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Games Hardware

Game:ref's Hardware Solution To Cheating In eSports 65

Posted by Soulskill from the anti-cheating-baseball-bats dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Cheating is a real problem in today's most popular online multiplayer games, and not just on public servers. Some of the world's top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players have been banned by Valve's Anti-Cheat System (VACS) in recent months too, bringing a nascent eSport into disrepute. But one gamer is taking a different approach, creating a hardware solution called Game:ref to tackle the problem. Simple in design — Game:ref, which the creator hopes to fund on Kickstarter soon, compares on screen movement with your inputs — but powerful in potential, the device has the potential to catch out illegal macro users both on and offline. It's already attracting interest in the top flight too.

"I've had some people from [eSports teams] Complexity, SK Gaming, and a few high-profile streamers reach out. I would say everyone seems onboard with making online PC gaming a more enjoyable experience," says inventor David Titarenco, a former Counter-Strike pro himself. "After all, most cheating on consoles has been eradicated, why should PC be so far behind?"
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Game:ref's Hardware Solution To Cheating In eSports More

Game:ref's Hardware Solution To Cheating In eSports

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  • it seems a/etheletes are cheating... should just ban sports for profit/money

    • it seems a/etheletes are cheating

      Why should they be any different than regular athletes?

  • I don't understand (Score:3)

    by Fwipp ( 1473271 ) on Friday May 01, 2015 @04:12PM (#49596643)

    As I understand it, it uses hardware to try to catch software-based cheats. Anything that comes from your keyboard/mouse will be trusted. What's the use-case for this?

    In one breath he cites tournaments - but shouldn't tournament organizers provide and lock-down the machines that people play on?

    He also claims that cheaters were responsible for the death of DayZ and Rust - but it's not like Indie games are going to require you to buy a hardware anti-cheat device to play; and cheaters just simply aren't going to use the device.

    (Also; if this adds any latency to your input, gamers won't use it. They're nerds like that.)

    • ...shouldn't tournament organizers provide and lock-down the machines that people play on?

      This, right here. Wanna play for money? Use our computers - each one is normalized, matched, patched, and clean of everything but the game... hell, fill the USB and other ports with epoxy if you're worried about someone sneaking in a geek stick with cheats, and proxy the hell out of it to prevent Internet access. Allow players to configure the game through the UI if they want, but otherwise no other action allowed outside of the game itself, and seal the cases with tamper-evident tape.

      The only possible obst

      • Of course, the tournament could audit the config files to insure no cheating, but there's a lot of gray area in there (e.g. having a specific combination of player events tied to one key or click that can perform fairly incredible stunts, etc).

        I don't see any gray areas - require each player to use the same config (other than what can be accessed through the game UI) as every other player, the same as pretty much any other serious sport puts the players on a level playing field. If the game allows it, and

  • Has most console cheating actually been eradicaated, or is it just that people aren't being caught anymore?

    Also, consoles are closed systems, whereas a desktop computer is an open system. I see eSports going the way of car racing: different events test different skills. We all know that cars can go faster than human reflexes can manage. Enter Formula racing, which is kind of analogous to console racing: everyone gets the same basic hardware, and can only tweak within those constraints. By comparison, PC

    • The added difficulty of cheating on a console is often offset by the fact that most console game developers get lazy and start trusting the client.

  • I mean, if someone has the hardware & software in their own home, there's really no telling what they're going to do with it. Maybe they're just mod the Game:ref to say you're not cheating when you are. Or some other method of circumvention.

    The only game competition that I would trust is one where they all played on identical equipment on a controlled network in an room ('arena' seems too lofty for 'place to play computer games'). If money was involved, (10's of thousands or more) I don't think it's

  • Anti:Game:ref (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lumpio- ( 986581 ) on Friday May 01, 2015 @04:25PM (#49596743)
    If this becomes popular somebody will make a cheat device that plugs into your Game:ref and simulates the mouse through it.

    • I was thinking just that - creating a USB device that takes input from one port, and simulates a mouse on the other, is pretty trivial.

  • Two things... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wolrahnaes ( 632574 ) <sean AT seanharlow DOT info> on Friday May 01, 2015 @04:33PM (#49596817) Homepage Journal

    First,

    Consoles are almost completely devoid of cheaters because they provide anti-cheat solutions baked-in their hardware.

