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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Epic Cracking Down On UT2K4 Cheaters Already 108

Posted by simoniker from the banished-from-the-kingdom dept.
qasimodo writes "Gamespot.com is reporting that Epic has banned the first cheater from Unreal Tournament 2004. You can read the thread explaining this on the official Atari forums for the game. DrSin, one of Epic's programmers started the thread as a warning to fellow users, and so far everybody seems to be happy. I agree with that, we need to stop the cheaters before they ruin every game out there. But the question remains: How can they stop them completely? Surely, script kiddies will just stop and go somewhere else, but how about the guys who write all the tools? They won't stop so easily." Elsewhere, nerdb0t points to an ACM Queue editorial on the subject of cheating in online games, arguing: "Perhaps game developers don't realize they're enabling roving gangs of sociopaths who are effectively destroying the virtual world the developers have worked so hard to create."
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Epic Cracking Down On UT2K4 Cheaters Already More

Epic Cracking Down On UT2K4 Cheaters Already

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  • let them do it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by focitrixilous P ( 690813 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @07:40PM (#8617005) Journal

    I always wonder why they don't make two sets of servers, one with all kinds of cheats enabled, and a good set. The cheaters get to fight each other for best cheats, and the normal people enjoy a good clean game. Everyone wins.

    It's good to see them enforcing their laws, but how could this new super-cool no cheating system fail so soon?

    • Re:let them do it... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Locky ( 608008 )
      Would that really work? What kind of mentality does a cheater have?

      In any case I don't see that being a solution, the cheats that are refined on one set of servers could wreck havoc on the 'real' ones.

    • Re:let them do it... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vaevictis666 ( 680137 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @07:43PM (#8617027)
      It didn't fail. It detected someone cheating, notified the admins, who verified it, and then they banned the cheater. Case closed. The anti-cheating measures in-game are the reason it took a full week to notice someone with a cheat - it's hard now.

    • Re:let them do it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:07PM (#8617288) Journal
      People don't cheat solely to be as powerful they can be. Some cheat because for them it gives them the same thrill as winning fair and square. They have no sense of fair play. Others cheat only to ruin the game for other people. These cheaters would still flock to the "good set" because thats where these two kinds of cheaters need to be to get their fix.

      • Re:let them do it... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by {8_8} ( 31689 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:31PM (#8617502) Journal
        I imagine that the majority of cheaters out there fall into the second category, which I like to call "Ruiners." Most of the cheaters I've seen derive their enjoyment from breaking the game rules through invulnerability, impossible weapons, etc., and from seeing the complaints from legit users. The enjoyment here is similar to that received from shining laser pointers at the screen in movie theaters.

        I've played CTF-style games against an invulnerable flagger, and it's incredibly frustrating to watch a cheater enter your base, grab the flag and walk back to their side while ignoring concentrated fire from the defenders. Flaming quickly fills the chat space, and the cheater just sits back and taunts.

      • It's probably a better thrill. (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Studies show that people appreciate money they didn't earn more than money they did earn (dollar for dollar). It's the getting away with something, being above the law so to speak.

        The whole bonus of cheating is knowing you're ruining someone else's good time.

        A brutal problem. To kill it, or mostly so, the battle would probably have to be fought in the MS API's. Something like every physical user interaction carries a part of their SID to prove it, and for "program testing" software it would run with th
        • This is totally wrong. People appreciate money they earn MUCH more than money they don't.

          99.9% of riches to rags stories involve people who didn't really have to work to earn their money.
        • Totally disagree here. This is exactly what the Homeland Security office's response is to international and domestic terrorism -- harsher controls, clamping down on any type of non-identifiable interaction. Basically, everyone who speaks, reads, types, looks, smells, or hears anything needs to have a tattoo on their forehead with a barcode in it for easy ID by the Feds. In a marketplace, these controls make even less sense than in the legal realm. Once again, I will state what others before me (and will af

    • Diablo 2 did this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Toxygen ( 738180 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:30PM (#8617498) Journal
      Blizzard set up 2 sets of "realms", an open realm and a closed realm. The closed realms kept the player's savegames on the server and while you were playing, all your character's interactions went through the server instead of straight to another player, while the open realms allowed you to play online or offline and kept your saved characters on your own local machine. Open realms also worked by the same system as fps's do, ie one player hosts the game, other players's boxes connected to it and none of the gamedata is sent to a secure server. It was a great idea and worked for a while, but cheats still crept into the closed realms from time to time. Of course, they were often patched quickly and the offending players banned, but that was little deterrent for others to try to cheat as well.

