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

Valve Gets Tough On Counter-Strike Cheaters 142

Posted by simoniker from the crack-down dept.
Tycow writes "Valve is finally getting tough on Counter-Strike cheat creators, according to a post by Gabe Newell on HL2-Fallout, who confirms: 'We've started taking legal action against cheating (cheat-sites, cheat creators,...) both in the US and abroad.' The makers of OGC, one of the mainstream cheat software sites for online games, are apparently seeking legal advice. CS-Nation also has a story noting: 'This is just another front in Valve's anti-cheating campaign. Back in April, Valve began a significantly more aggressive banning methodology, that came as a byproduct of a rapid series of VAC updates silently distributed to all CS servers.'"
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Valve Gets Tough On Counter-Strike Cheaters More

Valve Gets Tough On Counter-Strike Cheaters

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  • Quit blaming other people for your own problems (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:42PM (#9502663)
    Perhaps, instead of relying on yet-more-lawyers and yet-more-lawsuits, Valve should try to fix the FUCKING BUGS FIRST.

    The vast majority of exploits and cheats are based on bugs. Fix the bug, you fix the problem.

    Quit blaming other people for your own problems Valve.

    • Re:Quit blaming other people for your own problems (Score:4, Informative)

      by airjrdn ( 681898 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:12PM (#9502852) Homepage
      While on the surface, I agree with you, it goes somewhat deeper.

      Consider Unreal Tournament 2004 for example. Both a widely popular game, and an often chosen engine for other similar games. UT does MD5 checks to make sure the files on your system match the checksum amount they should match to determine if you are using altered files. However, via a fairly easy to find proxy, you can run a small TSR that will intercept the calls to run the MD5 check on your files and always send back what it wants to see...a valid MD5 checksum.

      How can the developers get around that? If they check for the TSR, it'll only change immediately to something they aren't checking for. Whatever the devs do, the cheaters will find a way around. For the most part, it's the better programmers that find a way around the things, but they will often post their applications for any kiddie to use.

      I don't know if legal action is the right action, but at least it's AN action. It's better than the company behind that $50 game saying what Epic says....it's up to the Unreal Admins to ban the cheaters.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )
      So, a company (Redhat) produces a product that has a bug in it. That bug causes a security hole. Some asshole exploits the security hole and causes millions of dollars in damages. Are you saying that RedHat shouldn't be able to sue that person, or that anybody shouldn't be able to sue that person, because it's RedHat's fault for not fixing the bug? Your logic doesn't hold up.

      In my example, a malicious user taking advantage of an exploit cost financial damage to companies. Cheaters cause financial damage to

      • Your Honor, He Ruined My Fun (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @01:48AM (#9503644) Homepage
        First off, let me state that I don't use cheat programs in multiplayer games (in fact, over the past couple years, most of my multiplayer gaming has been on AFAICT cheat program-free Xbox Live). That being said, I say TS to people who get into a game with a cheater.

        When I was playing PC multiplayer games on a regular basis, there were always games with cheaters in them. They (usually the cheater, otherwise the game) were easy to figure out. The solution? Switch to a different server. It ain't rocket science. The idea of suing someone for ruining an online game (specifically, a non-persistent online game with beaucoup other servers available) is ludicrous. The idea of a company suing people who make and distribute cheats - assuming they aren't breaking copyright law - is ludicrous.

        There's an easy way to remain free of cheaters in online games. Make friends and then play with them. Not only will you be reasonably certain there's no cheating going on, but you'll probably enjoy the experience more regardless.

        I mean, hell, if we're going to talk about lawsuits for ruining people's fun then why not go after spawn campers, consta-jumpers, loot whores, etc., too? How about suing people who are frustrated but remain in the game and on a team doing badly on purpose?

        If you're taking online games that seriously, though, I would recommend first that you quit playing online games and stick with single-player - clearly, you don't have thick enough skin to deal with other humans. Either that, or start a service - or find a way to encourage companies to start a service - with pay servers. If people are so invested in these games it's worth tying up court time, then it should be worth $10 a month to have a bank of exclusive servers not open to the general public. I would guess you'd weed out 90% of the cheaters with that one stroke since they'd probably keep cheating on free systems.

        PS- The next time you find a clause guaranteeing "freedom to be entertained" in a government's constitution, let me know so that I can snicker. Aren't there enough SERIOUS and IMPORTANT issues of freedom to deal with?

        PPS- The type of person who would make your suggestions would be the type of person with whom I would want to play and punish with cheating - I'm just that kind of bastard.

        • I wish I could mod the parent up, it's almost precisely what I would have said.
          Except to go one step further. Some people really enjoy ruining other people's fun. That, in and of itself, is fun for the griefer. By fixing bus and suing and removing cheating websites, Valve and their supporters are ruining the griefer's fun. Maybe cheaters should sue Valve on those grounds.

