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First Person Shooters (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Killing The Fun - Cheating In Online Games 167

Posted by simoniker from the i-aimbot-joo dept.
Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for its story discussing the ever-present problem of cheating in online games. One of the issues discussed is cheating on Xbox Live using Action Replay-like devices, with a Microsoft spokesperson suggesting: "We didn't go into this with the idea that no one's ever going to be able to exploit this... But we absolutely take this stuff seriously and are taking action on it every day." However, noted FPS player Dennis 'Thresh' Fong laments an unfortunate side effect for the dextrous: "Because there is this perception that everybody cheats, people that are good are not recognized for their skills. When I play online, I'm always accused of being a cheater."
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Killing The Fun - Cheating In Online Games More

Killing The Fun - Cheating In Online Games

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  • Oh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:27PM (#8516897) Homepage
    I thought the word for someone who didn't cheat was "n00b"

    • Re:Oh... (Score:5, Funny)

      by wheany ( 460585 ) <wheany+sd@iki.fi> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @05:57AM (#8519353) Homepage Journal
      I have done extensive research on recognizing cheaters in Counter-Strike. I have a web page that lists many sure signs of a cheater. [mbnet.fi]

      Using this list you can't have any false positives. So don't bother replying with the usual "I use all of those things and I never cheat" because if you do that, not only are you a cheater, you are also a liar.
    • I am often accused of cheating also. When playing any video game online there will be some sort of cheating involved. When dealing with the Xbox, there are mod chips and action replay to deal with. And with PC games you have to worry about AimBots, Wallhacks, and all sorts of other things. The people making the hacks and the people making the anti-cheating software seem to go back and forth over who is ahead of who. Some games I have played with people who were cheating, and had them actually show me how th

  • Cheating not only in online games... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gringo_john ( 680811 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:31PM (#8516927) Journal
    Cheating is something that is prevalent in many things in addition to online gaming.

    Take for example the olympics. The "arms race" to build the ultimate undetectable performance enhancing drugs closely mirrors the battle between online game cheaters and cheat detection.

    It's a sad fact that when the more there is at stake, the greater people will be willing to go in order to obtain a win.

    • I often think it would save a lot of time and money if you just allowed the damn drugs. Everybody would end up using them and treat them as an acceptable expense for entering an athlete in the olympics, so eventually the advantages would fall away anyway, and you wouldn't need to waste all the time and money on testing every athlete.

  • Did you ever think... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:31PM (#8516931) Journal
    However, noted FPS player Dennis 'Thresh' Fong laments an unfortunate side effect for the dextrous: "Because there is this perception that everybody cheats, people that are good are not recognized for their skills. When I play online, I'm always accused of being a cheater."

    Did you ever think people might cheat because they might not want to deal with the "dextrous" players who play 4-50 hours a week?

    Online gaming needs match making and player rankings built into their in game browsers.
    • PLEASE MOD PARENT UP.

      I think there are all too many people who would be casual game players, but who can't get into anything, because while they're trying to figure out what's going on, people like this dude NAIL them. I know I'm one of them.

      Don't tell us that we'll get better if we work at it - WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO. We want to be able to sit down and play with people at comparable skill levels and enjoy the game *now*, without having to devote our lives to learning to become uber-1337 at it.

      • Re:Did you ever think... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Idealius ( 688975 ) * on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @11:05PM (#8517188) Journal
        It wouldn't make any difference anyway. The cheaters would just create 6 bots instead of one to account for the 6 skill brackets.

        The whole beauty of online gaming is it's chaos. No blood, no foul. Just like life.

        Besides, a game is meant to be competitive. Cheaters have to do just as much work programming those bots as it takes to get good at the game. Not to mention they're caught, and kicked, often making the point moot.

        That doesn't solve Fong's unfortunate side effect, but it does make for some interesting online experiences.

        The things that happen through these machines are only an extension of our intentions. Tell me you've never heard of people sent to die in the deathchamber that were found to be innocent later?

        • Re:Did you ever think... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Divide By Zero ( 70303 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:09AM (#8521011)
          Besides, a game is meant to be competitive.

          Competitive, yes, but not at the expense of being enjoyable.

          game (n.)
          1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.

