H1Z1 Technical Director Joshua Kriegshauser creates a funny livestream clip by competing in a live battle royale match with his developer ‘cheats’ active.
While a lot of the debate around developers lately has focused on missteps with loot boxes and microtransactions, occasionally the people that create our favorite games make honest mistakes. Take Joshua Kriegshauser, for example, Technical Director of popular battle royale title H1Z1.
Most wouldn’t know Kriegshauser’s name or face, but the H1Z1 dev has amassed a decent following on Twitch, where he regularly streams matches. But Kriegshauser has found new fame thanks to a clip of him accidentally using cheats in a live match.
Before any sort of witch hunt develops, it’s important to point out that Kriegshauser made an honest mistake and his regular matches are devoid of cheating. He’s simply a developer that enjoys playing his studio’s game with its fans, and one time he accidentally left his invisibility dev tool active and got a kill with it.
At first, Kriegshauser is making a typical H1Z1 attack, jumping out of a cop car and shooting any and all combatants in his way. But after securing his first kill and hearing some players call out “Cheater,” Kriegshauser soon realizes that he still has his invisibility tool active. He then quickly opens up the command console, removes the invisibility, and makes sure that everyone can see him.
Again, this is nothing more than an honest mistake and a funny series of events for the H1Z1 Technical Director. But it does highlight how a developer could abuse their tools to get easy wins in a game like H1Z1, as unlikely as that might be.
At the same time, it might be interesting to see a developer use an invisibility tool like this to run amok on a server filled with cheaters. Games like H1Z1 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds have struggled with cheating and hacking practically since launch and most players skirt around bans using third party software.
PUBG has tried to curb cheating by matching other hackers with each other, but this might be an even better way to punish them. What better way to put cheaters in their place than to show them how cheating really works in the game.
H1Z1 is available now for PC.
