The Million-Dollar Business of Video Game Cheating 102
An anonymous reader writes "If you play games online against other people, chances are you've come up against somebody who's obviously cheating. Wall hacks, aimbots, map hacks, item dupes — you name it, and there will always be a small (but annoying) segment of the gaming population who does it. Many of these cheating methods are bought and sold online, and PCGamer has done some investigative reporting to show us rule-abiding types how it all works. A single cheat-selling website manages to pull in $300,000 a year, and it's one of many. The people running the site aren't worried about their business drying up, either — game developers quickly catch 'rage cheaters,' and players cheating to be seen, but they have a much harder time detecting the 'closet cheaters' who hide it well. Countermeasures like PunkBuster and VAC are sidestepped quickly and easily."
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It's effective when playing the long-game.
It's mostly pointless to try to keep up with 0-day hacks as some kind of system-wide approach that covers any number of games.
Really VAC is there to pick up the idiots too dumb to even be allowed to get away with hacking.
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at $3 per ID when they're having a sale, (which is quite surprising, I wasn't aware it could be so cheap!) the cheapers are quite profitable. If they were quick to ban, say within a few hours reliably, it wouldn't be worth it for most of the cheaters, and they'd quit doing it.
As it is now, you load up your hacks, buy a few accounts, and "rent" some haxor time on the servers for a few weeks, and then they go ahead and ban you, more-or-less right on schedule. That's all it is, they're just working a differe
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A breakdown of the situation in a meta-view shows us that cheaters suffer from feelings of insignificance, they feel socially outcast due to some aspect of life they fall short of. This eventually leads to full blown erectile dysfunction. Symbolically, they cannot get it up for the game and participate as the skilled do, so cheats are substituted as a kind of VIAGRA in order to mimic virility. This is sad in the case of female cheats who could avoid the problem entirely by stopping their diet of cookies and
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... and a few are just plain dicks.
Err, no. Every last person who loads up a cheat then plays against other people on the net on non-cheat server is a complete dick. It is like entering a public chess tournament with a hidden computer. It utterly detracts from the fun for other legit players who just want to enjoy themselves in a competitive, but also fair environment. If you can not get you head round how to enjoy playing a game online and also doing ok at it, then fine just give up or whatever. Don't try and ruin for everyone else though
300 Large? (Score:4, Insightful)
$300,000/yr posting game hacks?
Damn, I'm in the wrong business.
RE: 300 Large? (Score:3, Insightful)
$300,000/yr for being a middleman between those who find game hacks and those who want them. If you're not a middleman you're in the wrong business. Nothing to do with games.
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If you're not a middleman you're in the wrong business.
Until the cost-cutting comes...
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It wont be long before game devs code cheats into the builds themselves.
Once done, enables a new revenue stream:
- "Unlock level 2" = £2.99
- "More game time" = £0.99
- "Overpowered Armor 2.0" = £5.99
I can really see this catching on.....
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;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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How did it feel to be played by Brendan Fraser in the documentary "Encino Man"? How long were you asleep for? Cause that shit has been happening for YEARS.
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How did it feel to be played by Brendan Fraser in the documentary "Encino Man"? How long were you asleep for? Cause that shit has been happening for YEARS.
Man, am I glad I wasn't drinking something when I read that...
NASA bot in FFXI (Score:5, Interesting)
The reign of terror lasted about six months before SE finally figured out who was selling the NASA bot system and sent a pointed cease and desist letter. The programmer and designer of the system complied and all the servers were taken offline. Many of the users were ultimately banned.
To this day I cannot believe people would pool together three grand just to get more monsters in a video game.
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To this day I cannot believe people would pool together three grand just to get more monsters in a video game.
Really, you don't? Let me introduce you to a new way for bored people to spend shitloads of money: in-game purchases. I'm pretty sure people spend much more than a few thousand on stuff.
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Microtransactions cut both ways.
To this day, I cannot believe people would buy hats for TF2 characters.
To this day, I cannot believe people would buy random shit in Farmville.