      The way I see it, anti-cheating measures work the same as bug spray on a camping trip. You can apply it as often as you like, but mosquitoes are everywhere and at some point you've gotta suck it up and realize that soaking yourself in it from head to toe won't keep you from being bitten.

    • Re:let them do it... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Roshin ( 637756 )
      Creating a cheat-server would not work, because all they (the cheaters, griefers, etc) are interested in is ruining the game for *normal* players. People have been trying to run FPS-servers for newbies for years now, creating a place where newbies can get to grips with the game and not get massacred over and over on regular servers. It rarely works, though, because a lot of griefers enjoy joining these servers and rack up tons of easy frags and humiliating the newbs.

    • In lama land no one hear you cheating (Score:5, Interesting)

      by imr ( 106517 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @08:24AM (#8620292)
      Actually some people just like to spoil the games and can do it without cheating.

      During the ut2004 demo, on one server, a guy would come and stay HOURs just taking the raptor, and staying around his base, pushing players who spawned there and crashing it against them, killing them in the explosion. Then go back running to the raptor.
      His team would lose everytime. After one week barely no one would go to this server anymore, because of him, which probably made him rejoice in the closet where he was playing from.
      I could once neutralize him by going to the other team and taking the raptor to go the other base and destroy the raptors as soon as they appeared. That way he was forced to actually fight me in order to go back to his turf, but couldnt since he was really a terrible player. Which was probably the source of his behavior:
      This kind of guys takes pleasure in a dreadfull and utterly ridiculous way because they are unable to take some in a simple playfull way like the others. Therefore the envy.

      Other behaviors frequently met:
      -killing teammates.
      -killing hostages or destroying whatever important game goal.
      -monopolizing important ressources for the team.
      -standing in front of a door in a no teamdamage game, blocking the whole team.
      -getting teamkilled on purpose then shouting "Team Killer!" and having a good player ban.

      The worst case so far was a team of cheater, with aimbots, who invested a public server, went into the same team, and voted out every good players that would come to the game, in order to keep only newbies in the other team and frag them to death.
      What was particularly pathetic was that by watching them play in spectate mode, they were again really lame players, barely able to move in other ways than in straight line. The game was et by the way. Even with aimbot, they were easily killable, so they actually banned good players!

  • This is the only way. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by etymxris ( 121288 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @07:42PM (#8617021)
    As has been discussed in length already, it is impossible to trust the client unless you send each frame prerendered to every client pixel for pixel. Because of this, the only real solution is to ban the cheaters. The way this works is that the people running servers and Epic trust each other. When a client tries to connect to the server, it will check the CD key against Epic's master ban list. If you are banned, you will not be allowed to join the server. Someone could hack the server code as well as the client code to make sure this check is not done (actually, it's configurable), but the cheaters will not be able to play on servers that do such authentication. And as people prefer to play in a cheat-free environment, these servers will natually be more popular.

    Of course, someone can always come up with a better cheat or a new handle, but each time they are banned they will have to buy a new game to play again. That's an expensive mistake for the cheater. Making cheating economically prohibitive is the only way, as far as I can see.

    • Re:This is the only way. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by {8_8} ( 31689 )
      This method assumes that no one comes up with a working keygen. With a keygen, swapping banned keys for clean ones would be easy enough. Of course, I'm sure something's in place to prevent this sort of thing.
      • Presumably Epic keeps a whitelist of keys that have been assigned (a tiny portion of the keyspace). That's what Blizzard does on battle.net, and it works quite well - you can play in singleplayer with a keygen, but multiplayer requires a valid key.
        • presumably the whitelist is generated by an algorithm: would it be possible to break the algorithm given a sufficiently large sample of valid keys? Has this ever been done?

