PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Blocks 322,000 Cheaters (pcgamer.com) 184
The new anti-cheating system installed in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been banning more than 6,000 suspected cheaters every day. An anonymous reader quotes PC Gamer:
That's according to BattlEye, which polices the game's servers. Its official account tweeted yesterday that between 6,000 and 13,000 players are getting their marching orders daily. On Saturday morning, it had cracked down on nearly 20,000 players within the previous 24-hour period... In total, the service has blocked 322,000 people, double the number that was reported by the game's creator Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown, last month.
Yesterday the game had more than 2.2 million concurrent players.
Yesterday the game had more than 2.2 million concurrent players.
Get rekt cheaters (Score:1)
Losers by default.
Re:Get rekt cheaters (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Blocking is too nice. The better way is to detect cheaters and subtly modify their game so they go on a downhill course. Loss at every turn, and a hilarious sight for real players. After a while they notice, and consider the cheat sw 'broken'.
Re:Get rekt cheaters (Score:5, Informative)
I think DotA 2 cages cheater and bot accounts into their own world. So it turns into cheaters vs. cheaters and bots vs. bots. There is no way to find out that you are locked out of the normal game until you notice a complete lack of collectible items and those don't drop very often.
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Everquest 2 has/had a special server called Drunder, just for cheaters. That way, the cheaters and botters all wind up in one place. Interesting idea, but not sure how practical it is over the long run.
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Games are a type of fun. Cheating is a type of fun. So, why the fuck does it matter how people get fun.
Cheating is only fun for the cheater you dumb fuck. That's why they're banning twats like you.
I predict this stupid "battlegrounds" a nice demise.
What does this mean? Are you capable of coherent fucking thought?
Re:Get rekt cheaters (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just cohort all the cheaters together, and let them play by their rules?
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Fun is what makes games possible. No fun - fuck your stupid game
Then don't play it. If you can only get your kicks by ruining the experience of others, then just stay away.
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There was some game that put all the cheaters into their own server-pool, so they could cheat the hell out of each other. I like the idea.
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At the moment you break these, you forfeit all rights.
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>The writer of the EULA is never bound by the EULA.
False. In a contract, both parties are bound by the terms of the agreement. If one of the parties is not bound by the terms of the agreement, the "contract" fails to meet the basic standards of contract law and is unenforceable both ways.
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The terms that the two sides in a contract have agreed to do not have to be the same for both sides. In fact, they seldom are.
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So PUBG adds clause 13.37: If the SOFTWARE detects the USER to be using unauthorized third-party software unaffiliated with (skipping to the good part) ... we reserve the right to dynamically influence the variables affecting the USER's game experience to counteract the effects of the unauthorized third-party software.
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The end result, no matter what party violates the contract, is that the player no longer gets to play the game.
And the EULA is not a real contract anyway. If you read them there are no clauses that say what the game provider is obligated to provide, but often there are clauses that do explicitly say the game providers is not under any obligation.
Compare to a rental agreement, a real contract. I pay rent each month, but I don't get rent in return from the building owner. If I break the rules, I can get ev
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These people are those for which image and appearance is everything and actual skill does not count. Unfortunately, they probably get the idea from how the rest of modern society works. One of the indicators of a society in decline.
That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:2)
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that if you survey the people who've been banned, there is a near 100% false-positive rate.
I have it on good authority that nobody has ever been banned from any game for actually cheating; it's always a mod they forgot to uninstall (cosmetic only, of course!), or some innocuous program they have running in the background, or someone hacked their account...
=Smidge=
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:5, Interesting)
I think companies do it this way because they know these little shits will just buy another copy of the game, so more money for them, but I think it would be better to just quarantine all of the cheaters together so they can only play with each other. The only way out of that is to play for as many hours as you were cheating without using any at all to learn why it isn't appropriate to cheat.
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
Why bother cheating? It's a game. It's like saying, "Woohoo, I won the marathon!" while driving a hemi.
Seriously, if you have to cheat in a video game to make yourself feel 733t, you need to re-examine your priorities.
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:5, Funny)
Why bother cheating? It's a game. It's like saying, "Woohoo, I won the marathon!" while driving a hemi.
Not that I condone cheating (I don't, there are better ways,) but you seem to misunderstand gaming culture. It's not about winning or losing, it's about making your opponent (and sometimes you teammates) rage and reevaluate their life choices/use of time.
If you can use nothing more than a glowing box with some hardened oil clicky things attached to it with metal and slightly less hardened oil strings and cause someone you've never met, who has no idea who you are, to smash their computer and develop an existential crisis - well that's just magickal - it's better than sex.
