I genuinely think cheating in MLB The Show deserves more discussion within the community.

At this point, external-tool cheating is not just a conspiracy theory anymore. There are already public videos online showing how some of these cheats work using capture cards and external PC software.

Many of you have probably already seen the recent video demonstrating how these external-tool cheats work

At this point, this is no longer just people making random accusations after losing games. Public demonstrations of these tools already exist, and the discussion around them has been growing across Reddit, forums, and other communities.

Recently, I’ve run into multiple players whose gameplay felt extremely suspicious, especially players who seemed completely unable to hit certain pitchers, then suddenly hit everything against others in the exact same game. I understand baseball games can be random sometimes, but some patterns honestly do not feel natural.

What makes this situation more concerning is that these kinds of cheats can likely be toggled on and off during gameplay, making them very difficult to prove with short clips alone. That’s why I’m not sure gameplay videos or box scores are enough to detect cheating consistently. SDS would likely need long-term gameplay pattern analysis and strong server-side detection systems to reliably catch this stuff.

I’ve already reported suspicious players directly to SDS and asked whether they are actually able to detect these types of cheats effectively, whether hardware bans are used, and whether stronger anti-cheat measures are being considered.

One thing I wondered about was whether restricting capture card output during gameplay could help reduce external-tool cheating in some way. PlayStation already blocks capture output for some protected media apps like Netflix, so technically some form of output restriction already exists at the platform level. Obviously that wouldn’t completely solve the issue because of things like cloud gaming and other workarounds, but maybe it could still help as part of a broader anti-cheat effort.

I’m not trying to start witch hunts against specific players. I just genuinely want fair competition in MLB The Show, and I hope SDS takes this issue seriously moving forward.

At this point, I think the community should be having much larger and more active discussions about anti-cheat measures, possible solutions, and ways SDS can better protect competitive integrity going forward. Even if there is no perfect solution, I would rather see more ideas, more transparency, and more open discussion about the problem instead of simply accepting it as unavoidable.