    I'm not sure what consoles this guy has been playing, but cheating is rampant in pretty much every popular console game. Some kinds of cheats may be harder to implement on consoles, but they always find ways to do it.

    Second, all his rig does is monitor USB inputs. The same USB inputs I can fake using literally the same Arduino hardware he seems to be using for his prototypes. Any kind of macro-based cheats would be trivial to implement on USB-capable microcontrollers. One's cheat program of choice just has to change from sending fake inputs directly to the OS over to passing the same input commands out to a simple piece of hardware which then sends them right back as USB HID inputs.

    • I'm not sure what consoles this guy has been playing, but cheating is rampant in pretty much every popular console game. Some kinds of cheats may be harder to implement on consoles, but they always find ways to do it.

      Consoles aren't fool-proof. But other than the PS3 there's no easy way to inject arbitrary code. So other than taking advantage of bugs (which are the developer's fault), you can't really cheat on something like the XB1 or PS4 like you can the PC.

      Cheating the PC, by comparison, is almost always

      • Consoles aren't fool-proof. But other than the PS3 there's no easy way to inject arbitrary code. So other than taking advantage of bugs (which are the developer's fault), you can't really cheat on something like the XB1 or PS4 like you can the PC.

        Cheating the PC, by comparison, is almost always accomplished via arbitrary code. Wallhacks, aimbots, complex macros, tools that unveil more data than the player is meant to see, etc.

        Every single last-gen console was hacked wide open. 360 and Wii will happily run arbitrary code just as well as the PS3. Last time I checked the Wii was still a purely software mod, no hardware required. Xbox 360 requires hardware unless you have an old console that hasn't been updated in years, just like the PS3 now that both have patched their major security holes.

    • Re:Two things... consoles have cheaters (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Absolutely the consoles are filled with cheaters. Explain how online players have infinite health, armor that never degrades or run out of ammo (assuming ammo, of course).

      The pitch is that cheating is solved, but the facts are exactly the opposite. Xbox 360 has been cracked more than once. The PS3 is infinitely hackable. The new consoles are effectively cheap PCs and as such will be cracked if they aren't already. Then there are the modified controllers, the use of a PC or an Arduino (et.al.) as the input d

  • Anti cheating techniques are successful at first, then there is the circumvention, nothing is bullet proof however using certified hardware in an controlled enviroment is a good start.

    For online gaming high stakes = high interested = much energy leading to:

    a.) broad band solutions for common cheaters
    b.) specialised expensive hand crafted cheats

    History:
    1.) Nvidia looking glas hack - driver version detector+screenshooter
    2.) dummy OpenGL dll wrapper - file scanner+screenshooter
    also solved rat auto fire.
    3.) gam

    • It should maybe be pointed out that if Linux gaming actually manages to take off, it opens up new possibilities due to being able to compile your own kernel.
  • I'm not plugging my 1000 DPI mouse into something that sits between it and my PC. We're trying to reduce input latency, not create it.

  • Why are macros cheating? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We have some limits on what we consider cheating. Corked bats are not allowed in baseball. Steroids are considered bad everywhere. But in bicycling I can spend millions in a wind tunnel and devise ways to drop the mass of my bike. We have swimsuits which improve water flow for speed. So my question is this: Why have we decided that macros are cheating?

    Assuming that a professional gamer isn't going to go down the script-kiddie road, any macros that a top-tier gamer would use would be based on experience, kno

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Some macros are cheating, some macros are not.
      You are probably thinking of the latter type of macro, like a buy script to purchase a pre-defined set of gear.
      The former type would be something like an anti-recoil mouse movement macro that removes any need to compensate for recoil by the player.

  • ...most cheating on consoles has been eradicated...

    lolwut? Whoever wrote that must not be playing any popular online console games.

  • "After all, most cheating on consoles has been eradicated"
    BULLSHIT! People cheat constantly. It's either modding, glitches, file manipulation, modded controllers, artificial network delays, packet manipulation, etc and the only difference is console makers can't go anything about it because it's a walled garden instead of a real computer.

  • But all of the game producers would have to be on board for it to work efficiently. Which comes down to salesmanship and it's licenses cost.

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