          Oh wait, YOU'D NEVER FIND A LAWYER WHO WOULD REPRESENT YOU.

          *:)*
          • Oh I don't know... "Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe" might:)

            It does leave a bad taste in the mouth this legal action, but I find it absolutely hilarious knowing these stupid wankers are being sued. I gave up on online gaming a while ago. I play with a select group now and that's it. The great unwashed ain't worth the hassle.

            Maybe next we can sue the stupid wanker racists I've been encountering lately.

        • Re:Your Honor, He Ruined My Fun (Score:4, Insightful)

          by NeMon'ess ( 160583 ) <flinxmid&yahoo,com> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @03:44AM (#9504338) Homepage Journal
          You said it yourself If people are so invested in these games it's worth tying up court time...

          The people in this case is Valve which wants to make more money and keep its non-cheating fans happy. Its their job.

          If there's reasonable ways to keep cheaters from spoiling the fun of others, I'm all for them. Beats making the non-cheaters pay more money for a non-cheater environment.
        • There's an easy way to remain free of cheaters in online games. Make friends and then play with them. Not only will you be reasonably certain there's no cheating going on, but you'll probably enjoy the experience more regardless.

          I agree!! People who don't want to deal with cheaters should form their own Internet where everybody agrees not to cheat. That way it won't interfere with my freedom to cheat. I also enjoy yelling curse words at people at Wal-Mart. Those people that complain about me cursing
        • Switch to a different server. It ain't rocket science.
          So because someone else is cheating, I should be the one who has to find a new server? And if there's a cheater on that server, I should find another server? And if there's a cheater on that server, etc., etc.? That's ridiculous.
        • You don't seem to have the basic concept here.

          Lets make an analogy here. say you love to play basketball, there is a court near your house.

          Every Saturday (the one day you have off to play BB) you go to the court to try and play some basketball. Once you get there you see a game going on, you ask to join, they say "sure!!" as soon as someone passes you the ball you get punched in the nose, they grab the ball and make a basket. Rinse repeat ad infinitum.

          Why don't you go to a different court? surely the fac
          • You don't seem to have the basic concept of constructing analogies here.

            Assault is already a crime. If someone is punching you in the nose, you can call the police.

            But I'll pretend you said something about flagrant fouls not involving clear assault. Even in that case, you still have no "right" to assert in order to get access to a particular basketball court unless local laws, or the rules of the owner of the property, permit it. In addition, you've also got to the inalienable right to build your own

        • I never said that was a law, I'm only bringing up a point. If you don't like that example, see the earlier example I used with RedHat.

          While I dislike cheaters, that doesn't mean I'm not capable of dealing with them. The game community I admin for has a very reasonable policy towards cheaters, including warnings, kicks, and bans. Our servers are, as a result, cheat-free, for the most part. Such is the case of any well-admin'd server. If I am stuck on a server with a cheater and nobody can do anything, the s
        • Try to constantly interrupt a super bowl match by stealing the ball, parking you car in the middle of the field and throwing buckets full of paint on the players. According to your logic I should be allowed to do that because this is only a game plus like other people say they should fix the security instead of blaming me.
          • err where did you get that from ?? Each and every one of the examples you gave ALREADY VIOLATES A GIVEN LAW, the point is why re-invent the wheel. In this case I'd just let the punter or place kicker BEAT your A$$, and one of the cheer-leaders keep your car :)

            Granted I know what you mean, and I DO SYMPATHIZE, but as an avid FPS shooter and a server host there are easy ways around this crap, a trusted web of admins and players is the best, the UT UID per install is a good idea as well. We ban by UID and the

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Seahawk ( 70898 )
      Well - let us hear exaclty HOW you would implement an anti-cheat system that exists on a client compueter you basicly cannot trust?

      My guess is that you are not a developer...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

        Well, here's a solution: Let's just not trust anything the client says. Sanity-check everything. Make the game a dumb frontend that merely sends key signals and receives player/ammo coordinates. I know this is technically very much infeasible, but it is the only way.

        One other obvious solution would be a half-baked sanity checking that might be feasible on games - of course, this might mean letting the cheater go out of sync with the game itself.

        Of course, this way, cheaters may soon find out the game is

        • Well, here's a solution: Let's just not trust anything the client says. Sanity-check everything. Make the game a dumb frontend that merely sends key signals and receives player/ammo coordinates. I know this is technically very much infeasible, but it is the only way.

          This is basically how MMO's work. (Or at least, EVE) All character data is stored server side, and all transactions are encryped and verified by server. The client is simply a very pretty way to interact with the server database. Theres

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Seahawk ( 70898 )
          Two problems with this - it needs more bandwidth - alot of people are still on modems.

