reflect progress across key areas of platform integrity, including improved detection, enforcement, and early signals from new systems. However, we recognise that challenges remain, and there is still work to be done, and we are actively addressing the feedback raised by the community.
With further updates coming in Season 8, we remain focused on improving fairness, consistency, and trust across every match played on FACEIT, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you.
