Networking expert believes The Division needs ‘complete rewrite’ to stop exploits on PC

The Division has had maintenance issues here and there, along it fair share of bugs and glitches, but according to an industry veteran there isn't an end in sight for the bugs.

Glenn Fiedler, an 18-year veteran of the game industry, has helped bring a number of games to life. He helped launch Titanfall, networked the God of War Engine, and more. Fiedler specializes in game networks, essentially, he helps optimize codes and make things run efficiently.

After hearing complaints on The Division jump from the web to mainstream media like Fox News, Feidler checked out what the ruckus was wondering if they could be fixed.

In short, Fiedler believes that Ubisoft is using a trusted client network model for The Division which will leave the game in its hackable and glitchable state unless the code is entirely re-written for PC (the outlook is more uplifting for consoles). Taking to a post on Gaffer on Games (via Ars Technica), Feidler explained what he believes to be the situation on The Division's issues:

"We have a client-side cheat program that is poking memory locations and giving players infinite health, infinite ammo, and teleporting players around the level.

This indicates that The Division is most likely using a trusted client network model.

I sincerely hope this is not the case, because if it is true, my opinion of can this be fixed is basically no. Not on PC. Not without a complete rewrite. Possibly on consoles provided they fix all lag switch timing exploits and disable players moving and shooting while lag switch usage is detected (trusted client on console exclusive games is actually more common than you would think…), but not on PC unless they completely rewrite most of their netcode and game code around a server-authoritative network model."

Feidler's entire stance on how fixable The Division is depends on whether or not Ubisoft is truly using a trusted client network model. If it's not the case, then the playing field looks entirely different.