          I would work for a mmorpg - but not a fps.

          Secondly - how would that affect my ability towrite an aimbot?

          If I really want, I make an aimbot running on another machine - looking at the clients screen with a webcam, parsing that info and sending signals to control the mouse on the client computer.

          How would this EVER be detected by anyone? :)

          I know the example is extreme - but it's on purpose to demonstrate that you CANNO
          • Prevent the screen from being rendered correctly, or better yet, from being drawn at all. Either constant fade-to-black, or replace the battlefield with soothing images, or better yet, pornography. In fact, forget the FPS and the mouse :)

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by aj50 ( 789101 )
          This is in fact very similar to what actually does happen! The client sends the information "I am walking forward" to the server and the server checks it. There is a "lag compensation" feature of the half life engine where the picture on the screen moves exactly when you press the key but if the server says "You can't possibly be there!" you end up back where you started, so you could tell the engine that you could move twice as fast but the server would keep jumping you back to where you should be! This is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          That's how it already works, the server calculates the entire game and the clients receive the results and send back control information (i.e. tell the server "I'm moving forward", etc). Aimbots or wallhacks are clientside cheats that behave like a normal client does and simply display data the normal client hides (players behind walls) or pretends that its user does something he doesn't (like adjusting his aim and pressing the fire button). These cheats are undetectable for the server since they change the
        • There is a program that you can run server and client side that does this already, it's called cheating death.

          for the most part I think it works, although I have heard about hacked CD clients.
    • And why not? If it weren't for cheaters, fps games would still be fun. FPS lost all its luster because of retarded wall hacks, aimbots and etc..
    • I feel the need to add to this discussion, as the opening post is both misleading and untrue. I have not played CS for some time, but I currently run/admin an SoF2 server which is very similar exceot that the engine is two generations newer. From my experience with both games, they are very similar in the issue of cheating.

      As an admin, I run into all kinds of cheating. Wallhacks, ballhacks, and aimbots are some of the worst and most widely known, although there are a number of other types that exist. H
    • Wrong, most of the cheats used in CS are third party apps that hook into the .dlls used in the game, they get information that isn't supposed to be relayed to the client (wallhacks) and insert coordinates for the player automatically based on the relayed info (aimbots).
    • In an idealistic way of thinking you are right but as a customer I don't care if they fix the bugs, the well chair of their grandma or sacrifice some virgins in a volcano. What I care is that they find a solution to the problem. Cheating as ruined this game and they did have to do something not for them but for all the customers who want to play this game and paid for it. In my list cheaters are even lower scum than spamers. They ruined my pleasure and I think its now justice that they pay the price.

      M

  • And this is legal how? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pilot1 ( 610480 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:43PM (#9502672)
    What exactly gives them the right to shut down a website that distributes software that they don't like?
    While I hate cheating, I don't know how they have the legal right to do this.

    • Re:And this is legal how? (Score:5, Informative)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:05PM (#9502807) Homepage
      Technically, cheat software like OGL can be considered derivative work. Under US copyright law, derivative works require permission, otherwise its a form of copyright infringement. Of course, the same can be said of all those console cheating devices like .

      Furthermore, CS uses a key permission infrastructure to play online. Some cheaters use software to switch won IDs to evade bans and the like. This can also be used to find valid keys, which might qualifty as some sort of copyright protection circumvention.

      While I don't like cheating, I'm not sure a non-techincal solution is going to work. The only surefire way to stop cheating like that is to only send data to clients they should be seeing or hearing. That eliminates see through walls cheats, a significant kind of cheat for CS. I've been accused of cheating when I shot through some permeable materials to kill people, accusations are nearly a big a problem as cheating itself. Hopefully Valve is taking as many steps as possible to alleviate this problem.
      • Hey.

        It's OGC now OGL.
        Some cheats that I've seen in action were merely OpenGL hacks, that were a part of the operating system or video card drivers.

        Since when is this considered a derriviative work?

        OpenGL hacks are just that, hacks on the OpenGL subsystem.

      • Re:And this is legal how? (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        One non-technical solution is to remove anonymity from the online game world. If they required a credit card associated with your Valve account it would be much easier to ban people for life. Some kid may turn over his account, but it's much less likely he'll commit identity fraud.

        This is basically how Las Vegas deals with "cheaters" (even if they are just counting cards or whatever).
        • I can go down to the mall, gas station or grocery store and buy a prepaid visa/mastercard. Your idea wouldn't stop people determined to fsck things up.
        • They kind of do this already - you receive a CD key when you buy Half-Life, and you use that number to create your Steam account.

          If you get caught cheating by the Valve Anti-Cheat system (VAC), your Steam account gets banned for some lengthy amount of time. You get a chance to argue your case* (against full logs of what you got up to), so if you really were cheating you'll have to buy a whole new copy of Half-Life.

