Blogs Thoughts on Cheating in Multiplayer Games

To put it simply - if someone is a victim of cheating then its a form of abuse and therefore a crime or sin against another. In singleplayer there is no victim - nor is there if *everyone* is goofing off so its all about thinking through the consequences of your actions.

 

I think a lot of weak gamers cannot accept the idea that some players are so much better than them so they accept that they must cheat. This in turn leads to them cheating which is probably why the person mentioned that "everyone did it".

 

I loathe MP cheaters - I'm a avid player on COD MW2 PS3, and these little parasites annoy me to no end- I can accept the computer spawns me 3 ft from an opponent sometimes,Or my connection is flaky- But what talent or skill does it show to use the gliches in games to cheat their ratio or avoid playing the game fairly -.

I've personally come across several ppl in free for all's killing each other to get the nuclear strike perk - I made it my mission in the whole game to kill them both till they left - (and they did) .Cheating or rather using glitches shows no skill,no sense of fair play.

On the old Xbox360 i used to report the player instantly for cheating- wither anything actually came abt it is doubtful. But I recognise better players, I accept ppl being better than me -.

Companies need to be more responsible for the effected games. It 's not that hard to release patches for any well known glitches. It just shows a lack of quality from the company.

 

Cheating seems to be most prevalent in FPS games, and since with these games you do not pay a monthly fee to play online, the developer does not develop bug fixes quickly enough to fix the problems. As soon as they do, another hack is developed.

PC versions have the most hacks, and attempts to stop cheating by software such as punkbuster just add to the problem, as it is a challenge for the hackers to circumvent them, resulting in players mistakenly believing the server is free of cheats.

While FPS mutliplayer games work best on PC, I now find myself playing ps3 versions online as these have marginally less cheaters on them, and when the cheaters are exposes they can have their accounts terminated...

 

there is no greater pleasure then sticking it out with a cheater and learning how to beat him cheat n all. and then rubbing his face in it. get them pissed off and watch him run ... they usually ban you if they can before you completely humiliate them though

tea bag them all
i agree it's easier to leave the game....cheaters = play alone

 

maybe they should handle it like vegas...find a cheater and ban him from all mp, every time they show up the penalty gets worse... say a digital finger print sent to all current and any new games
....they are causing folks to lose and or waste money

 

The thing that gets me REALLY excited these days is MS, Valve and Rockstar publicly humiliating and banning the cheats.

Can you imagine having not just a game banned, but your whole account, your physical console ... Awesome stuff.

 

Yeah fantastic, till that gets used against you...

In a perfect world there would be no cheats. But in this world of malware/trojans/viruses your account could be a few clicks and a keypresses away from being stolen. It's a problem that Steam Support have to wade through a lot.

How do you prove it wasn't you or your pc that had the cheats?

 

Cheating, no matter what game or format, ruins the game for the vast majority who do not cheat.

Until devs take it more seriously, really plan for it, enforce very harsh penalties for it, then it will continue.

Ban them and their whole account, their IP address and their credit card/payment method FOR GOOD, from any future games, and share that information with other game developers who will take teh same action to them, is the only way to deal with the majority of "casual" cheats.

You will never stop the "hardcore" cheats, but you can, and should, cut down on the majority of it with very harsh penalties indeed, and not cave into the whining, and make it as difficult as possible, and expensive for those who continue to do it.

I blame those who cheat for being so lame to do it in the first place; but a close second comes the developers and publishers for not taking far swifter and harsher action against them, and also for not getting together as an industry and agreeing joint and harsh action.

 

Valve mistakenly banned people, how robust would your idea be in the real world? How easy would it be to reverse the false bans?

 

Nobody wants cheats in their online gaming. I think the cheats are starting to understand that

That makes me happy Someone having their account stolen and banned makes me

As for a stolen account being wrongfully VAC/PB banned, that comes down to Valve implementing necessary checks to work out if the account is being accessed from the wrong IP, the wrong ISP, the wrong MAC address, the wrong country, no stored key on the PC ... there are loads of things Valve can do to prevent security breaches and I'm sure they've thought of them all and will provide as much as they can in the future.

 

There are easy holes, like players who use net cafe's to play. How do you know that player has finally got an internet connection so is no longer playing from the cafe. And similar applies to IP or PC MAC addresses. I use my steam account across multiple pc's. I'd hate to have Valve ban me because I changed address/pc/played at a lan at friends or a real lan.

 

What he means is that if you are connecting from the UK most of the time and then one time you connect from Bosnia, at which time you are clearly hacking (and are caught by VAC), you should not be banned (at the moment, you are). It obviously wasn't you in Bosnia (you were in the UK) so Valve could be lenient and not ban you, or force a revalidation (ie enter credit card details or game serial key)

 

Glix.

You need to open your mind wider. Why would Valve ban your account because you go on holiday and access your account from a different country? Why would Valve ban you because you access your account from a different PC?

Or rather, the question should be - you need to explain how Valve would know it is still you making those accesses. When you've answered that question then you have cancelled out your own fears.

The security threads on the Steam forums are well-debated and make interesting reading. Everything I've mentioned is there to be read-up on.

 

Number one rule in computing security: Never trust the client.
That's why I think that getting tough on cheats by absolute banning won't work. They won't be able to implement a perfect system to stamp out the lengths some cheaters are willing to go for their 2 weeks of fame.

 

Your assuming for the one case though. Go to pb bans. There are cheaters in the UK as well.
This case doesn't work when the cheater/thief originates from the same country as you.

 

But as you rightly agree, it DOES work for every other country outside of the UK. In fact I can probably narrow that down right now to a node in Milton Keynes. So, assuming there are auto-checks in place that use a form of simple (see bank checks) AI to build a users usage pattern, it would be fair to say that after 50 account accesses from (let's keep it simple) the UK - when 1 account access occurs in the US, that should trigger an account confirmation process. You agree. That's great! The MAC and IP locks can build simple usage patterns as well. None of the ideas are perfect, but it all helps improve our security.

Valve has been banning cheats since 2002. You are safe in their hands

I don't need to remind any old-timers how crap the original CS became with cheats. It was rife. It was a nightmare at times and unplayable. It also created an atmosphere of paranoia that was possibly even more damaging than the actual cheats. A paranoia that exists in current games.

Will streaming game services be the saviour?

 

Only time will tell. Streaming has it's own issues, which make it almost impossible to be played competitively using that service.

Good old screenshots and 3rd party obscure anti cheat clients seem to be the answer for now with a cup of common sense (hmm no flashes or nades when the team are at spawn, interesting ).

 

I only cheat in MMOs... but MMOs have no winners anyway.