          A game is supposed to be FUN. I'm a casual Halo player, and when my friends and I get together to play split-screen or LAN Halo on the XBox, we have fun. When I play Counterstrike online, I get OWNED (or PWNED, or pwn3d), and it is NOT FUN. People much better than me make the game not fun, and it becomes an exercise in walking out, getting brained by some cat who spends his days playing Counterstrike, and waiting for the next round.

          You don't put a high school pitcher on the mound against the Yankees, you don't put a twenty-something who commutes to work and back in a stock car at Daytona, and you don't put a casual player on a public CS server. It's competitive in the sense that two parties are trying to acheive mutually exclusive goals, but it's nowhere near fair. There's no doubt as to the outcome, no fun for the loser and no sense of accomplishment for the winner.

          Thank you very much, but I'll play something else if I want to have fun, and I'll play Counterstrike if I need to feel inferior to a 14-year-old who doesn't do his homework. (A brash overgeneralization intended to illustrate a point; put down your flamethrowers.)
          • Online gaming seems eerily like life at times. It never seems quite fair, people already have their friend groups, and sometimes it feels like you're late to the party.

            Tough. Life isn't fair. What you can do about it is either suck up your pride and accept the fact that you are going to lose, or leave. Skill is the reason people continue to play - they want to be like so-and-so, who is a legendary player everyone looks up to. You take skill differences out, you alienate the loyal customer base. Single play

      • Re:Did you ever think... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by eliza_effect ( 715148 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @11:57PM (#8517661)
        That's what single player if for. Or at least find a server that is at your skill level. Many people find it fun to challenge themselves, and there's no reason to throw that away so you can have an even playing field.
        • Single player is of a finite length. Multiplayer increases replay value HUGELY.

          As for finding a server of my skill level, that's what I'm asking for. In my experience, most game browsers make doing so waaaaay too hard.
          • Play a game like UnrealTourney singleplayer (bots) and just scale the bot difficulty. The problem is of course bots tend to fail in comparison to real people, but every new generation of game has gotten better at that in some degree.
            • and playing against bots can quickly make up for the skill difference felt in multiplayer games, as you can learn the game without dealing with the excess crap that some players bring to the table.

              The two things that really improved my skill in FPS games were playing against Eraser bots in Q2, which I did for about 2 weeks before rejoining the multiplayer population, and joining my clan in TFC. In the 2 weeks playing against the bots my skill level rose an amount that it probably never would have against r

      • thinking all the time (Score:5, Insightful)

        by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @12:01AM (#8517692)
        But that isn't a reason to cheat is it? How many "casual" gamers do you think cheat? If I had to make up numbers, I would guess that most of the cheaters, hell I would guess a vast majority of them play the game in question as much as the ubber-1337 players do. There is this tendency for people to assume that people that cheat suck or have no skills and that is why they cheat, I think this is just something we tell ourselves when we lose to a cheater ("if he wasn't cheating I would own him!") People that cheat are people that either don't want to lose, or they are doing it just to ruin the game experience of others. I would be very surprised if you could find me a below average player that uses a couple of cheats to level the playing field.

        I see what you are saying, but I am not sure that there is really any relevance to the subject at hand here, I mean I don't think its fair that I own a crappy car, but does that mean you could empathize with me if I robbed a bank to buy a better one?

        • Where do you get off making blanket statements that you have absolutely no insight into?

          "People that cheat are people that either don't want to lose, or they are doing it just to ruin the game experience of others. I would be very surprised if you could find me a below average player that uses a couple of cheats to level the playing field."

          Ok, prepare to be very surprised. I've used cheats to level the playing field with games I'm not good at. So does my little brother. Why? Well, because I'm simply a

          • > I've used cheats to level the playing field with games I'm not good at.

            > Fact is, cheating becomes acceptable to me if it enables me to enjoy my game that I purchased.

            > Seriously, try to understand that people may share other views than you.

            First off, if there's no reasoning with you, we don't have to continue this conversation. If you're interested in discussing, please reply.

            Your reason for cheating is that it makes the game more fun for you - but what about everyone else? How can you ask
            • Well, despite the fact that I have cheated at a game before (heaven forbid) there is reasoning with me :) Because not all of us cheaters are immature, unintelligent people.

              Your point about asking others to understand me when I refuse to try to understand them is valid. I will retract my statement about how he should try to understand this. I really don't care if he understands this.

              Now, for the record, I don't cheat at every game. Hardly. In fact, I don't usually play the games I'm not good at because

          • I honestly do not give two flying fucks about the gaming experience of the other people on the server, and I'm sure more than a couple feel the same.

