Cheating Online Gamers 488
An anonymous submitter writes: "The NYT has an article - Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? - Just Ask Them. Hmmm.. Wireframe walls in Quake?"
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Cheating Online Gamers
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Pro$per (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Catching (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure what you mean. I dont play MMORPGS or RTS.. Im a first person shooter kinda guy.. but when I get on Quake3 server, adn I see one score of 300 and the rest are around 30, its a clue.. and when you see the skin standing in the wide open firing faster than any human could shoot and spin, with rails apparently coming out its ass, you get a clue that this is what is going on.
usually, I suspect those bots are actually _on_ the server. But Punkbuster helps..
Playing UT23K I havent seen much trouble.. the game seems much more even and better than Quake(s) ever were.
But Im sure there are people scripting things for Evercrack, and letting them run overnight. And buying and selling items on Ebay.. or running six player accounts, and then transferring things to each other.. but I guess thats part of the game. There is always some moron who just isnt happy that he isnt as good as the next guy, and feels the need to "even" the playing field for himself.
Maeryk
Of course they do... (Score:4, Interesting)
In terms of being "better" at the game than others, but part of the question should be is it cheating, or just another game.
Someone who buys or downloads a cheat that someone else made is a different deal, and clearly some of those people are pretty sad individuals who just want to say "ha ha fragged you", before never ever having sex with anyone.
However the person who creates the cheat, who engages in what can be described as espionage against the game developer is playing a different game of skill, that person is learning things, developing things and playing their own game with their own rules and "winning" by being able to cheat. The challenge here isn't to be better at Quake, but to be able to cheat the best at Quake, that in itself is a game.
How about an open game in which these developers play their cheats off against each other using the best players without cheats as the players in the game. That way you can find out who developed the best cheat.
Consoles (Score:5, Interesting)
Whod they reference... (Score:2, Interesting)
This article seems rather dated when discussing the FPS cheat-em-ups. Punkbuster has been dead in the water since early 2001. VAC is just now gradually working at bridging the gap between legitimate players and cheat-free bliss. Still buggier than a Brit tho.
Then again, it is poignant to observe the Q2-era cheats. When the mood strikes, and an old Q2 vet hits up the few Lith servers left on the Net, he is greeted typically with one or more players OBVIOUSLY craxing and haxing. Still going strong. The CS community is one which works hardest, imho, at a social more and communal interest in enforcing a 'policy' of sorts that cheating just sucks and work has to be done.
Some Common-Sense Solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Note, I'm not a really hard-core gamer or expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but...
Cheating in online games is always going to be a problem. You won't solve it, but can at least reduce it to the point where a server admin can deal with individual accusations.
-Only send each client information it really needs.
-Use checksums on binaries and libraries and things.
-Try to get more 'mature' gaming crowds together. I have noticed vast difference playing Battlefield 1942 at various times during the day, such as when it's mostly high school kids, or people with jobs who start playing after dinner, whatever.
-Make it clear that cheating sucks and won't be tolerated--this can help catch the remaining people with aimbot screen overlays and things that automated means won't take care of.
Netrek [netrek.org] used some anti-cheating mechanism, by embedding an RSA key in every "authorized" client, to which only a few developers known to the "RSA guy" and the Netrek community as a whole had access. Imperfect system, but it reduced use of bots to the point where it didn't really matter.
Also, one thing that a lot of people forget is that a lot of 'active' cheats (mainly bots in action games) fall into one of two categories:
a) Fully-automated -- these are predictable.
b) Partially automated -- things like aimbots. Their "owners" probably suck otherwise. If they see you, they'll get off a clean shot, but you don't have to confront them directly to smash them.
I am usually sufficiently gratified when I crush someone I suspect strongly of cheating by knowing it's probably some whiny 13 year old staring at his screen in impotent frustration to not really care about the other 9 out of 10 times he's beat me, not by skill but through some technology he most likely didn't create.
They dont... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, you could get an hours worth of kicks out of hit at maximum, but there's a good chance you'd just get bored and leave.
However, there's a big twist here, that new gaming site, YouPlayGames may bring cheating to a whole new level. I've seen how crazy people get in Tournements, how they whine and bitch and some of them try to bend the rules, but at least in Tournements things are monitored. In this service, all you have is a bet, and there probably isn't any monitoring done (and even if you recorded the game, I'm sure your opponent could hide his cheating if he knew how to do it right and make it look natural). Since there is money involved, the cheaters will have a new reason to play, and that is for money. This will be a greater drive for people to implement more complex hacks, that make say, an AimBot look like the same sort of aim present in CAL-i CS players.