          Presumably it would be easier just to get an insider to leak the algorithm - any idea if this has happened?

          • Yes, it would be. However, as the parent says, you don't look for valid keys, you look for assigned keys.

            If there's 20 million possible valid keys, but you've only made 500,000 CDs, presumably you know what CD keys you've put on those 500,000 CDs. So those are the keys you accept. Somebody comes in with a key outside of those 500,000, and they're obviously using a keygen of some sort.

    • Re:This is the only way. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Mprx ( 82435 )
      Even sending every frame prerendered won't stop all cheating, for example aimbots will still be possible using computer vision/image recognition systems (which unlike in "real life", in the limited context of a game is an easily solvable problem.) The only real solution is to only play games with people who are physically in the same location as you, or people you already trust.

      • Web of trust? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Christ-on-a-bike ( 447560 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @09:51PM (#8617929)
        Hmm... might this be another problem that a PGP web of trust could solve? (OTOH, PGP hasn't even solved the email trust problem yet...)

        At the moment, people who play online games 'seriously' tend to go to LANs or play in leagues - where cheaters are expelled. Could this trust concept not be extended with a web of trust? Vouch for your friend's setup as legit and then cryptographically sign it. To play in your web of trust, he needs to use that config. And if you suspect him of undetectable cheating anyway, you can revoke your signature. (Am I making sense?)

        This scheme is decentralised, whereas the current anti-cheating schemes are presumably based on DRM-like centralised trust. Software-only DRM is sometimes said to be impossible to engineer. I'd rather play with cheaters than install Palladium/TC hardware though :/

    • It only takes a day or so of downtime for Epic's master ban list before all of the public servers stop using it. Who'd want to waste a minute or whatever to connect every time, while the connection times out.

    • Re:This is the only way. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:35AM (#8619205)
      As has been discussed in length already, it is impossible to trust the client unless you send each frame prerendered to every client pixel for pixel.

      Actually Halo PC actually uses this type of netcode. What the netcode does is require all client information to be sent to the server where it will then be double-checked before it is actually intiated in the game. This way if you were to send double packets (speed hack) or send bad video rendering infomation causing you to see a wireframe of the map (see through walls hack) the server would immediately recognize it and kick you from the server. The problem with this method is lag.

      With all of the data being sent back and forth from the server (and god forbid its non-dedicated) games with more than 8 players in Halo PC are lag filled to the brim. Anti-cheat effective? Very. Gameplay effective? Hell no, especially with Halo PC's insane hardware problems.

    • As has been discussed in length already, it is impossible to trust the client unless you send each frame prerendered to every client pixel for pixel.

      I think Halo PC solves this problem by making everything serverside. I have yet to see anyone cheat on Halo, and it makes me wonder why more game's don't do something like this.

      • It's a tradeoff.

        if the server does all the work, then you can't run as many players off one server.

        you're going to need more bandwidth.

        latency and packet loss are going to make the game suck more (goes with the bandwidth increase)

        it'd be interesting, and probably more cpu intensive, to have a game which varried it's trust of the clients, if it detected apaprently inconsistent client actions, or if the clients were behaving....

        That way non/clever cheaters would get a better experience than obvious cheat

  • Dream (Score:5, Funny)

    by elasticwings ( 758452 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:10PM (#8617312)
    I have a dream, that one day, man will frag and snipe without hearing the crys of WALLHACK, OMG HAXOR!!!! Contact your congressman about putting a stop to the cheaters. Paid for by the association of friends of elasticwings.

    • Re:Dream (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Saragon42 ( 763516 )
      The only problem with that, of course, is that your Congressman (or other representative to your national parliamentary body) hasn't yet realized just how much money is present in the videogame industry, and so is more likely to write a bill banning videogames... but more importantly, and all humor aside, I really don't think you'll stop seeing "omg u f***ing h4x0r!" and its associate idiocies anytime soon. The problem doesn't devolve on game companies, either - although it would be nice if they could relea

      • Re:Dream (Score:2, Informative)

        by Roshin ( 637756 )
        I think Gabe's (from PA) theory that 'normal person + anonymity + audience = Total Fuckwad' has a point.

