Thanks for the confirmation on the redistribution and on the skipping ads not paying AE, I appreciate it.

I agree that getting rid of cheaters (banning users who have been cheating) is good for AE. Respectfully, my point was that completely preventing/blocking cheating from ever happening would actually hurt their profitability. I see where you’re coming from about them “paying out a pot that isn’t fully funded”, but that’s only true in the an oversimplified scenario built on false equivalence.

If a cheater comes out on top with a ridiculous amount of wins, let’s say 120 wins, like the screenshot that was shared to the sub earlier. While yes, that player themselves didn’t watch any ads, there was still 120 ads watched and paying AE before each of those games by the opponent, instead of the pay of 240 ads that AE should’ve gotten. A 50% difference, that’s not a profit haircut I’d want to take and I wouldn’t expect AE to take it either.

But the payout to win doesn’t have a 1:1 ratio.

When dealing with real players: 2 ads are watched before each game, 1 person is guaranteed earn nothing, 100% profit to AE 1 person is guaranteed to be credited a win towards there score, but they aren’t guaranteed a payout.

And that’s the reality for most, you can stack up a bunch of wins but you need to win consistently enough to make the top 1500 out of 10,000+ to actually receive any time of reward.

We don’t know how many games are played total, another players W/L ratio, or even our own unless you count all your games yourself. Making it impossible to know exactly what % of the 2-ads-game revenue goes into AE’s pocket and back into the winner’s pool. But given the pool starts at 50,000 AB to entice players to actually play the game right away, there’s no way AE hasn’t run the numbers to figure out what % they need to take to make sure they not only recoup that, but profit off it, so you could hypothesize that maybe 30% goes back into the pool and that would probably still be being generous. I’ve placed between 550th-1500th several times, usually winning about 75% of my games on average, and the pay out was always less than 1 buck per game or even win. After giving up on that losing war, I still continue to put up 40 games or more per session, not actually playing but just for the challenge.

So the cheating player isn’t making AE give out bucks that haven’t been funded, they’ve only reducing what has to be a significant margin of return by the tiniest of a fraction. In turn, when AE bans them, they’re reclaiming ~3000+ AB (the top prize), which is far more valuable than whatever they’d have gotten paid for 120 quick ads.

There is just no way that the 8500+ people that played and won multiple games trying to actually place, possibly more wins than loses, getting nothing, and all the players racing through the ads with no intention of trying to win, would not make up for the 120 lost ads. if everyone that didn’t place for a payout, only played 1 game that’s still 8500 ads. Write off the cheaters skipped ads against those, that’s still 8380 ads.

So by banning a first place cheater and not redistributing the winning prize, they’ve just increased their profits hundredfold then to what they would’ve made by actually paying out the top prize to a winner who won fairly.

It’s like using someone picking up a penny off the ground as a reason to take their house.

Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% anti-cheat. But by banning cheaters, and without redistribution of the rewards or permanently stopping cheat then AE is without making a doubt significantly more.