Sometimes a well-intended feature can become more of a liability in the wrong hands. A current trend in SoulCalibur VI’s online play is a perfect example of that.

SoulCalibur VI’s character creation feature offers creative players a significant amount of customization options that have been used to re-create pop culture figures or characters from other games. But those same features are being exploited by some to gain an unfair advantage in online play thanks to a combination of external cheat software and a lack of anti-cheat in the game protections that can block it. 

On first glance, the exploit itself is fairly entertaining, but the result is an unfortunately comedic example of a developer’s well-intentioned feature being used in an unexpected way to get a leg-up in a competitive game mode.

In short, players are placing objects like cubes or apples on their custom character, then enlarging those objects as much as possible until the object completely covers the character itself, with, according to players on Twitter, the assistance of external cheat software not blocked by the game. It makes for a hilarious battle from the outside, but the object itself actually serves to obscure the animations fighting game players rely on to quickly read and react to an opponent’s attacks during a match. Even worse, SoulCalibur VI players have spotted giant colorful cubes and massive battling apples in the more competitive ranked mode as well.