On May 15, Nexon published the report for the largest ban wave in The First Descendant of Q2 2026 — covering the week of May 8–14. Per the studio, thousands of accounts were hit: for cheats, bug abuse, macro software, and third-party programs.
What’s inside the report
Nexon sticks to the format it established back in 2024: an open list of IDs, dates, and violation wording. This time the report covers:
- Aim-hack / wallhack — about 60% of all bans
- Auto-farm / macro — ~25%, with the lion’s share being Void Intercept boss farming
- Duplicate exploits — item dupe bugs, 8%
- Boost services — selling power-leveling and lent accounts, 5%
- Other (RMT, trade fraud) — 2%
All bans are permanent, with no appeal. Nexon explicitly states that compensation for other players in the form of Caliber and Void fragments will be distributed once the audit completes.
How their anti-cheat works
For The First Descendant, Nexon uses a combination of three systems:
- Steam VAC — the baseline, catches the dumbest signatures
- Nexon Game Security (NGS) — their in-house user-mode module, reads API calls and hooking
- Server-side detection — behavioral pattern analysis: K/D anomalies, movement speed, shooting accuracy
The most dangerous piece here is the server-side layer. NGS can be bypassed with spoofers and obfuscation, but Nexon’s behavioral algorithms catch things like sustained 100% accuracy from long range, or anomalously fast Void Intercept clears on empty buffs. If your account has a 95%+ headshot rate across several consecutive matches — that’s already a flag.
What gets caught most often
According to unofficial community sources:
- Free / shareware cheats — almost 100% detection, caught in the first wave
- Public-source paid software older than 30 days — ~80% detection, risky
- Private builds with active support and regular updates — low detection, but never zero
- Macros for auto-farming — the headline category of May’s wave; Nexon is aggressively cracking down on bot farms
What this means for software users
Nexon’s ban waves are the most predictable in the industry. They run every 7–10 days, always Thursday or Friday UTC. That means you can plan your work calendar:
- Don’t use software in the window Thursday 00:00 – Friday 23:59 UTC. That’s the basic rule for anyone who wants to make it to the next season.
- Run an HWID spoofer before every wave. Ideally — 6 hours before the expected window.
- Don’t farm Void Intercept with a bot in long sessions. Nexon has learned to catch the “8 raids back to back without a 4–5 hour break” pattern.
- Don’t sell power-leveling publicly. Boost services are the top sanction category after aim-hack.
- Follow our The First Descendant catalogue — we publish current detection status for every cheat build within 24 hours of each wave.
What’s next
The next ban wave is expected on May 22–23. If you plan to play with software during that window — pause all activity 12 hours before, and don’t return to matches for at least 48 hours after. Nexon, like 24 Entertainment with NARAKA, plays the long game — and every ban = months of lost progress.
The full Nexon report is on the official The First Descendant Steam page.
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