        Creating a cheat enabled server probably wouldn't solve anything, but how about servers that eliminate anonymity? Where you have to log in using some form of real world identification (like a credit card)? Everyone would be playing as themselves and not 'N00bSlAyEr_666' or whatever and I think that would drastically cut down on cheating.

    • Re:Dream (Score:5, Funny)

      by qengho ( 54305 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @12:26AM (#8618791)


      I have a dream, that one day, man will frag and snipe without hearing the crys of WALLHACK, OMG HAXOR!!!!

      that one day right down in UT2K4 little Red boys and Red girls will be able to join hands with little Blue boys and Blue girls as sisters and brothers...I have a dream today!

      • Re:Dream (Score:3, Interesting)

        by imr ( 106517 )
        I realized your dream once and it's on topic since it was with the worst camper I've ever seen.

        The game was action quake2 and at that time, meaning pre counter strike, nobody would scream "camper!" because someone was actually sniping. Also because you just couldnt snipe without moving or die very soon.
        No, camper were, and still are in my opinion, someone who would stay at a spawning point in deathmatch and just kill spawners. Taking their ammo from time to time to go on camping.
        So this guy was a camper, a
      • I HavZoRed a Dr1m zat my 4 KiDz \/\/i1 1 day play on a server where they wi11 n0t b3 judged by the c0l0r of the1r skin bu7 by ze mad skillz 0f theiR char.

  • an idea I had.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xlipse ( 669697 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:34PM (#8617520)
    I always thought it would be a great idea for a development company to design a game, may it be a FPS, RTS or whatever, that ENCOURAGES cheating. For example, with the purchase of the game, you are given tools, maybe some source code or something, that helps you actually DEVELOP your OWN cheats. The whole point of the game would be to see who could create the best cheats and dominate. You could share them, trade, etc. I know that already sort of happens with some games, but not on the type of scale as I am mentioning - I'm talking about a mainstream, popular-like title. Hell, make a series of them.. an FPS, RTS, RPG, etc.. if it would help get rid of some of the cheaters from the games I play, then I'm all for it.
    • I don't think this would work for a company as a profitable product. I mean seriously, the people that would be interested in playing a game based upon writing cheats wouldn't buy it. They would download and crack it. And as far as the lamers that use utility cheats made by crackers. They'll lose interest once everybody is cheating and the playing field is leveled so that they can't ruin legitimate games. It's like back in the days of the first Diablo. Make a game called HAXS DUELZ GOD KILL and nobody
    • That would be pretty cool. You could have different ladder classifications based on the size of the code, or based on limitations (no left turns, heh.. I'm sure someone can come up with better ones), etc.

      If you could make it so the player is actually still interacting with the game (so they're all "enhancements" of some sort) then you might have something there. I've seen games where you programmed a robot and set it off to fight - it was neat, but after a few runs you just wanted to go in there and bash
    • The angle you need to take with this is an RPG/RTS type of combination. You play a hacker in the RPG-style part who must write his or her own code (cheats) for RTS games that he or she plays against opponents (AIs in single-player mode, other PCs in multi-player) in the virtual world. The inner-RTS games could then be any number of highly engaging games, each having its own particular limitations and strengths.

      You would either then have to create a stupidly simple "cheat-authoring" interface for the "I bo

    • not so simple. The action wouldn't even be amusing - it would mostly be "log on and watch your script call 'kill all' " once per tick.

      It would be very tricky to actually make this fun.

  • Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by D.A. Zollinger ( 549301 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:55PM (#8617631) Homepage Journal
    First off, let me clarify, I hate cheaters. I run an ethics guild [clandodgethis.com], and one of our rules is don't cheat. So I have no desire to see on-line cheaters flourish.

    BUT

    If you spent $50 on a computer game, only to have one of the major reasons you paid for it disabled by the manufacturer, wouldn't you be shouting bloody murder? Especially if they singled you out personally? I know I would be furious! Chances are, I would go down to the courthouse and file a claim in small claims court the next day.