To this day, I cannot believe people would buy $item in $game.
I don't cheat because cheating costs extra money and detracts from the fun of the game.
I don't buy extra, useless crap in-game because buying extra, useless crap in-
Re:NASA bot in FFXI (Score:5, Funny)
That's because you don't realize just how fabulous those hats look on my heavy.
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I don't cheat because, ultimately, you can only lose.
If you win, you won because you cheated. Not because you're better, not because you're faster, not because you in any way trumped the other player. The cheat won. Not you.
If you lose despite cheating, you're the loser of the losers. Not only did you lose, but you had an advantage over the other one and he STILL whooped your ass.
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...The cheat won. Not you.
Thank you for expressing that... something that was nagging me as I read the article and these comments.
I understand why people cheat in Vegas: they might walk away with real money.
I understand why athletes take steroids: million dollar contracts, fan adoration, groupies.
But, the point of online gaming is pure competition. It's anonymous, you don't even get the adoration of strangers. (and you're losing money, to boot!)
Cheating online just seems like bringing a pistol to a 1-on-1 basketball game, gunning do
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But, the point of online gaming is pure competition. It's anonymous, you don't even get the adoration of strangers. (and you're losing money, to boot!)
Cheating online just seems like bringing a pistol to a 1-on-1 basketball game, gunning down your opponent, shooting the ball through the hoop a couple of times; and then telling yourself what a great basketball player you are.
It's not about winning. It's an inferiority complex. It's about dominating other players. It doesn't matter to the cheaters what methods they use, they want to have the feeling of that power over others.
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People are generally stupid, and in particular no-skill people often believe that faking it by cheating elevates them somehow above the competition, while all it does is to ensure they never develop any real skills. Quite a few no-skill people also something similar to "advance" their careers in management positions. There is a reason the economy is so bad at the moment: We have allowed the cheater-scum to take it over.
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You are quite mistaken.
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Then that's a flaw in the game rather than a problem of the players. Personally, if this was in some way required to continue playing, I'd simply stop playing and continue when the chance to get it becomes more sensible or the problem has been remedied.
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I've spend hours on "old school" MMOs where group play was key and instances were rare, if they existed at all. Every single MMO that succeeded, without fail, ensured that there is no frustrating waiting spot in the game. Grinding, yes. I've ground away countless hours in DAoC, mowing down armies of enemies for that minimal, pixel-sized growth of the xp bar. But it was never a waiting game.
People can dig grinding. They can accept killing enemies over and over and over, hoping that at some moment in time the
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BTW, the wikipedia article talks about monthly story driven updates (you say a new chapter every other month). Not sure which is right.
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They did monthly updates, but alternating they were content and story updates.
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Square-Enix had never done an MMORPG before, and worse, they're Japanese so they didn't really understand what people liked/didn't like about the early MMO's. All they knew is they wanted their own. Thusly they made a game only crazy Japanese conformist min-maxers who love grinding for grinding's sake would love.
In many ways the PS2's other MMORPG, EQOA, was a better and more enjoyable game.
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Let's replace "Japanese" with "black" and see how that reads:
Alright, it was badly worded. But how else can I say:
Square-Enix and other japanese developers don't get/understand the gaijin market outside of Japan in ways they should if they're wanting to sell games to us gaijin.
It's not racial, it's cultural. Kind of like how us Yanks don't get "Branston Pickle"
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ChronoCloud, that was a weird post. While Japanese gaming culture has some marked differences when compared to, say, N.A gaming culture, it is just plain racist (and factually incorrect) to say "they're Japanese so they didn't really understand what people liked/didn't like about the early MMO's". I'm guessing your frame of reference excludes the early Japanese MMOs, for example.
As for EQOA being "better and more enjoyable" than FFXI, I totally disagree, and I guess I'm not the only one; EQOA is long gone,
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I think he really meant "games that were popular with the mainstream Japanese [country] culture compared with the tastes of people that live in other countries" (and probably meant the USA specifically).. Rather than literally meaning the term Japanese to mean anybody of Japanese descent, regardless of where they live.
