How can I tell if a crash is caused by anti-cheat?

Look at the stack trace for frames in modules like EasyAntiCheat.exe, BEService.exe, EACLauncher.dll, BEDaisy.sys, BattlEye.exe, or vendor-specific DLLs. If the crash originates from one of these modules or passes through them into your code via injected hooks, it's very likely not a bug in your game.

Should I filter anti-cheat crashes entirely?

Don't delete them, but tag and separate them from your main crash dashboard. You still want to see the volume in case an anti-cheat update breaks compatibility with your game. Create a 'third-party' crash bucket that you review separately, and reach out to the anti-cheat vendor if volume spikes after a game or anti-cheat update.

Can DRM like Denuvo cause false positive crash reports?

Yes. DRM runs before your game starts and can crash during its own initialization, with stack traces that contain DRM frames rather than your code. Players see it as your game crashing on launch. Add detection for known DRM module names and bucket those crashes separately so they don't pollute your release health metrics.

How to Reduce False Positive Crash Reports From Anti-Cheat Software

Quick answer: Scan every incoming crash for known anti-cheat and DRM module names in the stack trace (EasyAntiCheat, BattlEye, Denuvo, etc.), tag matching crashes with a third-party label, and route them to a separate dashboard. Don’t delete them — a sudden spike in the third-party bucket is how you find out an anti-cheat update just broke your game.

You ship a multiplayer game with EasyAnticheat, and the next day your crash dashboard is on fire. A hundred crashes an hour, all with stack traces that point at your game. You start investigating, reach a dead end, look closer — and realize the top frame is in EasyAntiCheat.exe, which you haven’t touched since you shipped. That’s a false positive. They’re common, they’re noisy, and here’s how to stop them from wasting your team’s time.

Why Anti-Cheat Generates Crash Reports

Anti-cheat software works by injecting itself into your game’s process to monitor memory, scan loaded modules, and detect tampering. That injection is invasive by design — it has to hook low-level system calls, patch function prologues, and sit in places the OS doesn’t expect third-party code. When something goes wrong in that injection, the resulting crash looks like your game crashed, because from the OS’s perspective, your process was the one that died.

The common triggers are: an anti-cheat update that’s incompatible with a specific Windows version, conflicts with overlays (Discord, MSI Afterburner, GeForce Experience), incompatibility with virtualization features like Hyper-V or VBS, and outright bugs in the anti-cheat vendor’s own code. All of them show up as your game crashing in your crash reporting system.

Identifying Third-Party Frames

The fingerprint of a false-positive crash is a stack trace where the crashing frame is in a third-party module, not your executable or engine. Build a matcher that scans incoming stack traces for known module names. Here’s a starter list:

# Anti-cheat
EasyAntiCheat.exe, EACLauncher.dll, EasyAntiCheat_EOS.dll
BEService.exe, BEClient.dll, BEDaisy.sys, BattlEye.sys
vgk.sys, vgc.exe  # Vanguard
PunkBuster.exe, pb_*.dll
nProtect GameGuard, GameMon.des
XignCode3, xxd-*.xem

# DRM
denuvo64.dll, sti.exe
steam_api.dll, steam_api64.dll  # Steam itself is usually benign
SecuROM, securom_v*.dll

# Overlays
GameOverlayRenderer.dll, GameOverlayRenderer64.dll  # Steam overlay
discord_hook64.dll, DiscordHook64.dll
RTSSHooks64.dll  # MSI Afterburner / RTSS
nvspcap64.dll, nvSCPAPI64.dll  # NVIDIA ShadowPlay
gfxvk64.dll  # Intel graphics overlay
GameBarPresenceWriter.exe  # Windows Game Bar

# Injectors
Cheat Engine, speedhack-i386.dll
XTrap, xtrap.xem

Any crash where one of these module names appears in the top five frames of the stack trace should be tagged automatically. You can implement the matcher at ingestion time so the tagging happens before the crash is counted in your dashboard metrics.

Separate Dashboard, Same Visibility

Don’t delete third-party crashes. That’s the wrong call, because you still need to see them for one critical reason: if a new anti-cheat or driver update causes your game to crash, you need to know immediately. A spike in the third-party bucket is a warning sign that you need to contact the vendor or ship a workaround.

Create a separate view or dashboard filtered to the third-party tag. Make it a second tab in your crash dashboard, not a hidden archive. Set up an alert that fires when third-party crash volume exceeds 2x its 7-day baseline — that’s usually the signal that something just changed on the vendor’s end.

// Bugnet crash ingestion rule (pseudocode)
const thirdPartyPatterns = [
    /EasyAntiCheat/i, /EACLauncher/i,
    /BEService/i, /BEClient/i, /BEDaisy/i, /BattlEye/i,
    /vgk\.sys/i, /vgc\.exe/i,
    /denuvo/i,
    /discord_hook/i,
    /RTSSHooks/i,
    /nvspcap/i,
    /GameBarPresenceWriter/i
];

function classifyCrash(crash) {
    const topFrames = crash.stack.slice(0, 5);
    for (const frame of topFrames) {
        for (const pattern of thirdPartyPatterns) {
            if (pattern.test(frame.module)) {
                crash.tags.add('third-party');
                crash.tags.add(`tp:${frame.module.toLowerCase()}`);
                crash.bucket = 'third-party';
                return;
            }
        }
    }
}

Documenting Known Interactions

Maintain a public list of known third-party conflicts in your support docs. Players often find your game crashing and assume it’s a bug in your code. A clear troubleshooting page that says “Crash on launch? Check if you have [overlay X] installed and try disabling it” deflects a huge amount of support load.

Common crashers to document: running with MSI Afterburner’s on-screen display enabled in games that don’t like overlay hooks, Discord’s in-game overlay with DirectX 12 titles, GeForce Experience with older drivers, and Razer Synapse with peripheral RGB sync. Each of these has been documented as a crash cause for multiple indie games.

Working With Anti-Cheat Vendors

If you ship with a commercial anti-cheat like EasyAnticheat, BattlEye, or Denuvo, you have a relationship with the vendor that includes support channels. When you see a spike in third-party crashes tagged with their module name, open a ticket with the stack trace and player hardware details. They often have internal patches waiting for the next update and can verify whether your observation matches a known issue.

Be specific and data-driven in these tickets. “We see 200 crashes per day in your module, here are 5 representative stack traces, here is the player hardware distribution, here is when the spike started relative to your last client update.” Vendors respond quickly to studios who bring them actionable data.

Detecting Cheaters Without Drowning in Their Crashes

Players running cheat software generate their own crash signal when the cheat engine conflicts with your game. These aren’t false positives in the usual sense — the crash is real — but they’re not your fault either. Detect injected modules that don’t belong to any legitimate vendor and tag those crashes as cheat-related. These go into yet another bucket that you check less often but use for banwaves.

Related Issues

For general stack trace grouping strategies, see Stack Trace Grouping and Crash Deduplication. For reading stack traces more broadly, check How to Decode Obfuscated Stack Traces. And for general crash analytics, read Game Crash Analytics: What Metrics Matter.

A false positive is still data. It just belongs in a different bucket.