          Getting money involved often acts as a good deterrent. It's still pretty much anonymous, but

      • While I don't like cheating, I'm not sure a non-techincal solution is going to work. The only surefire way to stop cheating like that is to only send data to clients they should be seeing or hearing.

        Amen! Litigation will only drive the cheat makers underground, big deal. They'll just release to overseas websites that valve can't touch. Actually fixing the game so that the cheats just won't work, now there is an idea.

        I thought the saying was "those who can't, teach". I guess it's actually "those who

        • Actually fixing the game so that the cheats just won't work, now there is an idea. ... Thats a pretty tall order. how about making a perpetual motion machine? their about the same difficulty.

          in Software devlopement you have
          Security/Performance/Stability/cost
          pick 3 of these. You will never have 4 of these. Most things stop at 2 of these.
          • I have talked about this before, but the basic rule is that more processing needs to be done on the game server. It won't stop aimbots (nothing will, including this litigious crap) but it can stop radar and other stuff. Units which you cannot detect will not be announced to your client, for example.
      • "Furthermore, CS uses a key permission infrastructure to play online. Some cheaters use software to switch won IDs to evade bans and the like. This can also be used to find valid keys, which might qualifty as some sort of copyright protection circumvention."

        While there are key-switchers (which worked with Halfife, before Steam made it's entry : Dunno about multiple keys now) that could switch (legimate) keys on a machine, it did not 'evade bans' : the key in case does get banned, and those key changers onl

      • Technically, cheat software like OGL can be considered derivative work. Under US copyright law, derivative works require permission, otherwise its a form of copyright infringement. Of course, the same can be said of all those console cheating devices like .

        Boy, you really pulled that out of your ass, didn't you? The term "derivative works" has nothing to do with making a program that is compatible with another program. Are you telling me that if I independtly write a program to view Word or Acrobat doc

    • What exactly gives them the right to shut down a website that distributes software that they don't like?

      In other news Microsoft shuts down the internet

    • some/most of the cheats are slightly hacked versions of the actual game files.. thus being copyright violations if you distribute them as full as is happening afaik.

      however.. the half-life engine was never ever meant to cope with any kind of cheating.. and not only that but cheating 'just a little bit' gives a huge advantage in CS(which for large parts is just about guessing where and when the enemy is going and being ready to shoot 'em). Only ways I could see how this could be combated _really_ are that t

      • Only ways I could see how this could be combated _really_ are that the server shouldn't be sending the coordinates of all the players to the client, just the one's the particular client sees(heavy, unless there's so many players this needs to be done for preservign bandwith anyways)

        Actually, that's not too much of a CPU load. HL usually only sends player coordinates if there is a chance a player is going to be spotted.

        A mod known as HLGuard fixes a this problem by cutting down significantly on how pla

      • Sueing them, makes it less likely that someone will make these programs. since 1: their mostly free. 2: hobbiests make them. IT's unlikely their goign to just moev offshore. Their goignt o stop. then a small economy sprigns up looking for "valid" cheats... see Diablo 2. But even so. IT'll reduce the amoutn of cheaters from "almost everyone" to "somepeople here and there". which greatly increases the amoutn of fun I have.
    • What exactly gives them the right to shut down a website that distributes software that they don't like?
      While I hate cheating, I don't know how they have the legal right to do this.

      because the software infringes on your IP. The software is meant to alter the ability of your end user to use the program as they see fit. Honestly, a few cheaters can be dealt with but if it becomes too prevalent people will abandon the game.
  • I take issue with these actions for the same reason that P2P shouldn't be outlawed. What if you are using/allowing cheats on private servers? (Note: I didn't see in the article whether or not the cheats work on private servers or if they are explicitly written for Valve's servers.) In other words, there are legitimate reasons for the cheats. If Valve wants to ban CD keys of users who are using the cheats, that's really their own business. But trying to get the cheats removed is rather unacceptable.
    • Napster was shut down because any legitimate function it may have had was vastly overshadowed by the illegal activity that took place on its network. I'd say a similar argument holds for cheating in online games.

      Rob
      • Sure. Doesn't make it right, though.

      • Napster was shut down because any legitimate function it may have had was vastly overshadowed by the illegal activity that took place on its network. I'd say a similar argument holds for cheating in online games.

        No this is completely untrue. Napster was shut down because the central server kept a hash of song names, the song names were copyrighted. The Napster servers were commiting copyright infringement. If substantial infringing use was all it took to shut down a network, why do Kaaza, Gnutella and W

        • If substantial infringing use was all it took to shut down a network, why do Kaaza, Gnutella and WinMX still exist?