            Then why play online games? It's a give and take situation Dweomer and if you don't want to play in the neighborhood you are free to stay indoors.
            Unreal Tournament (original flavor, 2003, 2004 extra crispy et cetera) has excellent bot customization options that could allow any player to create a match that they can have fun with offline and without power game
            • I play online games because I like to play online games. If I wanted a singleplayer experience, I would play singleplayer. Lets face it, bots are less fun to play against than people (unless you're testing cool ways to kill people, then bots are quite fun).

              Thank you for suggesting UT2004, unfortunately, I don't have a computer that can handle it, nor is it really my style of gameplay. But it is good that they have made improvements to bot performance. However, I enjoy the social aspects of online gaming

              • Cheater-Man_Lord_Dweomer said :
                I'm actually quite good at the games I've developed skills in. I frequently come in first place in bf1942. However, I really don't have time to learn the intricacies of other games.

                Doesn't take much time to learn how to spawn camp an un-cappable flag does it?

      • "I think there are all too many people who would be casual game players, but who can't get into anything, because while they're trying to figure out what's going on, people like this dude NAIL them."

        I've seen my share of this. I've seen a lot of people cry "FAGGOT CAMPER!!". I know I've been the victim of that. Evidently, sitting on a sniper perch and sniping is against the unwritten rules when you become proficient at it. I have never ever once heard "Hey man, you're making this too hard for me. Coul
      • Offtopic : IMO, anyone who spends the time trying out a game and then COMPLAINING about it is not casual. Once you spend the time to complain about a game, its no longer a casual issue. You're a gamer. Admit it. Get over it. No one is forcing you to play them, so the only logical explantion is you WANT to play them, therefore you're a gamer.

        On topic : Personally I have no protests about about "casual game players" complaining about gaming being too tough. I start protesting when "casual gamers" try to play

      • So an aimbot evens the field?? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kelmenson ( 592104 ) <kelmenson&yahoo,com> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @01:40AM (#8518314)
        Don't tell us that we'll get better if we work at it - WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO. We want to be able to sit down and play with people at comparable skill levels and enjoy the game *now*, without having to devote our lives to learning to become uber-1337 at it.
        None of the cheats out there "even the field"... They don't improve your aim; they make it impossible to miss. How is that enjoying the game? The only enjoyment the cheaters get is in annoying the other players of the game.

        Its not like the cheats are a handicap where you can give yourself 30% extra life or money or something... They are all or none.

        • Its not like the cheats are a handicap where you can give yourself 30% extra life or money or something...

          I've seen aimbots that actually have scales for setting the hit percentage (because it makes it harder for people to realize you're cheating). That being said, though, it's AIM, not life, money, armour, ammo, guns, whatever. If you can't AIM, why are you trying to play multiplayer? You'd think that people would figure out they can't aim before they got to the point of trying to play with/against othe
        • In counterstrike, there are plenty of cheats that 'even the playing field'.

          Off the top of my head:

          Fullbright (add an insanely bright light where the players origin is, removing any shadows making it easier to see anything)

          Skinhacks (make all cts blue and all terrorists red, use is obvious).

          Soundpakcs (replace default sounds with more distinguishable noises, for example giant 'OUCH' sounds when someone gets hit, making it easier to tell if you hit someone through a wall)

          Whitewalls (remove all textures,
          • Those are some interesting cheats. I have a lot of problems playing CS and the similiar games, I am color-blind, I have a terrible time distinguishing reds and greens (enough that it is hard and takes more time for me to differentiate people in CS). I loved Team Fortress for the fact that all the characters were either blue or red (strong shades of color make it easier for me). I have even have problems with different shades of camoflauge (sp?). Some of these hacks may have their legitimate purposes.
      • So you should be allowed to cork your bat in baseball in order to make yourself a better hitter? I call bullshit.

