Our efforts to keep Battlefield 3 a fair game continue. Here’s an update on how we are staffing up our anti-cheat department and decreasing turnaround times. Also: How you can help.

Fact: We receive literally hundreds of reports each day from our players on suspicious-behaving opponents. Our first call of action is usually to manually verify whether these reports are valid or not.

Fact: In the large majority of cases, cheat reports are not valid. By far the most common outcome of a report is that we can conclude that the player is simply awesome at playing Battlefield 3. We know it can sometimes feel like you’ve been the victim of a cheater – but the stark reality in most of these cases is you’ve simply met a great adversary.

Keeping the Battlefield fair is one of our top priorities. But making sure we don’t erroneously ban a non-cheating player is of course of utmost importance. That’s why we carefully investigate before banning anyone from playing the game.

More staff, quicker turnarounds
At the same time, we want to make sure we take swift action on proven cheaters. That’s why we have staffed up and decreased the turnaround time from report to action. Going forward, you will see quicker action taken on cheaters — specifically when it comes to stats wiping and/or banning them.

Finally, here’s a reminder how you can help us by reporting suspected cheaters. If you believe you have been the victim of outright cheating, the best way to report your concerns is to enter the profile page here on Battlelog of the person you suspect and click the triangle in the top right corner of his name.

This will open up a window where you can describe to us at DICE what happened. Please enter as much detail as possible, describing what specifically makes you believe this player has used unfair methods, and preferably include a link to the Battle Report for the match in question.

How to tell if someone’s been banned
One question that we get a lot is why person X is not banned when he is obviously proven to be a cheater. The problem is, there is no good way for normal Battlelog visitors to verify whether a player has actually been banned from play or not, since a cheater’s profile normally will stay visible but with reset stats.

This means that a player who has had his stats reset (but can still play) and a player who is banned from playing will look very similar on Battlelog. One way for you to get a better idea whether someone is banned or not is to look at the date of when he last played the game. But in most cases when you think someone should have been banned, he has. There’s just not any way for us to signal that on Battlelog at the moment.

We hope this small update has provided some insight into our anti-cheat work. Have a great gaming weekend, and thanks to our community for helping us in our ongoing anti-cheat efforts.

Get ready to battle it out in the earthquake-ravaged environments of Battlefield 3: Aftermath! 15 top players who capture and defend the most bases in Scavenger mode will win a limited edition, signed and numbered lithograph featuring artwork from Battlefield 3. Full details on how to join below. Happy hunting!

How to join the December competition
1. Become a Premium member
Make sure you are a Premium member. This competition is exclusive to our more than 2 million Premium members.

2. Download Aftermath
The competition will run in Scavenger game mode from Aftermath only, so make sure you have downloaded Aftermath (available at no extra charge if you are a Premium member).

3. Join our servers
Find one of the Premium exclusive competition servers. These will all be named “December Premium Competition” and have a number attached to it. You can search for this name using the manual server browser’s filter functionality.

4. Enter the server password
Enter the password for the Premium exclusive competition server. You will find the password when confirming below that you have read and agreed to the terms and conditions for this competition.

5. Capture and defend bases
During 72 hours, we will monitor who can accumulate the most base captures and defends (including assists, so help your team mates!) in Aftermath. Be one of the top 5 on your format to win a limited edition, signed and numbered lithograph featuring artwork from Battlefield 3.

Competition times
The competition runs the 72 hours of Friday, Saturday and Sunday December 14-16. Note that we use the UTC time zone to decide start and end times. Click this link to see when the start time corresponds to in your time zone. Technically, the competition will start already on Thursday evening December 13 if you are located on the west coast of America, for example.

Maps and modes played
The map rotation will be all maps in Aftermath playing in Scavenger mode.

Winners notification
Winners will be posted on Battlelog shortly after the competition ends, and then contacted via email with a winner’s code they can redeem at the DICE Store to claim their price and have it shipped to them.

Confirming that you have read and accepted the terms & conditions will reveal the password that you need to be able to enter the competition servers.

Get ready for our fourth dog tag challenge! Can you capture 100 million bases together with the rest of the community in seven days to unlock the new “Good Riddance” dog tag? Full details below in this community-wide challenge open to all players.

Can you reach 100 million base captures collectively in one week to unlock this new dog tag?

Your goal: To collectively reach 100 million base captures in Battlefield 3 during one week, starting December 14. If all platforms combined reach the set goal, we will unlock the new “Good Riddance” dog tag for everyone.

We will start counting your base captures on December 14 at 00:00 UTC (Click the link to see what time this corresponds to where you live — note that this is actually Thursday afternoon on the US west coast!)

One down -- 99,999,999 to go!

The challenge ends December 20 23:55 UTC. That’s one week to reach your goal in any of the maps and game modes featuring bases to capture (Conquest in all its variants including Conquest Assault and Conquest Domination, plus the new Scavenger mode in Aftermath.)

We’ll let you know on December 21 if the challenge was successfully completed, and unlock the dog tag the same day if you reached the 100 million goal. Good luck and happy hunting!

Last month, we asked our Premium members who could capture the most bases in Armored Kill. Here’s the answer.

Congratulations to our objective-minded winners – expect an email from DICE in the following days where we will let you know how you can redeem your prize from the DICE Store.

Thanks to our great community for taking part in our competitions, and stay tuned for the December Premium competition details!

November Premium competition winners
Xbox 360 winners
1 HiTecRdNek
2 kalidades
3 R A S K E L L x
4 Dark3nSoul
5 xxxSXEPUNKxxx

PC winners
1 Cecillyyy
2 Richard1647
3 Maj0ra
4 Mathin-POWdER
5 Acrak

PlayStation 3 winners
1 ElitestGamer
2 NotJustAnyRobert
3 toshi999a
4 ism60_miks
5 oG_GABRIEL

Rise from the ashes with Battlefield 3: Aftermath, available today on PS3 in Europe and North America! Check out the launch trailer below. This expansion pack will go live within Sony’s regular PlayStation Store update window, typically between 4-8PM GMT in Europe and 4-8PM PST in North America. (Sony Japan/Asia will follow tomorrow 10AM-2PM JST)

If you’re on PC or Xbox 360, you can enter the earthquake ravaged environments of Aftermath on December 18 (with our Premium members already being busy playing Aftermath since at least one week back, given their early exclusive access).