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same reason bullies bully. They only feel good when on top, and they lack the empathy that makes you feel on top when helping others. So the only way to feel on top is to dominate others, and the surest way to dominate others is in an unfair fight.
If you're interested in the science behind this, find the lecture "What makes a bully" on youtube.
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Go pracitice on yourself right now (Score:4, Informative)
If it is better than sex, you are doing sex wrong.
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Not that I condone cheating (I don't, there are better ways,) but you seem to misunderstand gaming culture. It's not about winning or losing, it's about making your opponent (and sometimes you teammates) rage and reevaluate their life choices/use of time.
That says a lot (not much good) about "gaming culture."
But knowing a lot of gamers, I think it only applies to a subset of gaming culture. Plenty of gamers like actual challenge, the testing of real skills, and collaboration in a common goal. It really depends on the sorts of servers you like to hang out and the people drawn to that server type.
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Back when the original DOOM and it's sequel were popular, I played that a decent amount. (Yes, I know, I'm old.) But sometimes when playing single-player, I would cheat to go into "god mode" because I wanted to blow off some steam, and mow through all the enemies without having to worry about taking damage.
Now, that probably doesn't apply to these cheaters. I mean, maybe they want to blow off some steam after a hard day at work, but most of the heavy PvP games these days have rewards for being really good a
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While i understand and to a point agree, there is a big difference between cheating in single player to bow off steam, and then cheating in PvP.
Cheat all you want single player, but if you come to an online platform where it is PvP or any way multi player leave the cheats at the door..
Re: That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:1)
half life/cs speed hack was the most fun i have had in any computer game ever.....
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. But I don't think it's about feeling errrrr 733t?... it's about being an little punk asshole. Like in the MMOs where they grief players for fun. Like completely taking over a town in WoW killing everyone over & over, including the NPCs, so no quests can be ran. Some people really seem to enjoy it.
I shouldn't be surprised how many people cheat. Back in Quake 2 my friends & I ran a server. At one point we finally had to add anti-cheat & dang we caught a lot. Many people I knew for a long time & thought they were damn good. ICQ was burning up that night. These guys got shamed bad, how embarrassing.
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WoW had an achievement, I think, at one point in time where you would kill the leader NPC in each of the opposing faction's main cities. Whether this still exists, I do not know. You were accosted by a relatively constant stream of high level NPC guards along with players of the opposing faction coming in and smacking you around.
Factions taking over towns was very much the outcome of one or two players going on a gank-fest around the vicinity of a low level quest hub town. The ganked players would complain,
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WoW had an achievement, I think, at one point in time where you would kill the leader NPC in each of the opposing faction's main cities. Whether this still exists, I do not know.
Sure it does, but they respawn pretty quickly, and it's not long before the attacking force gets swamped by defenders hearth back for a nice bruising. So even though the faction leader is killed, it doesn't really set people back for that long. This isn't considered griefing, like clearing out a low-level town and keeping it clear for a period of time, faction-leader-killing is built-in as a part of the game.
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you need to re-examine your priorities.
Wanna buy some death sticks?
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Why bother cheating?
Try playing Pokemon Go in a rural area and you'll quickly understand why people cheat (GPS spoofing) at that game. Unlike deathmatch/PvP battle games where you're being a dick to legitimate players by cheating, PoGo's cheat simply enables you to play the game without having to walk/drive all over creation.
Naturally, Niantic regularly flips their shit over people cheating. It seems they don't want people who aren't willing to waste a ton of gasoline to enjoy playing their virtual cockfighting game.
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> Naturally, Niantic regularly flips their shit over people cheating. It seems they don't want people who aren't willing to waste a ton of gasoline to enjoy playing their virtual cockfighting game.
Of course they don't want cheaters to cheat at their game. A game that doesn't action cheaters trivializes the actions that others who play the game legitimately go through. Most especially in pokemon go, a game about going places physically, not GPS spoofing in bluestacks or whatever.
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I know that some people get a great sense of satisfaction from beating them but for me it's little consolation for wasting several hours of free time. If I get stuck I cheat and move on, I am just not that into games.
Picking them apart with cheat engine is actually more fun than winning the right way.
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... but I think it would be better to just quarantine all of the cheaters together so they can only play with each other.
This.
