Another Rocket League bot developer, who knows the developers of Nexto and declined to give a real name but uses the handle Zealan on Discord, says the game is a fascinating challenge from an AI perspective. To have a chance in play against humans, bots must anticipate the result of actions many seconds ahead. “Nexto is already superhuman in some situations,” says Zealan, who has an interest in machine learning. “Trust me, in a couple years, there will be RL Items  top level beyond-pro Rocket League bots.” 

Epic declined to comment but told PC Gamer that it is working on ways of detecting and blocking bots like Nexto. That could start a game of cat and mouse, with cheaters using more advanced bots and more complex methods to avoid detection, and the company responding in turn with new countermeasures. Psyonix later issued a statement saying that it had banned a number of accounts found to have been using the bot. The company said that it had introduced a new way for users to report suspected cheating, as well as new bot countermeasures, although it did not provide further details.

“I’m interested in how the situation will evolve,” says Ted Xiao, an AI researcher who has been following the episode with interest. “I’ve heard players are sharing the exploits that Nexto fails against, and I suspect the bot abusers don’t have the technical chops to Rocket League Items Shop  fine-tune the agents further, so maybe there will be an impasse for now.”