Re:I agree with the author.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sometimes it's OK, sometimes not (Score:2, Interesting)
I also think it's OK if it's an inside, official cheat. I don't think this exists in online games, but if it exists, then it should be used. It's like it were in the rules.
But pure cheating is not OK. Yes, some people can be very successful at cheating, but they CAN be caught any time. Their fun is cheating, not playing by the rules. I believe it's OK to cheat in a game, but not at the expenses of the other players. If it detracts from other players' fun, it should be banned. If you want to play fair, it's really annoying when some other person is cheating and usually in a better position in the game than you.
As a side story: we have a card game in Brazil called "Truco" (I think it also exists in other countries) where it is allowed and even encouraged to cheat. But if you get caught you lose instantly or must pay some compensation. Usual cheats include signaling to the other player, hoarding cards or looking at cards before drawing them. You must keep your eyes peeled all the time. As you see, cheating is not really allowed, but you play the game with such a mindset that you expect a cheat anytime, and that's part of the game. It's fair in this context.
Re:read it here (Score:2, Interesting)
It's time slashdotters lived up to their own words and started frowning upon article-reposts like this. Otherwise, dont complain when the GPL is likewise ignored.
I hate cheaters (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What college is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some Common-Sense Solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why I generally only play online with friends. I don't need that kind of BS.
Re:Some Common-Sense Solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the soliution that works best. If you play with people you trust, you not only escape all the misery and suspicion of dealing with cheaters (potential or actual), you get the pleasure of popping your buddy in the head with the railgun, and not some random dork in his mom's basement.
-aiabx
Two kinds of cheating (Score:3, Interesting)
On-line game cheating in role-playing, especially subscription games is FAR more serious, because in some games, the currency or objects of power or weapons are worth real cash and can even be sold on e-bay (see the post with the e-bay link above) and it suddenly matters very much that some people are cheating.
Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance (Score:5, Interesting)
The other day my favorite servers where full, so I went elsewhere. It was a clan operated server clan name was [CM] I believe. Sadly, people that are in a clan automatically think they are good, these people were not. Their movement was very predictable or nonexistent. Along with another player we were seriously killing these people and they outnumbered us 4:3. It wasn't long before we both were kicked. I immediately reconnected, just to see what the deal was (and make fun of them). They were convinced I was cheating, people act like it is hard to get head shots or something. The damn cheaters out there ruin the game for the good players.
Sorry for my rambling, I just get frustrated. When I come home from work, sometimes I just want to smoke some wacky tobaccy and shoot people in the head.
Re:Some Common-Sense Solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
And people that get caught are so fucking stupid. It's so easy to cheat and not get caught that I have to laugh at them. Usually if and when I cheat, I just wall hack, no auto-aim, and DEFINATELY no auto-fire. But I still see the same shit all the time: I'll be dead, ghosting the level, and some kid on one end of the level is firing sporatically and you can see that his gun keeps re-targeting someone that's seperated from him by half a dozen walls. Some of the more powerful rifles will even go through walls, and you'll see a guy just drop to his knees in a hallway with no one else in it. How bad do you suck that you need the game to fire for you?
I have no problem with cheating...IFF!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a partial solution to the problem would be for online game sites to have separate games where cheating is explicitly allowed. Lame-ass cheaters who don't have the guts to match their hacking skills against others will still cheat in the no-cheating games, but at least the cheaters who have confidence in their skills will participate in these games, because winning there will earn them legitimate respect from the community they have the most respect for.
If those who participate in the hacker games make some effort to create a culture that looks down on people who hack in the non-hacking games, that could help too.
People who cheat in games where cheating is not allowed by the rules are lame-ass selfish bastards with no character and a pathetic substitute for self-confidence. If they really feel like they've accomplished something by winning in a way that spoils the game for unsuspecting people who play by the rules, then I feel sorry for them.
Cheating is a social problem-- (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as code executes on fundamentally untrusted platforms and as long as code is imperfect, there is no way to prevent cheating or exploiting in a multiplayer game. That's just the way it is; more technology isn't going to change it a whit, especially for
If we approach the problem socially, however, solutions present themselves.
Many games provide unique identifiers for each installation, like Half-Life/CounterStrike. This is usually an anti-piracy measure-- but we could use it to control cheating. Banning by unique ID is part of the solution, but not everything. Consider a solution modeled on USENET killfiles--
I join a game, and the client downloads the UIDs of the other connected players. The client compares this list against my personal list of people I don't like to play against (cheaters-- or maybe just obnoxious twits) and notifies me if any are in the game. I can then make an informed decision about whether to play there or look elsewhere.
