New RTS game Broken Arrow struggles on Steam as players speak out on cheating

Before it was released on Thursday June 19, Broken Arrow was one of the most wishlisted strategy games on all of Steam, and with good reason. A rival to Warno, and spiritual successor to the classic World in Conflict, it serves as a more realistic, more challenging alternative to Command and Conquer, an RTS where - supposedly - tactics truly matter. But all has not gone well for Steel Balalaika's debut. Despite tens of thousands of daily players, Steam reviews for Broken Arrow have gradually grown more critical, citing problems with unit balancing, multiplayer settings, and, most significantly, online cheats. Now, the pseudo milsim's overall rating has dropped from 'mostly positive' to the far-less-auspicious 'mixed'.

So, what's going wrong? Our Broken Arrow review goes into detail about the campaign and also how the multiplayer can often feel imbalanced or inaccessible. This isn't one of the best RTS games available right now, but if Steel Balalaika keeps working on Broken Arrow (the studio says it plans to support the game for "years") then eventually it could become much better - there's a considerable amount of promise here. Right now, however, what was once one of Steam's most-wanted strategy games is being pulled through the ringer.

The majority of Broken Arrow Steam reviews cite the same, small handful of problems. First up, when playing against the Russian team in non-campaign PvE matches, the enemy seems supernaturally capable of building and fielding units en masse; while you're subject to a budget and arrival times, and have to wait for reinforcements to reach the battlefield, the Russian CPU player is apparently able to conjure troops out of thin air.

"If you're intending on playing this game for a good single-player RTS, it's not there yet," one player writes. "AI practically cheats and gets 400 times the amount of tickets as you, causing every engagement to turn into one infantry versus 200 tanks and planes."

Respondents on Steam also regularly note a problem in multiplayer, whereby people can leave a game without facing any significant consequences - if the tide of a battle is turning against them, or defeat seems imminent, some Broken Arrow players might abandon a match, knowing they won't face sanctions. "I love this game but please start banning people for leaving games, or think of something," one player writes. "Two or three leaving teammates makes it unplayable," another says.

There are also reports of cheating in Broken Arrow's multiplayer, and some players express frustration at an ostensible lack of countermeasures. "Every other game there is a cheater," one person writes. "Feels like the game has no anti-cheat at all."

"This game is really good," another player says. "There is a lot of love here in regards to the technical uses for each unit. Unfortunately…there is excessive cheating. I would play this every day, every hour. But for now I am putting this down permanently until I see a huge change in the anti-cheat system."

In a statement from Wednesday June 30, Steel Balalaika admits that "the anti-cheat system needs to be fine tuned and improved," and says that the system will be bolstered in Broken Arrow's upcoming 1.08 update. The developer also acknowledges the lack of mid-mission saves in the RTS game's campaign mode, where levels can last upwards of 60 minutes.

"We're going to address the issue of the lack of a penalty for players who leave during a multiplayer match," Steel Balalaika says. "We're going to introduce a timeout system that will penalize leavers with progressively longer timeouts. Furthermore, we're planning on introducing a surrender option.

"We're not going to stop our fight with cheaters and we will continue working on improvements for our anti-cheat. As for save games, we know it's a highly requested feature. However, implementing it is more complex than it may appear. Currently we're investigating our options to make your single-player experience more convenient."

As of Thursday July 10, production of 1.08 is complete and Steel Balalaika reports that the update is now in final testing.

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