          Because they're decentralized. It's a lot harder to shut down a decentralized network than a centralized one. If it were possible to easily shut those networks down, it would've happened a long time ago.

          BTW, you can't copyright a song name. That's silly. The lawsuit [findlaw.com] was definitely about Napster's utility in pirating music, and the main thrust of the judge's ruling [findlaw.com] was that the Napster de
        • Isn't that rather trademark infringement since you cannot copyright names?
      • Napster was shut down because any legitimate function it may have had was vastly overshadowed by the illegal activity that took place on its network. I'd say a similar argument holds for cheating in online games.

        What world do you live in? Cheating may be antisocial, annoying, bad, immoral or whatever but it's not illegal. The argument about Napster is that people were violating US Copyright Code (Title 18) by distributing copyrighted works without authorization. That is illegal.

        Valve is blowing smoke

        • Cheating may be antisocial, annoying, bad, immoral or whatever but it's not illegal.

          Did I say that it was? Maybe you should look up what the word "similar" means.

          Never mind the fact that cheating is likely a breach of Counterstrike's EULA, which would indeed make it a legal (civil) issue at any rate. And if you think that EULAs are invalid? Well, a lot of people feel the same way about copyright.

          Rob
          • A violation of the EULA only gives them one recourse: cancel the license and ban the accounts.

            And EULAs may or may not contain enforceable clauses, but they are not inherently enforceable across the board.

            Copyright is enforceable because it is a law passed by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch. EULAs are private license agreements between two private parties. If you don't understand the distinction, it might be just one reason why you shouldn't talk about legal principles

  • Cheats are not illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:47PM (#9502704)
    Exactly. We all hate cheaters, but mucking around in the legal system isn't exactly the best solution here.

    Is distributing a cheat a violation of the (US and/or international) law? Nope.

    The people who run the cheat website's haven't necessarily violated the EULA either.

    The US and International governments are busy dealing with millions of starving people, wars, trade agreements. Your "cheat" isn't even a blip on anyone's radar...

    • Will a cheat case hold up in court? Heck no.

      Valve is counting on it not going that far. Hopefully, the cease and decist order they send Joe Gamer and his friends that are either using, creating, or distributing cheats, makes it stop.
    • News flash, you agree to a EULA when installing/running a game, this means (in simple terms) obey our rules (whoever wrote the EULA) or don't play the game. Break our laws, the EULA, and you're breaking the letter of the Federal law.

      Last I checked Valve had their butts covered in the EULA, if you cheat online, you're breaking the law.
      • EULAs are not Federal laws. They are, at the VERY best (and there is zero case law that supports this) contracts. It is in fact perfectly possible (and legal!) to intall and run a game without ever agreeing to the EULA.

        It is 100% NOT a violation of law to break an EULA, under any circumstances.

        • You're right, EULA's aren't Federal Law, but a EULA is a officially recognized CONTRACT (as you stated yourself)! And it is part of Federal Law (at least in the US) that breaching a contract is illegal! Ergo, you break the EULA, you are in violation of the law. It is also not perfectly legal (is is possible, I'll give you that) to install and run a game without agreeing to the EULA. Every game in some manner, shape, or form gives you access to the EULA before you install the game. Any company with half
          • You can't force someone to abide by a contract they haven't read or agreed to. They can claim up and down all they want that it's a requirement of the game to comply with the EULA but such a statement has no legal force. The best they can do is deny you services. For example, Valve can shut down your access to Steam. They can't take away your copy of Half-life.

            Breach of contract is not a crime. People do it every day, with no consequence whatsoever. Note also that I said AT BEST it's a contract, it's very

    • UT2004 EULA states that cheating is illegal [epicgames.com] I don't know what Valve puts in their EULA but Epic would certainly have a case in courts.

  • DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eyeball ( 17206 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:50PM (#9502722) Journal
    Good timing being an election year. I'm sure they could bribe^h^h^h^h^h lobby for an amendment to make any cheating (or any enabling of cheating such as talking about cheating, linking to sites about cheating, even whispering the word cheating in a low breath) punishable brutal whipping.

    Too bad DMCA already stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It would be a nice acronym for the Digital Millennium Cheater Act. Maybe it could be TATTLE (Technology Amendment To Target Lying game Enthusiasts)

    • Because I know subjects like the war on terrorism and the condition of our economy are trivial matters when choosing a president. The most important thing on my mind when voting is of course whether or not it should be legal for the 13 year old fuck wad who handed me my ass in CS last night to cheat.
    • Good timing being an election year. I'm sure they could bribe^h^h^h^h^h lobby for an amendment to make any cheating (or any enabling of cheating such as talking about cheating, linking to sites about cheating, even whispering the word cheating in a low breath) punishable brutal whipping.

      They tried that already, remember Clinton?