Clients could also collaborate; if a player joins who's on my 'shit list,' I could allow the client to notify the other players. Perhaps even an automated voting scheme could be enabled-- a player UID thats on enough people's shit lists could be automatically banned (assuming the server allows it).
Yes, there would be a market for new UIDs, much as there is a market for CD keys. However, if the client makes it easy enough to maintain the shit list, that in and of itself is only a temporary problem. As a side-effect, if an ID gets widespread my client plonks the whole lot of cheaters with one entry.
The emergent behaviour of such a system would force all the cheaters to play each other on cheater-friendly servers. At that point, who cares? 8) I see this as a win-win scenario; cheaters get to cheat, and the rest of us don't get bothered.
Some games are partway there. Tribes2 and some CS admin mods have voting mechanisms that kick/ban players; but this doesn't carry over between servers, whereas the above scheme would.
A third-party tool would help, but to be really effective it needs to be integrated into the game client so that all players are using it.
Stealing what ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Consoles (Score:1, Interesting)
I think a lot of this may be due to the relative demographic differences in the two markets. Quake was really the very first viable large-scale TCP/IP game, from what I remember, and there were certainly a good deal of people who used "bots" to enhance targeting efficiency and whatnot. If you were playing on a well-maintained server, it wasn't a problem. I myself ran a popular Q1 and Q2 server at a large midwestern university, and would sometimes see "questionable" behavior or actions. If so, I would tag the individual's IP address (or entire subnet) for future reference. If I received further complaints from credible sources, I would simply make a quick edit to my firewall; problem solved.
Obviously, with centralized servers under the control of the distributor or developer, this isn't possible. That said, I never really had many problems with cheating in the Myth games, either.
The WORST, by far, has been the behavior of what I can only assume are maladjusted teenagers on Sega's network. It's got to the point where I simply don't play any longer, after having compiled a record of something like 300-100 in NFL football. Half of those losses, maybe more, came when my opponent would pause the game for hours on end and I would give in and quit. Alternatively, early on in the shelf life of the game, some choad figured out that if player X ejected the tray for ten seconds and then reinserted it, the game would "diverge" and X would not be credited with a loss, even if I was beating his ass 63-3 with the Lions to his Raiders. People figured out other cheap things to do, like illegal substitutions (putting a fast cornerback in for a LB or down lineman on punt coverage so they could fly in and block the punt, sub a punter for a kicker on kickoffs to get cheap onsides recoveries, the list goes on forever), altering the camera during FG attempts, pausing during live play for a second or two repeatedly to disrupt your rhythm, and simply LEAVING the game while on offense and down a lot of points (sure, they'd get a bunch of delay of game calls, but the clock would never run and you as an opponent can't do anything about it). There were perhaps a dozen players who employed a legitimate style, and after a while you figured out what each of their respective games were more or less about. It was no longer any fun. Sega wouldn't intervene to curb the cheating. It became frustrating and annoying, and caused me to wonder why I was banging my head against the wall. So I quit. It's hard to see me coming back again, except to play friends or family.
Many people are lazy. Many lazy people are vain. Many lazy, vain people are loathe to admit they suck and can't stop James Stewart from having a Canton-type day against their top rated defense. Accordingly, they will take the easy way out and cheat. Human nature, sad but true.
Cheating takes the fun out of it. (Score:3, Interesting)
said he did so without apology (although he did not want to be identified by name)
This means you know what you're doing is wrong, and you have a great deal of shame for doing so. Otherwise, why would you care? Oh, maybe your account would get canceled, but that's a small price to pay for being right, isn't it?
While breaking the rules or using secret "cheat codes" has always been an accepted, even treasured part of single-player games,
Yes, sometimes you find insurmountable obstacles that cheating seems to be the only way around. But it's not true, you're just not trying hard enough. But by cheating, you rob yourself of the thrill of actually BEATING the damn thing. But once you start adding extra programs to "assist" you in playing the game, or exploit hidden bugs to give your character an unfair advantage, you've just admitted to yourself that you aren't good enough to play by the rules.
and when it becomes boring it is time to turn to the greater game of beating the system, they argue.
No, when it gets boring, that means its TIME TO STOP PLAYING! That's your brain telling you that it's time to get a life.
They fear that people would stop playing if those who cheated held all the power.