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While Japanese gaming culture has some marked differences when compared to, say, N.A gaming culture,
There are a LOT of differences gaming culture wise which affects the mindset of Japanese developers. While I'm not 100 percent agreement with Phil Fish's opinion, I think Japanese Development houses simply haven't adapted well now that they have to compete on a level playing field with top of the line formerly PC-only US/UK/CAN developers like Bioware, Blizzard or Bethesda.
it is just plain racist (and factually incorrect) to say "they're Japanese so they didn't really understand what people liked/didn't like about the early MMO's".
But they didn't understand, at least they didn't understand the tastes of us Gaijin. While there may have been Japanese MMO's those te
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What you describe is a nightmare. I sincerely hope that when my son gets older, he does not fall into some kind of trap like this where he poop-socks it for some stupid game just to get some pointless digital trinket.
I'd rather deal with just finding weed in his jacket pocket, like normal people.
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Sounds like an incredibly shitty game. I'm glad I never wasted time playing it.
More seriously, what you just described is not a game. It sounds more like a psychological torture device.
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Ehhh StillAnonymous, Eve Online is about as bad or worse but with PvP. Besides FF11 is an older MMO and it is enjoyable. Crono is just stating only 1 negative point of view the game but hey, if you want to have your kids smoke weed, go right ahead and let them know too.
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The leaders got busted for gil-buying shortly before NASA went down, then the rest of the shell dissolved when it died. Most of them transferred servers since they were blacklisted from end
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To this day I cannot believe people would pool together three grand just to get more monsters in a video game.
Haha, in EVE Online its pretty common to see people spend couple of grand on one ship, just to have it permanently destroyed the next day.
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A BIT?
What makes MMOs "difficult" today is mostly the players, less the content. Back in the "good ol' days", you'd have to have an IQ above room temperature to make it to top level. Today... I don't know, are we at "you find your epics every week in your mail if you can't be assed to raid" already?
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My first Titan EX attempt, about half the failures were my fault. Lately it's been everyone else that sucked. My free company still doesn't have enough at 50 for an entirely FC run. One or two more there should do it....
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I don't mind letting "casual" players (I actually hate that term, what's "casual" about it? I'm a casual player since I also have a job, so I can't play 24/7 yet still I tend to get my share of top level, top gear raiding... if people can't play well, that's not "playing casually" that's just "sucking at it"). And before someone comes and cries "But the 'casual' pays as much as you do, why shouldn't he get to see all the content?", I agree, there's no reason why some dungeons should be barred to you because
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Three grand is peanuts. How about spending $100,000 [tentonhammer.com]?
Valve needs to up the ante too -- SourceBans, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
I run a 16 player (coop) L4D1 server, a 32 player TF2 server, and a 32 player Insurgency server.
I *really* wished Valve would provide better out-of-the-box tools to admins. Plugins like "TooLateTooBan" to ban disconnected players shouldn't even be needed in the first place -- they should be built into all Source games.
For example, why doesn't the server automatically log Steam Id, IP, and Handle? Why the hell do I have to write a SourceMod plugin to do this? And then I can't even use this on newer Source games like Insurgency because SourceMod doesn't work (yet).
When a community on a server has more then a few admins we can self-police. But we can't do this if the admin tools are lacking, broken, or "unsupported" !
IP baning does not work well (Score:4, Insightful)
As people can easy bypass it by doing something as easy as rebooting the modem.
Also it can flag the wrong person and it can get tripped by user behind NAT / proxies
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A modem reboot won't reset SteamID.
Ipconfig /flushdns ?
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A modem reboot won't reset SteamID.
Ipconfig /flushdns ?
Nope, that won't change your SteamId either. The only thing that will is signing up for a new steam account and buy the game again under that.
What you can do though it to log the MAC address of the card, IP, SteamID and cross reference all of them across all steam games. That way if someone gets caught cheating then tries to set up a new steam account without changing their MAC address then the ban comes with them.
You should also make that information available to users so every player can lookup any other
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Mod parent up.