    • Remember, cheaters and cheat sites have already broken the DMCA, by revealing bugs and flaws in the software.

      This of course gives companies the right to sue, shut down and ultimatly execute the webmasters of these sites.
      Welcome to 2004!

  • Valve is about to put this user off to H/L 2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HFXPro ( 581079 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:48PM (#9503064)
    I loved the original Half-Life and most of the mods for it. Back in the early days, me and my friends on our land would quite often turn on wall hacks, aim modifiers, rapid fire hacks, and bunny hop scripts while playing with each other. We never would do this in the public games out of respect for other players. I don't feal it is Valve's place to say people can't make hacks. In effect they are stiffling the creativity and enjoyment of the other people. Adding this tactic of suing cheat makers with many of their other recent tatics I am seriously considering not buying H/L 2. They are becoming very dictitorial about their game which I don't care for either. I have not bought an RIAA album in over 4 years, nor have I downloaded song on P2P from an RIAA label because I do not care for their tatics or the crap they love to put out now. Now of course I have used P2P for obtaining opensouce software, or artist who don't mind P2P (and have even bought a large amount of their work). So adding Valve to the list is not that hard.
    • In effect they are stiffling the creativity and enjoyment of the other people.
      First of all, How is using aimbots and wallhacks enjoyable? All you do is see people through walls and your crosshair snaps to them and you fire and than bam...the fights over. I don't see the entertainment value in this. At best, it would get boring really fast.

      Look at it from Valve's point of view. Most people DO NOT cheat. And the few people who do cheat are making the game much less enojoyable for the rest. Which hurt
    • That's okay. If they can completely eliminate cheating from the multiplayer in Half-Life 2, I'll buy a second copy to make up for the lost sale on you. I don't know why people are defending this. If you plan on doing it on your own local LAN, then nobody is going to look for you. Of course, you will need to write your own hacks, but if you enjoy playing who can click the fastest using aimbot with your buddies on "your" LAN, then you can learn to write your own code. The majority of lamers on the intern

  • Great work, Valve. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrseigen ( 518390 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @12:06AM (#9503170) Homepage Journal
    There goes their entire customer base. :)

    (Just kidding, I'm sure there are very few people who cheat in CS.)

  • A Potentially Disturbing Trend (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @12:27AM (#9503265) Homepage
    I am a proponent of anti-cheating measures & detection, however this seems like it could be bent to serve other purposes, such as attacking the creators of trainers for games. The difference between most of the cheating that goes on in CS and a trainer is that (usually) the trainer is used only for singleplayer, while cheats are used in multiplayer.

    My question is, who draws the lines and where do they fall; is a trainer now considered cheating? I would argue quite heavily against someone who favored the illegality of trainers given that they are meant for a player to change a single-player experience more to their liking. Developers have mixed feelings about trainers, ranging from 'you can play the game how you like' to 'we made this game this way for a reason, by changing that, you wreck the entire game, we dont like that', both of which are understandable. Now, what stops a developer who is highly against trainers from hijacking such legalities to go after trainer developers & distributors. Are they drawing the line at multiplayer cheating only? Or are they going to go with the more artistic: non-permissible alteration of a game is not allowed since it ruins its original purpose of the game which the developer intended.

    In short, is this the potential road to DRM-like measures in games, where your ownership is only partial and is dictated by the publisher as to what you can and cannot do to the game. I know my comments are somewhat off-topic and may seem a bit overly dramatic but this can easily lead in other directions, especially in the enterprising hands of companies such as EA whom are trying to further consolidate the market.

    • Re:A Potentially Disturbing Trend (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @12:56AM (#9503420) Homepage
      Well, as far as I can see, trainers do no harm to the publisher of the game. Online cheats do. I used to play Quake, Q 2 and Q III quite a lot. Dabled in Unreal Tournament, and Sin was my favorite by far. THen the cheaters came.

      I don't buy online FPS games anymore, because the playing field is never level. THere's always some fuckwad who found a cheat that gets past the latest set of countermeasures, there to kick over the gameboard for the other players.

      Valve is doing exactly what they should. The day fuckwads are to scared to run cheats and kick over the gameboard because they can lose their fucking HOUSE is the day that people can start playing and enjoying these games again.

      I hope Valve cleans every last one of those motherfuckers out. Puts them in refrigerator boxes for their next homes. Makes sure their children never go to a good college. Most of all, makes sure they can never afford anything more advanced than a shitty $8 grociery store calculator for the rest of their natural lives.

      DRM isn't necessary at all in this case. THese people are harming Valve's business. They can be sued, and damage assessed on that measure. I hope it's assessed as harshly as possible.