        Find another server. There are approximately a gazillion games out there (plus or minus a bazillion) and they all have different skill levels. Or, as an alternative, find some friends who want to play that aren't Gods among men. Or, play against bots and set their skill level down. I used to routinely practice Quake Arena with 5-10 bots at varying skill levels...it was great practice, and I

    • Simple Solution... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BTWR ( 540147 ) <americangibor3.yahoo@com> on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @11:07PM (#8517201) Homepage Journal
      Simple solution... ever play Yahoo games? There are beginner, intermed and expert rooms to choose from. This might be something to consider in games. I find that the rooms are pretty honest in skill level. Sure, someone could troll the beginner rooms if they're good, but, from the Yahoo example, it doesn't happen (much). If you're #4 ranked, but in the beginner level, that's not much respect.
      • Gunbound has a feature like that, now, where there are a couple newbie servers, and a bunch of other intermediate to advanced servers (advanced players are usually referred to as pros).

        The newbie servers are always packed, with most of the games being full of so-called pr00bs; advanced players who continually recreate their accounts to circumvent the rank limitations in the newbie servers. They're only there to grief newbies, and you'd be amazed how often a bunch of those dipshits are sitting there, on the
      • Because Yahoo offers FPSes and other action games. Really.
    • Yeah, that's true. Unfortunately, it also creates another problem. People then need to cheat to get higher rankings.

      Still, I agree.
    • Which is why I tend to find online team-based games (Counterstrike, UT, Battlefield 1942) to be better than individual death match. You may find cheaters, you may find superb players, but it becomes easier to distinguish cheaters from the people that want to play as they don't do anything related to the goals of the map, etc. And then team games become fun since the averaging of the skills work out to make the game fun, so you don't have to be a 'professional' player to feel like a contributor.

    • Re:Did you ever think... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ooPo ( 29908 )
      You hit upon an important point, people who are casual players can look at cheating as a way of levelling the playing field. This is often overlooked in the knee-jerk reaction of 'CHEATING BAD!' we see so often.

      For about a year I ran a Counterstrike server. My brother bought me a copy so I'd run it for him but I ended up getting hooked on it for a while. I saw my fair share of cheaters but I took a relaxed approach to it - if the player wasn't ruining the game for other people I let it slide. It added a ch
    • I don't care if people cheat in "pubs".. it's the competitive gaming scene that gets hurt by cheats. The people that are competing competitively should *not* be using cheats.

    • With MMORPGs it's impossible to incorporate any sort of ranking system when a single server might be holding every player in the entire game. Sure, they say that high level characters aren't a problem, but from experience playing RO for a couple of years says otherwise. High level characters run through the area of low level characters, killing everything you're trying to kill, and stealing your fun.

      So it's absolutely understandable that people would cheat. Levels come so slowly that the only way thos

  • Aimbot Author here... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:35PM (#8516959)
    As someone who released the first aimbot for unreal tournament, and coded a few different cheats I can tell you why I, cheated. To grief people. I never cared about looking 'uber'. I was a good player in my own right. I cheated just because I wanted to grief the mindless, shitball, cliquey clannie fuckheads that played that game. I *liked* the fact that they knew I was cheating.

    Other people in my clan/grief group botted for other reasons. One guy just liked looking uber to noobz. Another just throught it was funny.

    • I would be inclinded to agree with the coward.
      I met a few guys that always cheated when they played counter-strike a few years ago. They said they cheated just because it made the other players so angry.

      I personally do not cheat at any of the games I play. I enjoy the thrill of completely owning the other players without the need for cheats.

      The best way to avoid cheaters is to join a clan or start your own clan. Get the other players to pay dues and then get a clan server. From there you can ban anyone th

    • Re:Aimbot Author here... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I cheated just because I wanted to grief the mindless, shitball, cliquey clannie fuckheads that played that game.

      And you know what those guys think of you now? That you're a mindless, shitball, cliquey clannie fuckhead. Way to feel superior, moron.

    • Cheaters are sick. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gumpish ( 682245 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @02:27AM (#8518560) Journal
      As someone who released the first aimbot for unreal tournament, and coded a few different cheats I can tell you why I, cheated. To grief people.

      So in other words, you're a sociopath. You derive pleasure from antagonizing others in a way that leaves them no recourse.

      Let me guess - pulling the wings off of flies and burning ants with a magnifying glass are among your cherished childhood memories. Maybe you had "fun" with firecrackers and the family pet?

      I'd hate to run afoul of Godwin's Law, but the senseless sadism exhibited by cheaters seems like it would fit right into some sort of guard/prisoner dynamic.
    • Nah the odds are you just suck, and so you throw the equivalent of a tantrum and try to ruin the game for people who can actually play.