The negative stigma against cheating at video games really didn't start until most games went in the direction of online PvP. Pepperidge Farm remembers official strategy guides (printed on actual dead trees), Game Genie, and when developers actually included cheat codes in their games. Video games are just supposed to be entertainment - not a personal quest towards enlightenment. IMHO, all this taking games too seriously has sucked the fun out of gaming.
Being banned for cheating is like Hasbro conf
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There have been single player games that have done similar things to prevent piracy. Instead of failing the game immediately when they detect a pirated copy, they wait until near the end of the game to show a notice or give a lower score or prevent completion.
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It does happen sometimes. There was a case where some kid with developmental problems was banned because he used a memory card (remember those) to copy a save game from his friend in order to unlock stuff in his copy of the game, and then went online. I guess it was back in the XBOX 360 days or even the original.
The worst part is that Microsoft doesn't just ban you temporarily or just your account, they ban your XBOX. They basically remote brick it as a usable games machine and it's impossible to appeal. A
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I've never been banned for cheating, but I've had a program flagged by a cheat detector before.
I used to play Planetside 2. They added Battleye cheat detection at some point. Shortly after that, Battleye flagged the Palemoon browser executable as "unknown and therefore suspicious" and made me close it before it would let me play.
I don't doubt people that complain about false-positives. Most cheat-detection software is pants-on-head retarded.
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I have it on good authority that nobody has ever been banned from any game for actually cheating;
Just look up Diablo 2.
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First rule of PvP is that if you lose, the other guy was cheating.
Second rule of PvP is that if you win, it was all due to superior skill.
Third rule of PvP is that the game creators have a grudge against you (or your role, your class, etc).
Fourth rule of PvP is that mom has to knock before entering the basement.
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Or Clara. Never forget Clara.
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I don't believe it's actually against the rules,
It is. https://www.playbattlegrounds.... [playbattlegrounds.com]
#12:
Do not stream snipe: this is a form of cheating and you will be banned if you do it.
They added it after several streamers, including C9's Shroud, were complaining and moaning like little babies.
There is a clip from Shroud's stream where he directly says stream sniping is the same as cheating.
It's completely insane, no other game bans for stream sniping.
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Their game, their rules.
Look, the only way that, realistically, they are going to catch someone stream sniping is if the sniper is dumb enough to be streaming at the same time or bragging about it.
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Depends on how common it is. Statistics to detect potential cheaters and then "simply" (with even more statistics) see if that potential cheater have to have external information or just being ridiculously lucky.
Wouldn't want to design the system but it's clearly possible.
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I get a funny feeling that there's a lot of stream snipers here calling them "whining bitches".
In fact, a stream sniper is somebody who gets in a game with a streamer and watches their stream to see where they are, and uses this knowledge to their advantage to kill the streamer. It's probably the least heinous of cheating, but it's still cheating. I disagree with making it against the rules as it should be a risk streamers accept by streaming (after all, most of them are making money off of the streaming)
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No one has to stream, by streaming you are giving this info away freely. In the real world, not using the info would be considered negligent.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's not illegal, it's not something that gets you banned, but it's clearly against some "code of honor," that breaks the system. Just don't do it, just like folks who AREN'T assholes don't jiggle the locks on front doors to see if someone negligently left one unlocked.
Re:That is a LOT of cheaters (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe a 30 second time delay would help?
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It's pretty much the same thing as playing a console FPS with 3 buddies and watching everyone else's screen to know where they are. The only different between that and stream sniping is that streaming usually incorporates a delay so you would only know where someone was and not where they are but that usually is enough to let you catch up to them.
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100 cheaters getting various false log-ins banned thousands of times.
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You do not have free speech on their servers. You have free speech only on your own servers. Nobody is obliged to give you a forum.
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Nah, he just has a memebot running.
Xbox Cross Network Play (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't sound like such a good idea anymore if it will bring cheating to the console experience...
Hopefully in cross-network games you can choose to play with console players only.
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Cross-network play in shooters has never seemed like a good idea to begin with IMO. The difference in precision and speed afforded by a mouse+keyboard setup as compared to a controller is such that I think console players are at an inherent disadvantage.
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That part isn't so bad. People already play gamepad vs keyboard/mouse on PC. Xbox is also getting official USB mouse/keyboard support for games and apps anyway.
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Back in the 360 days the Shadowrun multiplayer shooter made it glaringly obvious that this sort of thing doesn't work well. A mouse is just far more accurate than a joystick.
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That was the idea, they released an official Dreamcast map pack to allow PC gamers to connect, since the maps were slightly altered geometrically.