      I want to be able to play those games again.
    • Speaking of trainers...
      Back when the original Game Genie (kinda like an Action Replay) was released, Nintendo moved to block it from being sold. The court case was based on patents--Nintendo claiming that Camerica (the creator of the GG) had violated their patents. The publicity was all about how cheating ruined games and meant that people would likely just rent games and beat them quickly with their GG instead of buying them and spending more time on them. Obviously, Nintendo lost, but it's just an inte

  • cheaters vs thieves (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <see my homepage> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @12:30AM (#9503283) Homepage
    i'd prefer that they get tough on people who use keygens that manage to generate LEGAL keys, thus making my legal copy useless since STEAM refuses to let me sign up with a key already used! thanks!

    and it's only $10 to ship me a new cd! how thoughtful of you valuve. and FYI, this CD is 2 years old. i can't get the "90 day free cd".
    • My bed is that 99.99999% of those people complaining that keygens has generated their key, has infact been the victim of some virus that has stolen their cd-key(It's in the registry in cleartext).

      Phatbot is a good example - it had the capability to steal keys for alot of games.

      I have had my cd-key for something like 3 years now - my friends even longer - noone of us has had this problem!
  • Valve suing people for spreading freely available, legally obtained information. Riight. That falls into the "sucks" category. As above posts said, waste less time suing and more time fixing the obviously broken code.

    Great - Future FAQ authors will now have to see if their techniques are legally allowed.
    • Haven't examined the code, but i've heard it contains valves (c) code, and it is well within their rights to prosecute if that's the case
    • Perhaps they're resorting to lawsuites because the technical measures don't cut it anymore?
      • That doesn't make sense. Because technical measures to prevent something don't work, you sue people distributing legal information?

        Even if the contract you click when you play Half-Life says you can't cheat, that can't disallow you from distributing information on cheating.

        Basically put, they want to be lazy and not actually fix anything. Once information is out, it stays out. See how successful the MPAA was in limiting DeCSS?

  • To all the "Just fix it" people: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j450n ( 678096 ) <jason@s2games.com> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @02:20AM (#9503847)
    It's absolutely %100 not possible. Untill servers have the power to render every player's frame and the bandwidth to stream these frames to all the clients, it is absolutely impossible to stop people from cheating. (Even by the time we're there, it will be likely that the clients will have the processing power to analyze the frames *still* be able to do things like aim assistance...)

    The simple fact is that whatever the client is trusted with is vulnerable to cheating. There are plenty of things that can be done to make the cheating more difficult (and most games do at least *something* to try and slow down cheat authors), but the sad part is any amount of clever engineering can be completely undone as soon as a tool is made publicly available.

    Is legal action the best idea? I don't know. It's hard for me to jump on board and shout "Go get 'em!" because I hate the legal system medeling in technology it doesn't really understand as much as the next /.er, but something really has to be done about this issue. Cheaters destroy multiplayer games for legitimate players, no question, which translates to sales which translates to employment vs unemployment for people in the industry. It's really not harmless.

    Do people have a "right" to cheat? Good question. I couldn't begin to answer it, but I'd say that if that's the way teh law book bounces right now, maybe it needs to change. We all love our right to free speach, but can also all agree (unless you're an anarchist) that there are certain limitations, like going to see a movie and standing up and shouting through the whole thing is not cool. These people making cheats available are the equivelant of having someone standing outside of every theatre running some particular movie and passing out air horns as you walk in the door. Not everyone is going to go nuts, but you know there will be at least one ass hole in every theatre setting the thing off.
    • >It's absolutely %100 not possible.

      Not technically, but you can use tech to solve (=improve) it socially.

      Instead of a dumb linear list of players, there should be a web of trust. You sign the accounts of friends you trust and play with. You could still _chose_ to play with untrusted players (who you could then sign off on), but you could also _chose_ to only play with trusted players, after some metric ("trust accounts signed by people I've signed", "trust accounts below level 2 only if they've been

  • Good, cheaters should be put in their place, and not be able to play the game at all. It ruins it for the rest of the gamers and us. I hate cheaters!
  • If the software hooks into the client somehow then it could well violate the EULA, however its going to be a very weak stance even if this is the case. Some cheat software does not exploit bugs per-se, so to blame Valve only is not fair, for example it is only in years after HL that people have come up with concepts like not sending the client information about occluded objects (and so its impossible to wallhack). IMO it's just propaganda building up ready for the realse of HL2. Get the name everywhere in
  • .. the other soccer mom's kid, because that was clearly a late tackle on little Johnny and should have landed someone in the ref's book.
  • It sucks that they're doing this. This is exactly the same as the US cracking down on xbox modchip makers and whatever else DRM-unlocking schemes that are being crushed right now. (How many people whine about people using cheats and how many of these whiners own modded PS2's, roms, or chipped Xboxes?) Once a company ships a product, who are they to say how exactly you're allowed to use it and how not to? Obviously there's overlap with redistribution and other copyright issues, but come on, where does our fa

    • Honestly, if a hacker comes on, get the guy kicked, otherwise there's 10,000 other servers to play on

      But how do you know they're cheating? Did that person use a wallhack to see you round the corner or did he just hear your footsteps? I'm sure some people can get headshots everytime without a cheat - do we kick them too because they may be cheating?