    Question is, is there a better way to handle this other than a permanent ban from the master server? (Someone mentioned a set of cheating servers. I think I would be OK if those were the only servers you had access to once you were banned/restricted)

    Better yet, does the master server just work for browsing playable servers, and could you bypass it with clients like GameSpy, or is it more like how Half-Life used WON to check WonIDs?
    • Anybody who uses cheating software knows damn well the consequences of their actions. If anything the company that produces the game has the right to sue them. Everybody that plays the game is bound by the EULA. And in that EULA, I'm sure you will find a section about cracking and hacking. And of course, altering the software so that you could cheat would surely fall somewhere under the DMCA. I mean seriously, you expect a court to defend your right to cause a game company profit loss by ruining the ex
      • they don't stand a chance in court and are full of shit anyhow.

        signing an agreement that indemnifies the software creator and even gives them rights OVER you based on the use of their software is totally fucking gay!

    • Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Funny)

      by pixel_bc ( 265009 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:16PM (#8618406)
      > Chances are, I would go down to the
      > courthouse and file a claim in small
      > claims court the next day.

      From your litigious tone, I'll guess you're American. In that case, you're likely bound by the EULA you almost certianly didn't read that almost certianly gives them the right to do this.

      Have a good time at the court house.

      • Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Informative)

        by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:29PM (#8618491)
        EULAs aren't enforcable unless you agree to the terms before you purchase the game. If I made a video game and one of the terms on the EULA (to be read once the game was installed and there was no possible way to return it, at least in North America) was "You agree to me hacking into your bank account and emptying it," or even "You agree to send me $10," would it hold up in court? Doubtful.

        • Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:4, Informative)

          by D.A. Zollinger ( 549301 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @12:08AM (#8618712) Homepage Journal
          Good points. As well, lawyers are not allwed in small claims court, it is just me, the person I am accusing of doing me wrong and the judge, with damages of around $500 max (I would definately do more research before walking in there, of course). If I was claiming damages of $50(cost of game) + $30(frustration, time, etc), do you really think they would fly their CEO or the tech who banned me out there to defend against an $80 claim in small claims? Heck no. Free game + dinner on them! (assuming I could collect...)

          However, reading on their forum, I did manage to get some great answers to some of my original questions. You are banned from the master server browser. Which means that you can use alternate means to connect to the game servers (GameSpy, IP given to you by a friend, etc). You are only banned from the Epic Master Server Browser which will inhibit your ability to connect, but not stop you altogether (so it isn't as damaging as we had been led to believe). As well, server operators have the choice of honoring the ban recommendations of the master server, but by default that is not enabled. If Epic did decide to defend against my small claims suit, they could easily argue that access to the master server is not critical to playing online, and is a service they provide with limitation. If I cheat, they can remove access because of my abuse of that service, without stopping my ability to play online. Heck, if I were a judge I would rule in their favor.
          • It is a common misconception to think that lawyers are not allowed in small claims court. It just is that it usually isn't worth it. From nolo.com [nolo.com]

            In a handful of states, including California, Nebraska and Michigan, you must appear in small claims court on your own. In most states, however, you can be represented by a lawyer if you like. But even where it's allowed, hiring a lawyer is rarely cost-efficient
        • The EULA may or may not apply to your use of the game (personally, I don't like them, but whatever) but it CERTAINLY applies to online play on someone elses servers, where it's really more of an AUP than an EULA.

    • Better yet, does the master server just work for browsing playable servers, and could you bypass it with clients like GameSpy, or is it more like how Half-Life used WON to check WonIDs?

      Its more like WON.
      The Master server contains a list of all banned CD-keys (or banned IPs and subnets - yes, they can do that), in addition to being a server browser. All servers have the option to (set by the server admin) check with the master server to verify players CD keys.
      So basically you're fucked until you can buy

    • Er, exactly what gives you the legal right to access Epic's master servers? You paid for the use of the software. You didn't pay for the use of their network services. That is a privledge that they grant to you, and they are free to revoke it for any reason that they choose.
    • I don't think your case would stand on court. You buyed the game, and the game still WORKS. The only thing you cannot do is to access some extra service that the same company provides, and that they are probably providing without any obligation to the buyer of the said game (like Battle.net for Starcraft) or that you are paying for, but not without some extra contract (like some MMORPG account).