      You're probably the wiseguy who thinks that it's a great idea to sneak in a turbocharged/nitro car in a race meant for normally aspirated cars.
    • Non-rant:

      I seem to remember that the first UT aimbot was "Funbot", written by Darkbyte[S&D] after discussing the possibility of UT cheats with players who insisted UT was cheat-proof. It was a proof of concept, but was released after he foolishly sent a copy to someone who claimed to be an anti-cheat developer. Was that you?

      (UT players might also know Darkbyte as the co-author, with Dr.Sin, of Client-Side Hack Protection.)

      I haven't used Funbot, but I was sent a copy by someone who'd collaborated with

      • When Windows Windows gets infected with viruses or worms, people bitch at Microsoft.

        When Linux gets a root exploit, people bitch at the kernel developers.

        But when a game developer leaves in an easy route for an online cheat, and people exploit it, everyone goes after the people who wrote it, and the people who use it.

        Talk about a double standard!

        People, if you really care about online gaming cheats and treat it as some religious campaign, then petition the developers to remove the availability of th

  • Take it as a compliment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toxygen ( 738180 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:35PM (#8516962) Journal
    Seriously, if you're so good at a game that you're consistently being accused of being a cheater, just laugh it off and say to yourself "damn, I'm good". Don't get me wrong, it sucks to have people not trust you, but in the end YOU know the truth, so how much should you really care about some insecure loser's paranoid opinion?

    • Re:Take it as a compliment (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dFaust ( 546790 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @01:28AM (#8518250)
      While your concept is nice, it just doesn't work out that way. Perhaps you've never been accused of cheating (when you weren't). It's not simply one person who happens to say, "Cheater". It's repeated rants full of explitives. Games are supposed to be fun! How fun can a game be when the entire time you're being called a cock-sucking pussy fuck cheater?? Seriously. Even by people on your own team.

      But that's only the beginning. Some games allow players to be even more proactive... ie: voting. Believe me, when you're playing fair and square and every few minutes a vote comes up to kick and/or ban you from the server..... not my idea of fun. Especially if you actually DO get kicked. Talk about killing the mood.

      Yeah, it's flattering in a way. But it gets old FAST.

      • Perhaps you've never been accused of cheating (when you weren't). It's not simply one person who happens to say, "Cheater". It's repeated rants full of explitives.

        You exposed something that's right at the heart of this. I used to be a "casual" Counter-strike player, maybe 5 hours a week, just having fun. Definitely not interested enough to cheat. But some days I would really be ON, and I'd get a lot of headshots in the first 10 minutes, and look here comes the vote to ban me as a cheater. Some of the playe

      • you deal with it like this:
        The Cheat Wall [combatcertified.com]

        It's funny, we've had people come and ask to be removed from the "wos" etc.. those people won't be so quick to accuse again.

      • I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to write a server which auto-kicks/bans any user who uses inappropriate language.

        If the computer isn't good enough at figuring out what is offensive, you can do what some ISPs do, which is to actually employ people to randomly enter and play games, to spot this sort of behaviour. If you admin a gaming server you might as well randomly enter every now and then to boot people out. With games like Half-Life which can identify people by their CD key, you can cause quite a pr

    • That's fine in a large community; you can always go somewhere else. In a smaller community, it can hamper your ability to find a server where you won't be harassed.

  • Why? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:37PM (#8516972) Homepage Journal
    Why is it so easy to cheating at online fps games? Can some of you l33t h4x0rz put some effort into cheating in online casinos. Make that roulette wheel show up 00 every time. I'll split the winnings with you halfway. With that kind of money you can hire the world champion of counter-strike to play for you. Win without touching the mouse even!

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:43PM (#8517008) Journal
      Why is it so easy to cheating at online fps games? Can some of you l33t h4x0rz put some effort into cheating in online casinos.

      Because Online Casino's aren't open source, and don't encourage modding of their games. Have you ever seen Roulette-"Counter Strike edition"?

      FPS games would be much more secure if they weren't so open and didn't allow for modding. I know the open source advocates here are going to scream about how open source is more secure, but it isn't when it comes to games because some things in games can not be patched aftermarket.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Aliencow ( 653119 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:48PM (#8517042) Homepage Journal
        No, they'd be more secure if they were 100% server based like Casinos are. It's not like the outcome of the spin is determined on your pc. However, due to lag reasons, your PC has to know where everyone is even though you shouldn't see them..
        • No, they'd be more secure if they were 100% server based like Casinos are. It's not like the outcome of the spin is determined on your pc. However, due to lag reasons, your PC has to know where everyone is even though you shouldn't see them..