Your explanation is spot on. We ban by Steam ID, but use the IP for cross reference.
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I am serious about pinball and you really can't cheat there and if you try to do some the other players will see you doing it.
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I am serious about pinball and you really can't cheat there and if you try to do some the other players will see you doing it.
You grab a few ashtrays that are always around and set the front legs on them, your leveling the playing field (which has gotten steeper though the years).
Level it just before the tilt pendulum hit's it's limit. Then play your game, it's much slower and not as much fun but you can rack up some points as long as you don't move the machine too much and tilt it.
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and other players will see that and they too will have the same setup as well.
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That is why we ban by Steam Id which is a) unique, and b) persistent, since it is by Steam account.
i.e. STEAM_0:#:######
We also use this utility
http://steamidfinder.com/ [steamidfinder.com]
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Wait... people still run Insurgency servers?
Well, guess I know what I'm reinstalling tonight!
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The HL2 mod is now a stand alone 2014 game.
* http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
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Definitely going to check that one out, I remember playing it when the crew first developed it, and I thought it was probably the best "war-sim" FPS out there at the time.
Side note regarding Steam - I'm really digging how they've embraced the modder community by folding them in as full (for lack of a better term) games - Just Cause 2 MP being another of my favorite examples.
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Valve has always understood the long tail. Ubisoft/EA is the complete opposite of Valve -- smegging clueless about what customers want.
Ubisoft: We'll sell you same shit year after year. Map editor? Mods? 4+ coop support? Begone because "obviously" _everyone_ pirates our game; we have complete and utter contempt for our PC players even though they helped build our company before we could do shitty PC ports!
Valve: Here are yearly dirt-cheap sales so you can play with your friends. You can run your own serv
CFAA? (Score:2)
Criminal justice systems, perhaps understandably, aren't preoccupied with people cheating in online games. “Especially when it’s international,” Gibson said. “Then you’re talking about the FBI and Interpol. If someone stole $10 million in diamonds, call them. If someone is hacking your game, they don’t care.”
Really? Isn't FBI bound to pursue possible CFAA violations? I mean, cops already used it for a number of other idiotic things already, haven't they?
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Really? Isn't FBI bound to pursue possible CFAA violations?
As soon as you can show $10,000 in damages from one instance of cheating, perhaps.
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Possible lost sales from this and future game because people are cheating and those noticing it will make bad publicity out of it and prevent sales ? A single instance with 63 other people seing it can be worth quite a lot I expect :)
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It can, but it'll only happen once the media companies get serious about computers. Right now they're content to let their software divisions bring in profits without any need to legislate laws to protect their antiquated, broken business models.
Once they realize their software divisions are doing poorly due to, well, because they're the ones running the companies, they'll start prodding their lobbyists with sharp sticks to "protect" their software divisions too.
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Online cheating is to buying/participating in DDoS attacks as torturing animals is to serial killing.
Best to stop it early.
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It's rather hard to implement such a "need to know" strategy in games, as odd as it may sound. It's simply easier to dump all the information on your computer and have it, instead of the server, decide what you should and what you should not see.
MSN Gaming Zone Backgammon allows cheats... (Score:5, Funny)
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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Or the front door in cases of "Pay to Win"
If you can't beat us, let us join you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the problem is the same as in securing your hardware: Physical access = Game Over.
You've got folks running software on their hardware, they're going to be able to do whatever they want with that. I can see the ethics behind punishing people who cheat against other non consenting folk, but this statement bugs me:
If it wasn't for hacking and cheating in games I wouldn't have taught myself how to program as a child. In fact, the first thing I did when I got any new game was save the game, do some action, save it again and do a hex-diff to scan for the change, and edit the byte values to give myself more ammo or items or money, etc. I'd still take pride in beating the games without cheats, and in competitive servers I wouldn't cheat, but amongst other hacker friends, or on my own servers I see nothing wrong with cracking games. I've added new game modes, weapons, and levels to games via patching the EXE and data files.