      And maybe they WILL fight for the case in a small court. If some random cheater is banned from a server, and then
  • Games should just support gpg and/or x.v503 for identification and verification of who players.

    Optional ofcourse, ie not much use for FFA games, but for clan games it would quickly be a requirement if it was easy to use.

  • I bet his brother installed the hacks and he had no idea how they got there... i have heard this happened to dozens of people in CAL, TWL, and OGL... im sure it is a conspiricy.
  • The cheetahs are hard up, but I always say, cheetahs never prosper...
  • Players must install VMWare to play
    ALL NETWORK TRAFFIC MUST BE DIRECTED TO VMWARE
    Players must subscribe to a dynamic DNS name pointing to the PC in gameplay
    • All players join a predetermined IRC channel
    • Players break into groups of up to 6
    • Players declare their OS
    • Players agree on game type (deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.) and duration
    • Players must locate eachother via DNS and try to crack or disable the opposing players' virtual machines (shut down a service, obtain an encrypted tex
  • Is the post by the supposed cheater part way down the first page of that thread.

    I say supposed, because that post could very well be someone making a joke.
    • I'd say that the post wasn't made by Zellius. He lives in Europe, at this point he says Wales, but I thought he lived elsewhere, but that's beside the point. Look at the properties of the picture, it's hosted at imageshack.us... That makes no sense for him to store images there. Now take it a bit further, and take the number 1 out of the url for the pic and look at what you get. I seriously doubt that is a screen cap of the infamous Zellius' computer.

      I think it fitting that the number one master hacker in

  • In the atari announcement, i found this:
    CD key theft is a crime against a UT2004 customer.

    I'm going to buy this game next week, and while i would be extremely pissed that someone would use my key, that would NOT BE A CRIME against me.
    It would be an ANNOYANCE, which i would hope, atari's support service would deal with.
    Thank you for not overreacting over such unimportant matters, you're just adding to the already spoiled legal atmosphere.
    • If I get your CDKey, and I get banned with it - you can't play the game as you paid for.

      Dat's a crime. It might not seem like a big crime, but I think once you got done screaming at forums about how you have to go plunk down another $50 to play again, you might disagree.

  • I know this is off topic, but its funny anyhow... I saw a screenie from UT2004 where this portion of a map (don't know which one) looks just like goatse...

    http://www.imageshack.us/img1/5365/goatseUT04.jpg [imageshack.us]

    I swear this is not a goatse image, just a map that looks like goatse...

  • Well, it's been a while, and I don't know how much things have evolved...but when I was kicking ass in Descent 2, and someone came in and launched 30 earth-shakers at a fast click, I did "kick playername". There's also restricted games, where players have to get permission to enter. Or you can set up closed games with players who you know don't cheat.

  • Everyone should realize... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dr Sin is an Epic programmer, but he was just another gamer who wrote a mod for the original UT. The mod he wrote was CSHP (Client Side Hack Protection) to combat the first bots. Epic hired him to write cheat protection for UT, but it's not like the other programmers even care about cheats in UT. For Dr Sin to talk about a cheater then gamespot to say "Epic wages war against online cheaters"...it's not epic, it's just Dr Sin. Just like before Epic/Mark Rein/Whichever big guys don't care about botters, t

  • Nice concept, but ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chriskenrick ( 89693 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @06:59AM (#8632899)
    I've already had problems with my CD key. One particular server will give me "the master server says you have an invalid CD key" messages every couple of rounds. While this may not sound like so much of a problem
    1. I'm only running the demo version of UT2004, connecting to demo only servers
    2. I'm not cheating, in fact, I'm decidedly middle of the road when the score sheet comes up at the end of a round.
    3. I'm not engaging in any anti-social behaviour, nor been accused of it

    While I love the game (and will probably buy it when I get a chance to get to a store), it doesn't fill me with confidence about the anti cheat protection in the final product.

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