          Not true. The server keeps track of where everyone is. If someone looks "lagged" on your screen (running in place) and you shoot them, it won't count on the server. Otherwise a player who is lagging could kill everyone on their computer and when they stopped laggi
          • The server keeps track, but the local machine has to know where everybody is. THat's all the parent said.

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Cecil ( 37810 )
        FPS games would be much more secure if they weren't so open and didn't allow for modding.

        Listen, bud. Have you seen a pirated copy of Microsoft Office lately? Is that because it's "too open"? Adobe Photoshop? 3D Studio Max?

        The reason online casinos have not been hacked is because the client DOES NOTHING (At least, in every intelligent casino I've ever seen). The client is a graphical display with a button, just like the one-armed-bandits in real casinos. You click a button, the CASINO does the processing

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Graelin ( 309958 )
      Can some of you l33t h4x0rz put some effort into cheating in online casinos

      Having worked for said online casinos I can tell you that some of them do and nearly all of them get caught.

      The other posters are correct, in that the client software really does nothing, but some of the leading casinos out there have stacked the odds only slightly in their favor in some games - mainly blackjack.

      The only kinds of cheats you will find for casinos are auto-players. They play BJ 100% by the book and often come out

      • Re:Why? (Score:2)

        by Otter ( 3800 )
        The only kinds of cheats you will find for casinos are auto-players. They play BJ 100% by the book and often come out winning big. Then they get a call from the casino and all those winnings disappear.

        If you're still reading this -- presumably if you're offering virtual blackjack, you could use a shoe with an infinite number of decks, right? That would eliminate any card counting. Can you get a meaningful edge just from playing by the rules or is counting possible with online casinos?

        • Can you get a meaningful edge just from playing by the rules or is counting possible with online casinos?

          Not sure on the shoe size (Ha ha) but I never heard of someone geting caught card counting when I worked there. It was always the auto-players. The house is supposed to take you on BJ but if you can play the by book it seems like you'll take them. Or you could 4 years ago (when I worked there.)

          This stuff is on a Need to Know basis in taht industry and I was not in a position to Need to Know. So mo
    • FPS games do most of the work client-side, which is why its so easy to cheat in them (prevent it from detecting a collision between a bullet and a wall, and you can shoot right through them, change the rate that it updates your position, and you can move faster. Change the shot delay onn your weapon, and you can fire a rocket launcher five times a second).

      Online casinos, and most MMO games do something else though. What you have on your end is basically just a graphics engine and input. The server takes yo
      • "The main way to cheat in those kind of games is to macro. Some MMORPGs are suscptible to the same speedhack program people use in CS, which mucks with the computer's clocking instead of the program itself, but for the most part, there's nothing client side to hack."

        Just to elaborate on this a bit -- He means EXACTLY the same program. The speedhack that was floating around back in the cs 1.3 days works fine for speedbuilding in (war/star)craft, speed running in a MMORPG, or even slowing down the clock in m
  • This is precisely why I don't play FPS games on public servers anymore if I can avoid it: If it's not someone cheating, it's someone accusing me of cheating. I only play with people I know nowadays.

    I'm also wary of MMORPGs for the same reason.

    • Most MMORPGs do everything important server-side now. They've learned a hard lesson from cheaters in UO and EQ's early days. I just posted this in another message, but here goes again: Most MMORPG clients are basically just a rendering engine. You get the data of what goes where from the server, and you send input to the server. The server handles your stats and everything that you would want to hack. I wrote cheap and dirty stat hacks for several MMORPGs to try and silence cheat acusations. I used one to
      • I saw some excellent client-side hacks for RO which people used to use to fake screenshots for various purposes. In some cases it was just fake spawning dozens of hostile monsters onto the screen just for the impression... these days Gravity just do the thing for real in the major towns.

  • Technological solution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @10:51PM (#8517070)
    Cheating being possible at all is a side effect of having the client know too much about the game state -- the position of other players, collision detection, etc. This is presumably done in an attempt to work around the lag introduced by the network. This means only real-time games are susceptible to cheating; turn based or casino type games cannot be cheated in. It also means that faster networks should enable game makes to validate inputs and make more of the decisions on the server side, thus making cheating obsolete even in FPS games. Until then, anything you do to stop cheaters is just a temporary stop-gap in a never ending arms race.
    • Action Replay cheats on XBox are based on save game data stored on the XBox hard drive. One way of fixing this issue is storing the data on the MS servers using the encrypted transmission channel built in to XBox Live.