And ultimately this is true. However, all game companies aren't perfectly innocent in this regard. Cheaters may comprise a small percentage of the total player base, but it has appeared at times that reforming the cheaters seems to be of a higher priority than showing them where they can get off, and giving them a shove in that direction. Ultima Online went through this several times during the first few months. Kept giving amnesty to cheaters if they just gave back the stuff they obtained by cheating, or even warning them a few days before they would start checking. I say, day one, mention that all cheaters will be banned permanantly and immediately, no exceptions, no warnings, NOTHING. And in their defense, a lot of them say this, but there wouldn't be that many cheaters if they were serious about it.
In theory, this should give players many options and strategies to explore, but it could also lead to players' gaining monopolies.
And in the real world, monopolies are regulated.
Games also typically have a grey area, mentioned in the article. These are tricks you can do in the game that are within the rules and maybe even the spirit of the game, but have a result that was not planned for. FPS Speedrunners have long exploited these tricks without crossing the line into cheating. In Doom for instance, you had strafe running, wall grabs, wall running, rocketjumps, archie jumps, flipping switches that are "out of reach", clearing ledges that should have been too far, but aren't, etc. Of course, all of these tricks are generally more difficult than playing exactly as it was intended. Players have spent hours trying to perfect a trick that will save them a few seconds, just so they can shave a second or two off the record.
If a grey area is considered unfair, then it should be stated as such and fixed. In a perfect world, most such exploits and grey areas will be identified and removed during an extensive beta period, but beta periods have been traditionally too short, and game developers are caught with problems that they have to fix without upsetting a world that can't be reset. In games that end after 30-60 minutes, this isn't a problem, but for the games that go on forever, your options are limited.
-Restil
What I do to users that cheat at my online games.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I run several massively multiplayer, free, web based online games (WWII - War of Supremacy - war.coldfirestudios.com [coldfirestudios.com] and Space - Glory Through Conquest - space.coldfirestudios.com [coldfirestudios.com] to name a couple)
Now I know that everyone that administers an online game handles cheaters differently, but here is what we like to do
Now, don't get me wrong
We only do the above nasty things to people when they ruin the experience for the other players
It may not be the perfect answer, but most of the people playing my games seem to enjoy it
Begin Ranting and Raving
My thought on cheating, especially with games, is simple: Why would you spend hours and hours playing a game that doesn't provide a challenge? If you cheat, it takes away the feeling of accomplishment that you have when you're done playing
So again, what is the point of cheating?
We didn't find it to be too problematic... (Score:1, Interesting)
For me, playing against anybody not in the top 100 was a joke. Thus, I constantly received complaints of "cheating". Anybody that good can easily beat somebody who was using an aimbot. Perfect aim does nothing when your entire understanding of the level and how to control it is exponentially better than your opponent.
On the other side, during clan competitions, we prevented cheating by taking screenshots after the game, and emailing them to a judge. Thus, anybody using pak2 (it gave the player models huge spikes so you could see them through walls, made invisibility very visible, and other little things) would be discovered. We didn't account for any other cheats (aimbots) because we didn't consider those cheats effective.
I can see how this is a problem nowadays however, especially with MMORPGs. I haven't played any games since Quake 1 (i've tried a few) because the games lack the balance and perfect level design of Quake 1. For example, in UT, all the weapons are powerful enough that something like an aimbot can make a drastic difference. In Quake 1, the only really powerful weapons were the rocket launcher and tbolt, and a noob with an aimbot was worthless with a rocket launcher, and the tbolt ran out of ammo so quickly that it was impossible for an aimbot to dominate with one.
All in all, I guess I am just reminiscing about the good ol' days, when cheating was ineffective due to good game design. It seems that cheating is now a fact of life and actually does have a very negative effect on gameplay, which is why I will never play any game competitively again.
It is easy to prevent cheating. (Score:2, Interesting)
Step 2: Create an RBL style list of cheaters.
Cheat = global ban, means that no-one would dare run cheats.
And when you're NOT cheating... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:read it here (Score:3, Interesting)
You know I have had a NYT id since 1996, I used "nyt@", and I have never ever gotten a spam from them.
The NYT sets a cookie, so you don't have to constantly relogin, assuming you use the same computer.
Its not difficult. I had more trouble setting up my KDE desktop than I had registering for the times. The Times, by the way is Lynx compatible, which, when I only had dial up, was my preferred way to surf news sites. I also did the entire registration in lynx.
So, WTF are you talking about, exactly? These sound an awful lot like whiney excuses from someone who thinks its cool to bitch about the injustice of the NYT required registration.
I have an idea, go to your local newstand, and just read the entire paper there without paying for it.
Yes, I realize you've posted AC. I suppose this means you didn't register here because that would mean giving Slashdot your email, god knows you wouldn't want them selling your email to lord knows who...