      I agree that good admins are essential for a good server. A non-adminned BF1942 server will soon degenerate into a TKing, base-raping, vehicle stealing mess -

  • What I'm doing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrgrey ( 319015 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @08:42AM (#9505714) Homepage Journal
    I used to play CS but have stopped due to cheaters. I got a little fed up and created a fake aimbot/wallhack. Lamers download the hack, which is simply a batch file compiled to an .exe, run it, and get sent to an unlisted page on my website where their IP is logged and they're added to a counter. They are asked to share their thoughts in the forum.

    So far I have logged over 900 (counter messess up every once in a while) to my counter, but my stats page shows 17324 hits, and the list of IP's I have logged is 31 pages long.

    http://igogg.com/mrgrey/ [igogg.com]
    • I got a little fed up and created a fake aimbot/wallhack. Lamers download the hack, ... sent to an unlisted page on my website where their IP is logged and they're added to a counter.

      Personally, I think this is funny, but I really hope you don't get sued for fraud. You are distrubuting something which fails to be what you have claimed it to be. It may really be a keystroke logger or even a key emailer.

      And remember, it was funny when the little guy does it to screw other little guys, but when big bu

      • Re:What I'm doing (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mrgrey ( 319015 )
        Here's the actual batch file

        @echo off
        cls
        echo IGOGG is not responsible for anything that comes from running this file. Run at own risk.
        echo Formatting Aimbot source...
        PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1000 >NUL
        echo Done...
        echo.
        echo Converting source to Binary
        PING 2.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1000 >NUL
        echo "whole bunch of binary that actually says cheaters never prosper"
        echo Done...
        echo.
        echo INSTALLED
        some menu type stuff that I had to take out to post
        echo.
        PING 3.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1000 >NUL
        echo Going online to che
        • Just to do a little bit of CYA, you should add a line after the "Run at your own risk line" asking if the user wants to continue, press Ctrl+C to cancel, and then a pause. That way, the user has, in effect, agreed to what you are about to do. All in all though, I like it.

  • I played CS from the original beta release up to the 1.1 release. I only stopped because the cheating had gone from a minor annoyance to an epidemic. After the retail game was released, there was an explosion of new servers and players, and the cheating went out of control. Outside of a few well run clan servers, most servers were unadministered, or the admin just didn't care (he was the one cheating). Once that happened, I dumped CS altogether, and I switched over to Day of Defeat. DoD doesn't have an
    • Yes, cheating has ruined CS.

      I was an average CS player.

      But one time one snuck behing some players with a deagle.

      3 headshots in a row(lucky), instead of praise I was called a cheater, blah, blah.

      Ruins the game.
  • I've always thought that some smart cheater-hater should come up with the ultimate cheat that just happens to be a trojan that transmits the cheaters' cd keys and/or steam ids back to a home server... then randomly add those IDs to a published "Master Ban Page" somewhere. It'd be great if said smart person could get Valve to secretly add code to the servers so that the ID transmission went through the game channel itself, then had the server send the data back through steam and then to the ban server for p

    • re: getting cd keys via trojans
      that has happened before, it was distributed across quakenet i believe.

      the problem now is that you dont need a cd key to run and install HL anymore, steam lets you get it for free, and by creating a new account, you are able to have a new steam:id (which replaced won:id) whenever you want. yes, admining servers does indeed suck now

      • Wow, I didn't realize it had gotten that bad. I stopped playing when they moved authentication to Steam, so I guess I'm a little behind. Maybe something like that would work with HL2, once it gets hacked to hell... sigh. I was really looking forward to CS2, too.
  • It has struck me for some time that we shouldn't be so worried about whether someone is cheating or not, but rather: "How well are they playing". Right now detecting cheating software is somewhat easier, but imagine a day in the future when we will have webcams connected to software that generates 100% valid inputs into a 100% valid client that is 100% indistinguishable from a human playing the game. At that point you can no longer "detect" that it isn't a human, and the focus will be simply: "Is that pe
  • What a fucking ridiculous attempt by Valve. Their sole recourse is something they already do: ban accounts. Here are the possible "legal actions" Valve could take. 1) EULA violation - This is only available to Valve against an end user. The total recourse that Valve has against the end user is to terminate the license to use the software. Can Valve seek monetary damages? I doubt it because the EULA probably says that YOUR sole recourse against Valve is a refund of the purchase price or some similar limita

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