Hunt: Showdown

Hunt: Showdown is CrytekPublisherCrytekCrytek is the German developer of Hunt: Showdown and the maker of the CryEngine. Hunt uses Easy Anti-Cheat, backed by Crytek's Fair Play Task Force and a behavioral input-analysis layer.1 game in this family →'s tense PvPvE bounty-hunting shooter, built on the studio's own CryEngine. It entered Steam Early Access in 2018 and released in 2019, and in August 2024 it relaunched as Hunt: Showdown 1896 on CryEngineEngineCryEngine (Crytek)CryEngine is Crytek's proprietary engine, originally built for Far Cry and Crysis and known for its rendering. It powers Hunt: Showdown, which moved to CryEngine 5.11 with its 2024 relaunch.1 game in this family → 5.11, moving consoles to current-gen only (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series). Players extract with bounty tokens under threat from both AI and rival hunters, and a single death can erase a session's progress, which places it in the extraction-shooter family alongside Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty DMZ.

Hunt: Showdown requires Easy Anti-Cheat, including a kernel driver on Windows, for online play; the EACAnti-cheatEasy Anti-Cheat (EAC)Easy Anti-Cheat is one of the most widely deployed kernel anti-cheats in PC gaming. Founded by Finnish company Kamu in 2006, acquired by Epic Games in 2018, and bundled with Epic Online Services. The kernel driver loads while a protected game is running. User-mode daemons EasyAntiCheat.exe and EasyAntiCheat_EOS.exe are catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.18 games in this family → process is EasyAntiCheat_EOS.exe and the game is HuntGame.exe. Linux and Steam Deck players are supported through EAC's user-space Proton path. If a launch fails with an EAC error, repair the EAC install from the game folder rather than disabling it.

Hunt: Showdown uses Easy Anti-Cheat, in the Epic Online Services variant (EasyAntiCheat_EOS). On Windows, EAC runs a kernel-mode driver plus a user-mode service that load when the game launches; the game will not start without it, which is what the recurring 'Easy Anti-Cheat not installed' errors are. The game process is HuntGame.exe. Because EAC's Proton path runs in user space, Hunt also works on Linux and the Steam Deck, which Crytek enabled in 2023.

Because one death can wipe a whole run, cheating bites especially hard in Hunt, and complaints concentrate at high skill brackets. Crytek runs a Fair Play Task Force that reviews community reports alongside EAC's automated bans, with an appeals path for false positives, and publishes recurring transparency posts with ban figures (the specific totals are Crytek-stated rather than independently audited). In 2024 it added Anybrain, a behavioral system that analyzes input patterns, partly to catch mouse-and-keyboard spoofing on consoles. EAC remained the anti-cheat through the 2024 engine upgrade.