Lots of folks bought Doom when they already had Duke3D and Quake just to play with new weapons I added to the game: Flame Thrower: Replace rocket launcher projectile with imp fire ball frames, limit its range by making it disappear after a duration [use the frame tables], increase ammo counts, reduce the damage and reload for VERY rapid fire, replace the projectile's death frame with Archvile flame attack, FIX the damn Archvile flame animation sequence so it animates smoothly. The sound effects preempted itself, so rapid fire would make a great whooshing sound as big beautiful gouts of fire shot out and went crackling up the walls. It was beautiful and all done with just a hex editor using in-game graphics, and I couldn't for the life of me imagine why the game makers didn't have it in the game already... High Explosive Ammo: Set the bullet puff / bleed frame to be the rocket launcher explosion, great fun in co-op w/ specially designed insane difficulty levels. Then there was the Tactical Force Gun: Plasma rifle bolts w/ no damage, high HP, partial invisibility, and high mass, but slow speed. You could make a time-limited wall of force by strafing. You could maintain a barricade, trap folks against walls or via encircle them, great for escape. BFG mines: Zero speed BGF blasts, without the bright bit set - they look small but have a big radius for hit-detection, and just twinkle as a little dot until someone walks into the detection range and they explode -- When these mines go off, invisible kill rays shoot from the "owning" player's current location even elsewhere in the map, but aimed in the original direction the blast was fired at (because that's how the BFG code worked, yep, the biggest and "best" weapon is/was fucking buggy as all hell, ruined would be a better word for it, come the fuck on Carmack, do you even algebra? [gamers.org]). So, I'd do a binary diff and produce a binary patch that worked against a certain executable version to avoid distributing modded EXEs themselves so as not to break copyright. Soon DEHACKED came out, and even more folks were able to mod the EXEs. Thus when Doom2 just gave us one more shotgun barrel, everyone was fucking pissed! The hackers had shown off what the engine was capable of, so the game felt like a half-assed attempt to monetize the same game twice.
My most successful hack was when I finally managed to fix the BFG in Doom2.exe by having the rays shoot out from the blast instead of the player and gave the ray direction the reflection vector of the surface it struck or reversed it if it was a player. This required reverse engineering the fixed point math format, and I had to find some unused area for my machine code to be inserted -- which was easy because Carmack
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I've worked on countering these type of cheats (Score:1)
Circle of trust (Score:2)
I have a solution, at least in part. Have a circle of trust so that:
1. You can only play if you know people in the service (or at least have a few very notable seed individuals which dev's trust)
2. If an individual is reported (and verified) as cheating, have a non-trivial penalty on the individual(s) who are in said friend group
3. If the upstream peer continues to be penalized for their peer's cheating, they can choose to drop their association essentially stopping the other guy from playing (unless they h
The reality is... (Score:2)
... online DRM'd games lead to this naturally. Game devs/pubs brought this on themselves by taking servers out of the control of players hands because of greed. Many people get hacks to get around paying for anything in online DRM'd games. Who'd of thought it, cheats being cheated by the original cheats (game pubs/devs).
My support for AlterIW.Net was to catch/ban cheats (Score:2)
ie: CoD MW2, It's not easy, then you toss in recoil of the weapon and it just becomes a war of words, very hard to prove. We had two people who's function was to judge weapon recoil and only they could ban or bless the player.
For me it was also important to recognize a good player, as my son was banned from just about every server he played on, he's just freaking good. This is an old clip I made proving an accused cheater was really just a good player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
But just goes to show
I'm not a cheater, but my style begs to. (Score:2)
IDKFA was more than a phrase, it's how I started my games. http://www.gamefaqs.com/ [gamefaqs.com] is my source of faq's and other unknown tricks of a game.
My son brought me into CoD, he's good, and cheat free. I not only set an example by following his lead but I see no sense in cheating in these types of games and honestly I'm one that would benefit from doing so. I'm not a good shooter, if in an engagement I'll almost always lose be in on foot, armor, or aircraft. (were talking CoD or BF3).
I have a lot of BF3 friends a