Dreamcast has Mouse and Keyboard, these were official accessories available from launch. I still have mine, and played that way with that system. There were also PS/2 adapters for the Dreamcast Maple Bus which people used if they didn't want to buy new devices.
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Microsoft did with Gears of War 4, they're now pushing cross platform multiplayer in PR, they're publishing PUBG on Xbox and have their hand in the port, they're currently experimenting with multiplayer across both prior to release, Xbox One is getting official mouse/keyboard support for games and apps...
Unless anything disastrous happens I'd say it's coming, it seems like MS would have some egg-on-face PR-wise if not.
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Yes but every rule has an exception.
Great Start (Score:2)
Now what about PED users?
We have it on good authority that ChrisRedfield88 and Doomslaya were wreaking havoc while under the influence of Redbull & Mountain Dew.
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If you want to perform, you have to enhance your drug use.
How do they do it (Score:1)
I have never understood how these players cheat. Is it special software or hardware? How do game developers prevent it?
Re:How do they do it (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How do they do it (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few basic categories of cheating by modifying your client software. In order of simplest-to-most-complicated.
(1) Rendering. For obvious reasons rendering the 3D scene is done on the client side. A malicious client can replace opaque textures with transparent ones so as to see through walls. This is more advantageous in games where bullets go through walls.
More advanced rendering hacks involve replacing enemies/targets/powerups such that they appear in garish colors, emit light or even messing with their poly configuration so they appear huge.
(2) Data reveal. Since much of the data has to be transmitted from the server to local, much of it not "visible" to the player, another class of hacks intercepts this data (either in-memory from the victim process or from the network stack) and displays it out-of-band, e.g. on a minimap running on a second screen. I can imagine in a game like PUBG (or Starcraft) this would be a huge advantage.
(3) Input cheating. Most likely to get you banned -- this is basically an aim-bot that synthesizes the right input based on either reading the screen or, more likely, hovering data as in (2). Fairly easy to spot from looking at the server replay, as it will basically be a few milliseconds from when an enemy comes into view and when a perfectly-placed shot is fired. Also, in my experience looking at replays, humans almost always overshoot when aiming and then correct back. Aimbots somehow manage to decelerate right on target . . .
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Wow. Lets hope nobody is smart enough to write an aimbot that adds a random normal-distribution based Sleep() before moving, or uses basic damped simple harmonic motion to aim. Such a thing is unthinkable.
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(3) Input cheating. Most likely to get you banned -- this is basically an aim-bot that synthesizes the right input based on either reading the screen or, more likely, hovering data as in (2). Fairly easy to spot from looking at the server replay, as it will basically be a few milliseconds from when an enemy comes into view and when a perfectly-placed shot is fired. Also, in my experience looking at replays, humans almost always overshoot when aiming and then correct back. Aimbots somehow manage to decelerate right on target...
I remember aimbots that worked like that in Unreal Tournament last century. They were quickly banned, they were quickly modified to "merely" be superhuman-ish. I have a friend who could get himself banned on any public server with the sniper rifle, he wasn't cheating as I saw him play in real life just very quick, very skilled. Hit a few too many headshots and he'd be banned as a cheater. I'm sure the anti-hack system was also pretty crude just like the aimbots themselves, but it's not trivial to accurately
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> Snipers are pussies anyway.
Just because you are walking food in an open field doesn't mean everyone sucks as much at keeping cover as you.
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I used to play Quake 2 on a few servers with the game speed cranked way up, rail gun only (like a sniper rifle, point and shoot weapon,) and a laser hook thingy that you could aim at a wall waaaaay over there and it would pull you towards it at amazing speed. With that and some other adjustments it became a fast twitch freakout session every time I logged in.
I died what seemed like a thousand times the first day. Then I started to get the hang of moving fast in 3 dimensions, aiming and shooting while flyi
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That's actually really interesting. It sounds like this would be interesting as a training trick. Food for thought, thanks.
Better solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Better solution (Score:1)
Hmmm.....
The nest answer would be not to cheat, but make the game believe your opponent is cheating...
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I tend to like this solution the best, but my problem lies with games that allow players to report cheaters. I don't cheat in games, but have been reported for cheating in a few games (old Counterstrike servers, Smite, HotS) because I would occasionally do something that someone decided was suspicious (or they were just plain angry at losing and wanted someone else to blame). In games like that, I don't want to be lumped in with actual botters and cheaters just because some jackass decided there is no way
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I think the ideal cheater-punishment system would do that, but on a cool-down timer related to how often someone is "caught". This makes false-positives less bothersome, and gives cheaters the chance of redemption (though unlikely) without having to purchase another copy of the game (but if that is the cheater-punishment method, well...)