      Note that there's a little sidebar on Action Replay cheating on XBox Live that runs with the Merc article.

      -dave

    • Re:Technological solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @04:49AM (#8519087) Homepage
      This is only partly true. *some*, perhaps even *most* cheats are a result of the fact that, as you say, with common game-designs the client knows a lot more than it *should* tell the player. And so by changing the client to disclose it, you gain an advantage.

      Typical examples include cheats that let you see trough walls, or cheats that give you a wider field of view.

      But that's not the *entire* problem. There's a few more classes of cheats. And those cannot be eliminated by the server only telling the client stuff that the player should see;

      Aimbots. You see (and should see) the enemy on the screen. Some program helps you aim so that you hit better than you otherwise would. If you always hit 100%, it could conceivably be detected, but the problem is that the aimbot can be adjusted to be *precisely* as good as the server will allow anyone to be.

      You mention casinos, card-games and turn-based games. Those can be cheated (well, it's up to you if you count it a cheat, but atleast it'll give one player an unfair advantage over the other players) for example by having a program count cards for you. It's quite a big advantage in for example online bridge to *always* know *exactly* which cards have been played and which remains. Good players will remember some of it, but a program will remember all 100%.

      Then there's the problem of behind-the-scenes communications. To stick with the bridge-example, two players on a team have a *humongous* advantage if they can tell each others, somehow, what cards they have. With online gaming, this is obviously as simple as IM.

      Or let's say online poker. Let's say it's implemented with Schneiers cryptographically secure poker-system, so that no client can cheat. But, the thing you don't know is that the three other guys at the table are really friends, and communicating over IM. They'll tell eachothers who has the best hand, and the others will fold. Essentially, you're playing against a player who gets three hands every round, and can choose the best one to play with. You will loose. There is nothing the game-client can do to prevent this. Even if it *somehow* blocked all other ip-communications, the others could be sitting in the same room and communicating by talking, or they could be sending eachothers sms or any of a 100 other possibilities.

      You're rigth that telling the client less will reduce or eliminate *some* types of cheats. You are wrong however in claiming that this is the only reason cheating is possible at all.

      • Aimbots (Score:2)

        by El ( 94934 )
        Good point. I can't think of any effective way of guarding against aimbots in software, since anybody with enough time and money could dummy up the mouse input. Perhaps a hardware solution would work... what if you required the use of a cryptographically secure mouse? Sounds like it ultimately still would be able to be cracked. Can anybody think of an effective way of preventing the use of aimbots, other than playing only with people you trust?

        • Sign the network communications. Then sign every piece of code which needs to be run to make up the game. The game itself, the gaming library, the mouse driver, the entire operating system. Then ensure that the user can't hack their computer hardware to disable code which isn't signed.

          And yet whenever trusted computing is brought up, everybody objects, so this will never happen.

          • That just makes cheating more expensive. I can still take the video out from one machine, feed it into optical recognition software in a second machine, and have that second machine generate my mouse input. Undetectable by the first machine. Certainly not worth it, but then why is any form of cheating worth the trouble?

      • Aimbots could probably be defeated by using trusted computing, oddly enough. You ensure that all connections between the client and the server must originate from the client and be signed (deals with proxies and standalone bots), and you ensure that the client code can't be altered (deals with .exe hacks.)

        the aimbot can be adjusted to be *precisely* as good as the server will allow anyone to be.

        Lag permitting. :-) Though of course, a good aimbot will know to lead its target.

        You mention casinos, c

  • I know BF1942 has the new "punkbuster" program. has it worked? I'm usually right in the upper-middle part of the score rank, rarely at the top, so I never notice if the #1s are awesome or cheating. Just wondering if u guys know...
  • Dennis Fong misspelt "m4d sk1LLz".

  • How about instant replays? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @01:23AM (#8518223) Homepage Journal
    Call of Duty [callofduty.com] multiplater games show instant replays every time you get killed from the other player's perspective/view. I think this is a cool idea. It would be nicer if you can record that too.

  • Cheaters are not that bad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @01:50AM (#8518376)
    Cheaters are bad. But they are NOTHING compared to TKs.

    At least cheaters you kick and they go cheat somewhere else. TKs keep coming back cause they enjoy it too damn much. Not to mention TKs have a sad history of coming back with different name.

    At least cheaters are wanted by one team. TKs are hated by everybody. The team that win gets an unsatisfying victory. The team that lose gets abused.
    • OK, So I've been out of the scene for too long. What's a TK?

      Dave

    • At least cheaters you kick and they go cheat somewhere else. TKs keep coming back cause they enjoy it too damn much. Not to mention TKs have a sad history of coming back with different name.

      Of course, that kind of makes me wonder why games all seem to have a static view of what a "team" is. Anyone who is killing more of one team than another should automatically be considered friend/foe as appropriate. Hell, I'd like to see things go a step further and have a "neutral" designation where people are d

  • Find some people you trust... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shazow ( 263582 ) <andrey.petrovNO@SPAMshazow.net> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @03:12AM (#8518719) Homepage
    Back in the days of Diablo (1), one of the most cheated-in games ever, a few of my close friends from school decided to limit our gameplay amongst ourselves so we wont be affected by the cheating going on in the "real world". We managed to enjoy the game a great deal, none of us cheated. It's based on trust, really. If you can find a few people that you trust and play with them, it increases the enjoyment of the game enormously.

    Same goes for first person shooters or any other game. Find yourself a clan with trustworthy members, and play.

    Just because everyone else cheats, doesn't mean you have to expose yourself to their damnation.

    - shazow

  • winners never cheat (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ddsoul ( 756692 ) * <harry@ic e . org> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @06:34AM (#8519464) Homepage
    Cheats can be quite effective, especially to police those that DO cheat. Back in the ol' CS days, on my friend's server we had always suspected this one guy who frequented his server of cheating. Needless to say I found one of these "wall hacks" to monitor his actions and the way he played (just from ghosting around and observing through walls.)

    It was quite effective to watch as he was able to predict exactly where everyone was (ie shooting through doors or being rather hesitant when going up or down the sewers..etc etc, I think if cheating is such an issue, there could be designated "Watchers" who get the ability to see through walls and observe, just there to monitor the play like referees at a sporting event. Fighting fire against fire so to speak.

    But from what I remember anti-cheat software (is punkbuster still around??) has really progressed in the past few years, I guess the same can be said about cheaters tho.

  • My story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Universal Nerd ( 579391 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @07:42AM (#8519677)
    I'm a good CS player - and by good I mean that I frag at least twice as much as I die and play by the rules (camp as CT and rush as T on de_ maps). I've also commited to memory most of the popular maps and know where people camp (and how to get them). I've also learned that walking is the best way to play (Ninja Mode as I call it).

    Anyway... I've never used a cheat in my life and now, in CS 1.6, it's really hard to cheat yet I've been banned from servers because I "cheat".

    If I had learned to cheat, I would have never learned to play well, I can hold my own against most clanners in lan houses and I'm respected as a gamer despite being "old". Mind you, I play about an hour a day (when the wife lets me).

    Cheating sucks, it really, really does.

  • Social Psychology At Work (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mongoose Disciple ( 722373 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:13AM (#8521046)
    At its heart, I think this and similar issues (such as baseball and steroids, which I believe someone brought up above) are really just a reflection of our culture.

    Somewhere along the line there's been a paradigm shift, and maybe it occured so gradually that no one noticed it was happening at the time. Winning has become more important than anything; this is a generally accepted value.

    It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think at some point, the cultural value was more that you wanted to be the best (at whatever). Winning wasn't the goal, per se; it was just the natural consequences of being the best. Somehow that middle step of excelling has been lost, has become a vague ???? not unlike a failed dot.com business plan. Once upon a time working hard and becoming good at your chosen endeavor filled that gap, now whatever means that seems most expedient (including cheating) is permitted to suffice.

    How or why that happened, I couldn't say.

    • I think there's more: people believe that you deserve everything that you get, or that happens to you. Winning is the proof of being the best, not the result. That means that if you cheat and no one catches you, you're the best and you can point to your win to prove it.

      Along the same lines, people are very focused on evidence, and not so much on the truth. It's like people think they're in a court of law all the time, and knowing that they did something wrong means nothing as long as they're the only on

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