This cool-down would work much like the one used on Robot 9000 [wikipedia.org], where the first few bans are short (hours or days at most) but each successive ban is an exponential increase
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That's fine if the segregation is a choice at game start: 'For people who prefer to use third party software, use this server'. But considering that cheaters do spoil the game experience for those who aren't using aimbots or wallhacks or w/e, just putting them in a fence with no other penalties seems like a far too light penalty if they get caught.
Admitting it's designed wrong? (Score:2)
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Ban them from all PVP on Steam (Score:2)
IMO there is no punishment too severe for people who cheat in PVP. It ruins the experience for thousands of others just so they can get their jollies. I would love to see Steam update their TOS to include across the board PVP timed bans escalating to PVP permaban for repeat/multiple cheaters, tied to the name on the credit card, which would not only deprive the cheater of whatever game they were cheating in, but block them from all online play permanently on Steam in perpetuity.
The trick to preventing cri
Re:Ban them from all PVP on Steam (Score:4, Insightful)
Draconian penalties are not particularly effective in preventing bad behavior, whether it's crime or cheating. What works is increasing the likelihood of getting caught.
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More cops vs. more jails.
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Effective cheat detection is key, I agree, and assumed in my earlier post, but your statement is patently false. If you have perfect capture rates (everyone who cheats is caught) but the only penalty is a warning email, no one who is cheating will stop. The penalty is a key part of discouraging cheating.
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Sure, there must be meaningful penalties. I'm just saying that the proposal to drastically ratchet up the punishment for cheating is not likely to be effective.
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To your point, 150 years ago, the penalty for stealing a horse or cattle was hanging, which is equivalent to stealing a car these days. I do think they had it right back then about the death penalty for rape and murder though. There are some lines which if you cross make you irredeemable and not worth keeping around for a chance at a repeat performance.
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Banning from all PVP on Steam? Talk about an overreaction.
Here's the ugly truth about cheating bans: often you can objectively tell if a user cheated -- they modified the client exe, or the program detected a specific code bot running. But many bans are subjective: there was no proof, but there was a high suspicion that the user cheated to do something in a game. Maybe the user managed to get somewhere the developers thought was impossible. Maybe the user had excellent coordination and managed a lot of he
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If you read my prior post carefully, you will see that I suggested a progressive ban, i.e. first offense, 1 day, second offense, 1 week, third offense 1 month, fourth offense, permaban or some such progression. You could even put in a period after which you decent one ban rank, as long as you are not perma banned. First ban goes down one ban rank in 1 month, second ban goes down in 6 months, third ban goes down one rank in 1 year and further bans go down one rank per year.
It is not a one strike and permab
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He's not though. Cheating is a real issue, and it destroys a lot of games. If a company were to take a seriously hard line against cheaters, then the cheaters would move on to another game. Or not- I don't care where they go, as long as they go.
Interesting..... (Score:2)
I kept thinking about buying this game, but held off due to so many bad reviews about the issues with cheaters.
Maybe I'll break down and give it a try, if they're really doing anything effective to get that under control.
I'm not some "punk kid" gamer. I'm in my 40's and I only play a few games at a time. Kind of picky these days about what's a worthwhile use of my free time. (Still kind of addicted to Starcraft II because I find in a lot of ways, it's like playing a game of chess against an opponent, at
Single Player Mode gets rid of all but 1 cheater (Score:1)
Nothing curbed my adult computer gaming like requiring I play online.
I'ts a losing battle. (Score:2)
It got rid of the lazy cheaters - but the hard core competitive cheaters quickly circumvented the cheating protocols. How? Well the language barrier played a big part in it. The Chinese have several active bots and cheat programs but
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Finally, there is a ton of upper-end cheating. Many of the top notch players use private servers online that they pay to use. So when they are put against a new apponent's base layout, they go to the private server, make the base, then practice against it.
I would consider that to be "practicing", not cheating. You even used the word "practice" yourself.
Having a neural network do the "practicing" to find the best strategy might be cheating, but probably indistinguishable from a skilled player who did the practicing themselves.
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Of 2.2m players they found 322k cheaters, that's 15% of the players, and that's only counting the ones they found.
Not necessarily. They probably banned the same cheaters multiple times.
Re: The advantage of consoles (Score:2)
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"What's that? Did we read you say you wanted to buy more loot chests??"